Assessment

REPORT CARDS                

• This is our first year with our new standards-based report cards.  Rather than reporting grades (A, B, C...) as in the past, we will now provide more accurate data by indicating student growth on each state mandated standard.

• Students will be assessed on each standard and then their performance/progress will be reported using "M" to indicate mastery, "P" to indicate appropriate progress being made, or "E" which would indicate emerging progress on the standard.

• See the presentation I shared with the School Board about the change in report cards HERE .

•  All 2nd graders are expected to master addition and subtraction facts before entering 3rd grade.  Fact fluency will be assessed weekly.  To "master" a fact means that the answer is memorized and no strategy is used to figure out the answer.

• We will be writing every single day in all subjects.   

• This will be our third year with our intensive, sequential phonics program called "Fundations".   This program eliminated spelling tests!  Explicit phonics instruction will take place each day for 30 - 45 minutes.  Assessments will be given at the end of each unit which typically runs 2 - 3 weeks.  A parent letter will be sent at the beginning of each unit, and they will offer suggested activities to support the work we do in class.  No weekly spelling list will be sent home as we don't want students to memorize spellings of words.  Our goal is to teach them the underlying phonics used to write all words.  This program is aligned with evidence-based research.

ASSESSMENTS USED TO INFORM INSTRUCTION

• Students will take the MAP Assessment (Measures of Academic Progress) three times a year.  These tests are taken on Chrome Books and used to gauge progress and inform instruction.  This is a norm-referenced test and results show a student's performance compared to typical peers.

• Oral reading fluency will be assessed using two measures:  DIBELS (administered one-on-one by a teacher) and MAP Fluency (taken independently on a Chrome Book while wearing headphones with a microphone).  These assessments are done three times a year and are used to measure progress with oral reading fluency.  Results show a student's performance compared to an expected benchmark.

• 2nd graders take the CogAT test in March.  This is a group-administered cognitive abilities test used to screen for academic talents.  It assesses students' learned reasoning and problem solving abilities through a battery of verbal, quantitative, and nonverbal test items. The state of Ohio mandates that schools use a screening measure to test for giftedness.