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This year a new standardized assessment is on the scene: The Georgia Milestones.
I was spending time with one of my best friends who is also a teacher when I first heard the phrase. “So this new assessment, I think they’re calling it Georgia Milestones, should be interesting,” he said. My ears perked up. The CRCT was going away? The Georgia Department of Education was going to ramp up the end-of-the-year test to align it with the Common Core Georgia Performance Standards (CCGPS).
Fast-forward to this fall where I was provided with an opportunity to actually look at the contents of the test and evaluate some of the test items. Of course, I cannot go into detail about exactly what I saw, but I used today’s lesson as an opportunity for the students to see what the Georgia DOE (Department of Education) has shared with the public to date. We the Georgia Milestones overview portion of the lesson as an opportunity to field any questions that arose.
Thereafter, the students were given a serious choice: what version of the lesson were they going to do next?
They were allowed to ask me 5 questions total about the two lesson options and then had to use their newly-acquired knowledge to choose either Option A or Option B. I then revealed the options:
- Option A:
- Create a writing prompt based on one of the following articles from the “Reality Central” book:
- “Debating Ratings” page 20
- “American Dreaming” page 32
- “Heroes without Haloes” page 168
- Create a writing prompt based on one of the following articles from the “Reality Central” book:
- Option B:
- Create a writing prompt based on one of the music videos below:
- “When I’m Small” by Phantogram (embedded below)
- “Black Out Days” by Phantogram (embedded below)
- “When I’m Small” by Phantogram (embedded below)
- Create a writing prompt based on one of the music videos below:
Whatever the students did not complete in class was then assigned as homework.
Georgia Milestones Resources Used in Class:
- Georgia Milestones Assessment Update (PDF of a PowerPoint presentation)
- Georgia Milestones Assessment Structure and Content Weights
Homework:
- Read for 30 minutes
- Complete “Create-A-Prompt” assignment if it was not completed in class (see above)
PowerPoint:
