9/8/2021
You may hear your child tell you that they read with their teacher, took a math test in the first few weeks of school, took a spelling test already, and completed a number of other informal assessments. STM does this because we believe that data helps to better inform our teaching, which offers more opportunities for students to learn. Let’s break down our beginning of year assessments:
- Fountas and Pinnell: Reading assessment to check accuracy, fluency, and comprehension. We use this to ensure your child always has a good fit book and to monitor their reading progress throughout the year.
- Developmental Spelling Assessment (DSA): Spelling test that looks at the features of words in order to help children learn spelling by pattern (and exceptions to those patterns) instead of just memorizing a list.
- Math: Review skills from previous grades, which gives teachers a great idea of where to start with the curriculum for this year.
- Scantron (3-8): A Diocesan-wide skills check in Reading, Language Arts, and Math. This assessment is adaptive, meaning it will progress with your child’s knowledge and measure skills-based understanding on a grade level equivalent from K-12. This also gives each teacher a detailed report to compare against their knowledge of the student, which gives them a great place to start differentiated instruction.
- PALS (PK and K): Checks early literacy skills with the intention of helping teachers form small groups of students to target what each child needs to learn to become a fluent early reader. This is completed at the end of September.
The trick to beginning of year assessments is that they do not count as a grade--they are specifically designed to gather information about what students know and do not know to guide instruction. You can help by making sure your children have enough sleep, a big breakfast, and come into school ready to learn!