Dear Families,
At some point soon, you should be receiving your child’s progress report. If you haven’t already, I suspect you’ll receive it in the mail by tomorrow or Saturday, or Monday at the latest. If you don’t receive the progress report by the end of next week, please let me know. I want to take some time to go over some important elements to the progress report.
To start, achievement level descriptors are used to show your child’s progress on a variety of skills: Beginning (1), Developing (2), Proficient (3), and Strong (4). Think of proficient (3) as grade level. By the end of the school year, it’s ideal for a student to be earning proficient (3) in their work. This shows they’re meeting grade level expectations. While you might think developing (2) is not good, that’s certainly not the case. Developing means your child is building their ability in that particular domain and becoming stronger. They’re working towards proficiency.
Reading- Independent reading levels are assessed using excerpts from books at different levels of complexity. From levels A-Z, students demonstrate independent reading skills at a particular level based on their ability to read a text fluently, pronouncing no more than four words incorrectly, summarizing the text succinctly, and answering a mix of explicit and implicit questions with 75% accuracy. It’s not uncommon for a student’s fluency to be on a lower level than their comprehension skills. This is an indicator that while a child’s ability to understand the text meets grade level expectations, they’re exerting a lot of energy trying to decode a pronounce the words. Reading more is very important.
The comments you see on the progress report for reading come from our nonfiction reading unit that we completed in the middle of February. This unit focused on strengthening students’ abilities to read informational text, specifically identify main ideas, infer relationships between subtopics, and analyze perspective and author’s craft. A big part of how I assess students’ reading skills comes from the written work we do in reading. Thus, it’s not uncommon for a student to independently assess as a level W reader, but earn developing achievement level scores. This is an indicator that there is progress to be made in how your child communicates about their reading.
Writing- Our big writing unit this trimester was informational writing. In the last part of this unit, students wrote a feature article reporting on an important topic through the lens of journalism. Achievement level descriptors were used to report on your child’s progress in the main components of writing: structure, development, and language conventions.
Content Areas- Our two big units this trimester were The Age of Exploration and the 13 Colonies. Students earned scores on these units that represent particular achievement levels.
Enjoy Spring Break!
Mr. B
IMPORTANT UPCOMING DATES
Week of 3/25- NO SCHOOL Spring Break
Wednesday 4/3- Overnight field trip informational meeting in my classroom after school (4pm)
Friday 5/3- FRIDAY SCHOOL DAY
Tuesday 5/14- Thursday 5/16 Overnight field trip to Dry Falls-Sun Lakes State Park in Coulee City, Washington
Monday 5/27- NO SCHOOL in observance of Memorial Day
Friday 5/31- LAST DAY OF SCHOOL (half day)
