Resources available online
The Maine DOE collaborated with the Association of Teachers of Mathematics in Maine (ATOMIM) in organizing a series of two-session “Dine and Discuss” events this spring to share information about the Smarter Balanced assessments and Maine’s role as a governing state in the consortium.
The assessments, scheduled for deployment in the spring of 2015, are designed to measure student proficiency in the new, more rigorous Common Core math standards that have been incorporated into Maine’s Learning Results standards. The Smarter Balanced assessment is computer-adaptive – meaning it can adjust up or down in difficulty to match how students are doing on the test and help pinpoint where students are excelling and where they need support. The assessments measure higher-order thinking and ask students to connect content and concepts, rather than simply solve equations.
Attendees at the Dine and Discuss series worked with sample math assessment items, talked about the implications for classroom practice and learned about resources available to them to try assessment tasks with their students. (In case you missed it, Smarter Balanced now has online practice tests in both math and English language arts.) Maine DOE’s mathematics content specialist, Michele Mailhot, worked with a team of six other ATOMIM board members to design the content of the sessions. She also researched and provided answers to questions about the Smarter Balanced assessments raised during the first session that were shared during the second session and are made available on the ATOMIM website as a resource.
Materials used in the two-part series can be found at: https://atomim.wildapricot.org/dinediscuss.
More information
- Michele Mailhot
Mathematics Specialist
Maine Department of Education
207-624-6829
michele.mailhot@maine.gov - Maine and the Common Core State Standards, including professional development modules and Common Core math resources