The Bethlehem Star

We hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving Break. We enjoyed having time with our families, but it is great to be back in school! It is hard to believe that 2023 is coming to a close soon. One more month to go!

The next few weeks are filled with a lot of learning and a lot of fun! Students will be taking mid-year assessments--MAP, DIBELS, and TRC. We will be welcoming families for a holiday-themed Family Literacy Night, and 2nd grade will be performing! To kick off the holiday season, we also have an optional holiday-themed calendar that pairs each day's dress-up theme with a book. There is always some extra joy in the air in December! We absolutely love this time of year!

Click on the images below for more information about Family Literacy Night, the Holiday Theme Calendar, and Holiday Parties.

The following 3 articles explain the assessments we will be giving over the next couple of weeks. If you have any questions about the assessments, you are welcome to contact your child's teacher.

DIBELS ® (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills) is a set of procedures and measures for assessing the acquisition of literacy skills. They are designed to be short (one minute) fluency measures that can be used to regularly detect risk and monitor the development of early literacy and early reading skills in kindergarten through fourth grade. We administered the beginning-of-the-year assessments in August, and we are excited to see the growth our students have made since that time. Reports with your child's results will be sent home with your child's report card in January.

The TRC (Text Reading and Comprehension) assessment is an early literacy formative assessment for grades K/1–5. TRC helps teachers understand student reading development by measuring a range of skills including reading fluency, accuracy and comprehension. TRC enables teachers to record detailed running records of student reading and assess student comprehension using a series of leveled books. TRC also allows teachers to assess early print concepts and reading behaviors in pre-readers. Teachers and school leaders use TRC results to make instructional decisions and carry out/monitor interventions and supports.

MAP (Measures of Academic Progress) is a dynamic adaptive assessment that measures your students' achievement and growth in K–8 math, reading, and language usage. We use MAP Growth to understand how our students are performing and to inform our instructional strategies. Students in Kindergarten through 2nd grade are assessed in Reading & Math, while students in grades 3-5 have an additional assessment in Language Usage. We look forward to seeing the growth our students have made. Results will be shared with families when report cards are sent home in January.

We will begin learning about Perseverance the week of December 11. One way to think about Perseverance is “pushing yourself through challenges and obstacles.” We all experience challenges in our lives. We all have moments when we feel like we can’t do it or that we want to give up on a big task. It is important to develop tools that help us work through those challenges in order to grow in those moments instead of giving up. How might you practice Perseverance as a family this month? Perseverance is 1 of 3 traits we will focus on throughout the year that helps students Be Strong. Across grade levels, students will be developing skills like focusing, organizing, and goal-setting.

1: Represent UGA Day: Wear Red & Black

4: MAP: 5th Grade Reading & Kindergarten Math (Borron & Greene)

5: MAP: 3rd/4th Grade Math; Kindergarten Math (Camp & McGhee)

6: MAP: 5th Grade Math; Kindergarten Math (Hunter)

6: 4th Grade Field Trip to Truist Park

7: MAP: 1st/2nd Grade Math

7: PK-5 Family Literacy Night & 2nd Grade Music Program 6:00-7:15

8: Student of the Month Ceremony 8:30 AM (by invitation)

11: MAP: 3rd/4th/5th Grade Language

18: Holiday Parties (See graphic above)

19: Holiday Parties (See graphic above)

20: Last Day of Semester; Early Release at 10:45

21: Winter Break Begins (Students return to school on January 8, 2024.)

8: Students Return

10: Report Cards Go Home

15: No School-MLK Day

25: Family Math Night

Thanks to your generosity, our school raised $878 for Adult Literacy Barrow as part of our Read-a-thon on November 17. Those funds will directly assist adult learners in our community. We enjoy helping our students learn about the importance of giving back to our community, and we had so much fun reading in our pajamas! We can say this event was a HUGE sucess!