Are we spending too much time testing?

Yesterday (Friday) felt like such a loooooooong day! I only gave my 6th graders 2 tests, but they took sooooooo long! Am I doing an “overkill” on testing for report card grades? Our district says that we have to have a minimum of 1 grade per week per subject. But am I taking it too far with the actual length of the tests? Here is what I have done:

1. Reading-Our Scott Foresman Reading Street series provides a weekly selection test for the weekly story. I used it for the majority of the year, but I didn’t like the assessment. So-I created my own test for the weekly story and made it an open book test. I did this for a couple of reasons.  One is that I want my students to be able to think on a deeper level, while at the same time I don’t want to try and trick them! I also want them to be able to write open ended answers that promote that deep thinking. AND-of course I want them to do well on standardized tests! 🙂

2. English-Poetry- I have started having them read a weekly poem on a daily basis for fluency. I gave them a test yesterday and assessed; vocabulary, mood of poem, conflict, figurative language, etc. They said the test was so hard. 🙂

I do like the type of tests that I have created, because they ask the students to “think”, but they take up so much class time. Maybe I should shorten the reading test to a one page test since right now it is a two page test. And maybe I should do not do a weekly poetry test-make it monthly!

I’m just thinking out loud! 🙂 We’ll see!