Bondurant-Farrar Community Schools

Artifact
Artifact Title: Six Minute Solution Passage and Student Graph
Portfolio Author: Christina Cornia
Date: October 27, 2015
Iowa Teaching Standard 1 Demonstrates ability to enhance academic performance and support for
implementation of the school districts student achievement goals.
a.
b.
c.
d.

Provides evidence of student learning to students, families, and staff.

Implements strategies supporting student, building, and district goals.
Uses student performance data as a guide for decision-making.
Accepts and demonstrates responsibility for creating a classroom culture that supports the learning
of every student.
e. Creates an environment of mutual respect, rapport, and fairness.
f. Participants in and contributes to a school culture that focuses on improved student learning.
g. Communicates with students, families, colleagues, and communities effectively and accurately.

I chose this artifact to show:

X strength and competency in this standard
Evidence to support attainment of this standard:
Description of artifact and how the artifact meets the standard:
The district uses fluency goals set through our FAST testing. Not all students meet the fall benchmark when
tested. The fall fluency goal for fourth grade is 119 correct words per minute. The vast majority of my students
are above this benchmark. It has been my experience though, that continued fluency practice benefits all
students. About one-fifth of my students fell below the benchmark. Only one of my students below proficiency
is in my classroom during all of my small group time. As opposed to having an intervention for one student, I
prefer to take the five to ten minutes for all of my students to build their fluency. I do this through Six Minute
Solution. Each week students receive a passage on Mondays. They whisper read it for one minute then spend
two minutes writing about it. Tuesdays through Fridays, the students partner up and they each read the
passage for minute. The opposite partner watches for mistakes and gives the final work count. The students
then switch roles. Finally the students fill in their graph with their word count each day. This practice is in line
with encouraging students to meet and exceed these state set goals.

Reflection on artifact:
In my second year with I have made a few adjustments that seem to be improving the effectiveness of Six
Minute Solution. The first of these adjustments is in how I partner the students. In the past, I wrote down all
of the scores and partnered the students two by two so each reader had a similar fluency score. The down side
to this is often the students with lower fluency scores werent always aware of their partners errors. Now, I list
my students scores in order from highest to lowest as before; then I split the students down the middle. I put
the highest in each group together, then the next highest, etc. This also seems to drive students with the lower
scores to do better.
The other adjustment I have made is to time the students from start to finish of the activity. I start a timer
when I ask the students to take out their passages and get with their partners. I leave it running while the
students read and I stop it once every student has marked their graph and has returned their passages and
graphs to their desk. The class finds this very motivating and has fun trying to eat their previous times.