Thursday, December 8, 2022 Volume 17 Issue 12
You child’s progress reports will be loaded into The Source sometime near December 16. This trimester we will send home printed report cards (aka progress reports). In future trimesters, we encourage you to access your child’s progress report in The Source. In talking to parents about report cards over the past few years, I have noticed that as hard as teachers work to be clear in assigning grades and comments, there can still be some confusion. You are always welcome to talk to your child’s teachers or to me about questions you have, and I thought I would also address our system of grading here.
We measure the academic benchmarks on our report cards by using a scale of 1-4. This reflects your child’s progress towards specific grade level standards. The scale is as follows:
Below performance expectations for this time
Approaching performance expectations for this time
Meeting performance expectations for this time
Exceeding performance expectations for this time
Standards based grading is different from traditional grades of “A”, “B”, “C”, etc. that most parents received growing up. The numbers 1-4 do not equate to traditional grades (i.e. a “4” does not equal an “A”). They are also not an average of work that a student has done over the first trimester, meaning that if a student really struggled with a concept at the beginning of the year and earned scores of mostly “1”s, but had demonstrated consistent grade level understanding by the end of the first trimester earning a “3”, that child would not receive an average of the “1”s and ‘”3”s equal to a “2”. She or he would receive a “3” because they were able to meet the standard. Likewise, a child who was able to meet the standard early in the trimester and continued to do grade level appropriate work by the end of the trimester would also receive a “3”. The purpose of standards-based grading is not to compare your child to other children, but rather to give you information about how your child is progressing towards the expected grade level skills.
You may also see an area marked “*” on your child’s report card. This is to indicate that a particular skill has not yet been addressed by the teacher. Because teachers cover a range of skills across grade levels, they do not address every standard in every trimester. During conferences, your child’s teacher discussed their progress with you, but if you have questions about what you see on the report card, please do reach out to your teacher.
The Learning Behaviors section of the report card gives you information about your child’s behaviors that promote learning, such as perseverance, organization and self-control. This section is scored in the following way:
S: Strength (consistently uses skill across subjects and settings)
D: Developing (applies skills in most subjects and settings)
E: Emerging (beginning to apply skills in some subjects and settings)
Attendance is also marked on your child’s report card. Remember that your child is counted as present if they are present in their Teams meeting for any part of the day or if they complete work in Seesaw at any time of the day. They may also be counted as present if you have technical issues which prevent them from being in class an you let us know.
There is one new element to the elementary progress report that you will want to be aware of. Our district is just transitioning to using Lexile Levels as a measure of determining if students are meeting grade level expectations as independent readers. The Lexile Level will now be the single measure teachers use to answer Yes or No to Independent Reading: Student meets grade level performance expectations. This is just one measure of reading with a focus on comprehension from one point in time (their Fall MAP test). As with any new measure, we often see students not meeting the expected target when first adopted. Your child’s teacher uses other measures to determine proficiency in reading. These may include DIBELS, SIPPS and F&P assessments, depending on your child’s grade level. If you have questions or concerns, please let your child’s teacher know.
Visits from 2 Division II Field Hockey Teams
Last week two Division II Field Hockey teams volunteered to drop by and join two of Ms. Litton's PE classes for some hands-on lessons on how to play field hockey. Students had a blast!
Teams were in Seattle from across the country for the NCAA Division II National Field Hockey Championships.
The two teams that came to Thurgood Marshall were:
Assumption University out of Worcester, Massachusetts who work worked with Ms. Anderson's 1st grade class
West Chester University out of West Chester, Pennsylvania who worked with Ms. Laughlin's 4th grade class
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