Presented by Lindsay Vanderburg, District Instructional Specialist, Secondary Reading Language Arts, Killeen Independent School District (TX); and Cortney Kingery-Ragan, Lead Teacher, Early College High School English Department, Killeen Independent School District (TX)

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How are you authentically assessing your students’ reading and writing? How are your students preparing for state summative assessments? If you’re feeling unsure about your answers, this edWebinar is here to help you find solutions! The team at Killeen ISD in Texas has faced these exact same challenges. To best support their educators, and in turn prepare their students, they created common assessments aligned to their core curriculum and to the rigor of their state tests. This was not an easy task, and they have compiled the tools, resources, and tips that helped them to boost student outcomes.

In this recorded edWebinar, learn about:

• Designing the right kind of assessments for your students while including teacher voice
• How to improve feedback for meaningful insights
• Tools that help you save time with planning, prep, instruction, and grading
• How to identify skill gaps and areas for enrichment, and then how to differentiate support
• How to incorporate your state standards and core curriculum into custom district rubrics

By creating common assessments that aligned with both their core curriculum and state standards (not an easy task!), along with learning progressions, the stress of preparing for assessments was allocated for teachers. The educators at Killeen ISD were able to gather meaningful data on student reading and writing proficiency, measure growth, and then effectively use that data to differentiate and refine instruction.

This recorded edWebinar will be of interest to K-12 teachers, librarians, and school and district leaders. 

About the Presenters

Lindsay Vanderburg holds a Bachelor of Arts in education from Texas A&M University and a Master of Education in curriculum and instruction from the University of Kansas. Lindsay began her teaching career in Iola, Texas, in 2004 teaching sixth grade English language arts and social studies. As a military spouse, she has had the opportunity to teach in multiple districts and schools as an English teacher, reading teacher, reading specialist, dyslexia teacher, and instructional coach. Lindsay currently serves as Killeen ISD’s District Instructional Specialist for Secondary Reading Language Arts.

Cortney Kingery-Ragan holds a Bachelor of Arts in English from Sacramento State University and a Secondary Credential from Humboldt State University. Her husband’s career in the U.S. Army brought her to the Fort Hood area in 2015. All seven years of Cortney’s teaching experience have been with Killeen ISD, first at Harker Heights High School, and now at KISD’s Early College High School. She has had the privilege of teaching English I and II at the regular and Honors levels, as well as teaching accelerated seniors in English IV during the summer. As part of her work with the district, Cortney served on the Common Unit Assessments revision team for English II in the summer of 2021 and has also given multiple district-level presentations to her colleagues for professional development. She currently teaches English I Honors to college-bound freshmen and serves as the ECHS English Department’s Lead Teacher.

Closed captioning will be added to the recording within 2 weeks of the live presentation.

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Writable is a guided writing program that helps teachers scaffold and motivate students to become purposeful, proficient writers, and helps schools assess and monitor writing growth. With 1k+ assignments and prompts (or create your own), many types of feedback and grading (including AI), and custom district or state assessments, Writable helps teachers save time on prep and grading while focusing their writing instruction.