Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Newsletter ~ May 30 *** Tis The Season for Assessments *** GO RASCALS!!!

HEAR YE.... HEAR YE.... 

RASCAL FAMILIES!  


Your child will be taking the DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills) Assessment today, Thursday, May 30th. Following is a description of each subtest.  The results will be sent home with your child's report card on the last day of school.


Letter Naming Fluency (LNF)
On the LNF assessment, your child is shown a page of random letters and asked to name the letters.  The number of letters your child names correctly in one minute is counted.  The ability to name letters is a strong predictor of later reading achievement. The Benchmark Goal is 62 letters per minute at the end of the kindergarten year.


Phoneme Segmentation Fluency  (PSF)
Understanding that spoken words can be broken down into individual sounds and then blended back together to form a word is an important skill in learning to read and write.  On the PSF assessment, your child is given a spoken word and asked to say each sound in the word:  “Tell me the sounds in the word mop.  “Child:  “/m/ /o/ /p/”.  The Benchmark Goal is 40 sounds per minute at the end of the kindergarten year.



Nonsense Word Fluency (NWF)
Children with strong phonics skills know the sounds of letters and are able to blend them together to form words.  On the NWF assessment, your child is shown a “nonsense word” containing 2 or 3 letters (e.g.  bim, ob) and asked to read the word.  Your child is given credit for each correct sound (Correct Letter Sound – CLS).  Nonsense words are used so that the teacher knows your child is connecting the sound to the letter rather than recognizing the word by sight.  The Benchmark Goal is 28 sounds per minute at the end of the kindergarten year.



Measure of Academic Progress (MAP)
The kinders are scheduled to take the NWEA (MAP) Test on Monday and Tuesday in Math ~ Thursday and Friday in Reading.  What is the MAP/NWEA Assessment?  NWEA’s computerized adaptive tests are called Measure of Academic Progress, or MAP.  When taking a MAP test, the difficulty of each question is based on how well a student answers all the previous questions.  As the students answer correctly, questions become more difficult.  If the student answers incorrectly, the questions become easier.  The final score is an estimate of the student’s achievement level.


This assessment itself is unique in that it adapts to the student's ability, accurately measuring what a child knows and needs to learn. In addition, MAP tests measure academic growth over time.   This is the third time the NWEA has been administered this year. Results will be sent home on the last day of school with your child's report card.  The NWEA Assessment will continue every year throughout each grade level so that you’ll be able to compare your child’s progress with the progress of the previous year.
                                              
                   SCORE  Rascals!!
                       June A. Rich 













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