Newsletter
MAP and MClass Testimg Time Is Here!
It is time to sign up for the MAP assessment for your 3rd through 9th graders and also bring your K-3rd graders for the MClass reading assessment. As indicated by our Principal Dan Cooley in previous communications, the MAP test will give you very tangible information that you can use this year while educating your students! Please take a few minutes to sign up for your desired test date and time below.
GENERAL INFORMATION:
Anchorage Office MAP Testing:
MAP Test Dates: September 9th-13th
MAP Test Times: 9-11 and 1-3. You choose your day, time and test. Only one per day is allowed.
Eagle River MAP Testing (SPACE IS LIMITED-FIRST COME FIRST SERVED:
Be sure to sign up for MAP testing using THIS link.
MClass testing for K-3rd grade will take place September 9th to the 12th on a drop-in basis. There is no need to sign up. NOTE: 3rd graders will complete both assessments and can do their MClass reading assessment after one of their MAP tests.
Attention Parents of K-3 Students
One of the skills tested on the upcoming MClass benchmark is Phonemic Awareness. This simply checks to see if your child can identify the sounds in spoken words. It isn't a skill always found in all reading programs so sometimes it confuses young readers. You can prepare your child for this skill check by having them tell you the sounds they hear in words. Example: cat= c/a/t/, splat= s/p/l/a/t, hide= h/ī/d, bridge= b/r/i/j. Have fun playing with words!
SIGN UP NOW!!
Do You Have Friends looking to Home School?
We are the place for their homeschooling needs. Open enrollment is going on now! If you know of a family who is interested in homeschooling have them enroll with us! If you have any questions please don't hesitate to call us at 907-742-3700.
Important Information From the Principal's Desk
Hello families! I hope that the school year is starting off well for those that have started already. For those still in the planning and preparation stage, i hope those plans are coming together well!
So, what important information did I have? And, why is it important? Let me answer the second question first. The reason that it is important is because I know that each of you wants to give your student the very best opportunity to thrive academically, in fact no one wants it more than you! There is a powerful tool that we have for you that allows you to see very clearly what your child's current level of academic performance is. It give you very specific and actionable information that you can use immediately in your home classroom to adjust instruction for your child, that is the Measures Of Academic Progress assessment. This assessment is the Farari of assessments for several reasons, so give me a moment to tell you two of the most important of those:
It is adaptive to your child's performance in the moment. As your child answers questions, that response is instantly evaluated and depending upon how they answered, your child is given another question that is harder or easier. This really allows the MAP assessment to zone in on their current level of performance with great accuracy. This really helps you see where they are at now and how they have grown or changed over the course of the year...and what teacher doesn't want to know that?
Specific, actionable information is produced that will help you know exactly what your child needs to be learning and what they have already mastered. We can provide you with information about what your child is currently working on, what they just mastered and what they are ready to have introduced next in the areas of Math, Reading and Language Usage (writing). But, more that that, within each of those broad categories it breaks it down into areas such as informational texts, grammar, algebraic thinking, geometry and more. You will have a tool in your hand that allows you to tailor your child's lessons to exactly what they need!
I used to believe that the main point of testing was reporting. Wow, was I wrong! The main point is to provide actionable information to you the teacher and also to know what areas we can celebrate and what areas we need to dig deeper to make progress.
I hope that each of you will choose to participate in in our MAP testing and our MClass (k-3) testing this fall! I will be providing some parent seminars both in person and virtually after testing to help you as parent-teachers to unleash the power of the MAP assessment results! More information about those seminars will be coming soon!!
