Today students are bringing home iReady Parent reports. At the start of the year, students complete their Fall iReady Diagnostic as they’re starting to receive instruction in their new grade level. Since students have received very little grade level instruction at the time of the Fall Diagnostic, we do not expect them to start the year placing on grade level.

The expectation is that most students will start the year demonstrating knowledge from their previous grade level, since that is the level of instruction they completed most recently and have had very little, if any, on grade level instruction at the time of the Fall Diagnostic.

Placements one grade level below at the start of the year indicate that students are performing consistently with students who have just begun their academic year. The Fall Diagnostic is one data point teachers can use to help determine strengths and opportunities for growth moving into the new school year.

Parent Conferences are on November 6 from 1:00-3:00PM and November 7 from 6:00-8:00PM. In order to sign up for a conference we use an online scheduling program called PTCFast. In our newsletter next week you will find all the directions and links to sign up. We look forward to discussing your child's progress at our upcoming conferences.

Fifth graders played “Bloom Busters,” a game where the object is to save a town from a harmful algae bloom.

October is Dyslexia Awareness Month.

*Did you know...

• Dyslexia is a specific learning disability that is neurobiological in origin. It is characterized by difficulties with accurate and/or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling and decoding abilities.
• People with dyslexia have many strengths, which may include creative expression, athletic performance, scientific discovery, empathy, critical thinking, vocabulary, and more.
• Many successful, intelligent people are dyslexic, including Salma Hayek, Octavia Spencer, Keira Knightley, Richard Branson, and Steven Spielberg.

*Each week of October, we will share a fact vs. fiction about dyslexia.

*Fact or Fiction? Dyslexia is a visual problem. Its hallmark symptom is reversing letters and numbers, such as seeing a "b" as a "d."

• FICTION. Dyslexia is primarily an issue of phonological processing, or the ability to analyze speech or spoken language. Students with dyslexia might have difficulty with reading because they struggle to match letters with the sounds those letters make. For example, imagine reading the sentence below when the letter e is replaced by the letter a.

Ha sew e big brown baer.

Students with dyslexia might reverse letters, but so do student without dyslexia. In fact, letter reversal is common and demonstrated by all types of students when they are first learning.

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