Report Cards will be distributed the first week of February. Over the course of the year, I have been doing both formal and informal assessments of where your child is academically and socially at this point in Kindergarten. This week, students have learned what an assessment (or to them- a by yourself activity) means and how important they are to a teacher. They have learned that these activities are ones that they have to do ALL by themselves so I can see what they know - not their friends. Although many are inclined to help out a buddy (we have such empathetic friends), we are learning to do only our own work. It was also explained to them how a teacher looks at what each child knows in order to plan what to teach them. The students did a FANTASTIC job of practicing real assessing behaviors: being quiet, saying the answers in their head, looking only at their own paper, not asking a teacher or friend for help, trying their best, and simply moving on if it is too hard.
Last month, more formal reading assessments were completed. Each assessment took between 5 and 30 minutes and allowed me to find out where your child is at. These assessments gave me information on students reading accuracy, fluency, and comprehension and time was spent analyzing their reading to see what strategies they are using to solve words. This will guide me to plan for instruction based on the needs of the student. Students have begun to work in small guided reading groups last week based on the data collected.
I hope you are enjoying watching your child progress through their kindergarten year. Each day they continue to amaze me in their learning thus far in the year. Thank you for continuing to support our classroom learning. If you have any questions once report cards come out, please let me know! More at-home support will be shared at this time. These activities for at-home support are always optional.
