assessments! - mequon-thiensville school district · 2016-01-22 · they will also explore literary...

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Grade-‐Level Breakouts

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Assessments

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Academic Newsletter Quarter 3

2015-‐2016 School Year

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of you for your willingness to be involved in your children’s school experiences thus far this school year. Your support and encouragement are vital to the success of your children, and we so appreciated your efforts.

I know that many of you are aware of the mid-year assessments we administer to all of our students at Oriole Lane. These assessments are incredibly valuable to our staff, and the information we gain from these assessments helps our teachers to develop instruction that meets the needs of our students.

During the month of January, students in grades 1-5 will complete the Measure of Academic Progress (MAP) Assessments in both reading and math. During

the month of February students in Kindergarten, first and second grades will complete a Fountas and Pinnell Benchmark Assessment in reading. This benchmark assessment is administered on an individual basis and assesses a student’s accuracy when reading a passage, as well as his/her comprehension of that passage. The information gleaned from these assessments provides teachers with a wealth of information on the students with which they work.

Finally, our Building Leadership Team has been meeting monthly throughout the school year to continuously assess where we are in relation to the achievement of the goals set forth in our 2014-2016 School Growth Plan. The following staff members comprise the Oriole Lane Building Leadership Team: Meg Smith, Betsy Holtz, Laura Treat, Jodi Brekke, Eileen Day, Greda Kukla, Tara Webster, Nancy Puerzer, Susan Hersh, Megan Riehle, Sarah Brilliant, as well as myself. As you can see we have representation from each grade level, as well as various specialists in our building and across the district. Each member of this team provides a unique perspective, which helps move our building forward. Our Building Leadership Team is currently preparing for and beginning to develop our new School Growth Plan for the 2016-2018 school years. This plan provides direction to all that we do at Oriole Lane, and directly supports the Mequon-Thiensville School District Strategic Plan.

Once again, thank you for your continued support. Sincerely,

Mary Jo Tye Principal

Specialists Assessments Grade-‐Level Breakouts

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Academic Newsletter Quarter 3 2015-‐2016 School Year

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4K

Math: Students will build upon the work we did with numbers to 5 as we move on to groups of 6-10 objects. We will devote extra time to strengthen our understanding of 10 as it plays such a large role in their understanding of place value in later grades. The students will also learn how to decompose, or break apart, these numbers in different ways.

Reading: 4K students will be listening to stories by James Marshall and Mo Willems. They will use these stories to talk about what the characters are like, how a character feels and what a character might do. We refer to this as making inferences. Our students will also continue to look at text features such as the use of different fonts and sizes of print.

Writing: 4K students will begin a Narrative Unit with a focus on communicating their ideas through pictures. This unit will include specific lessons on perspective, balance and filling a picture frame with details that tell the story.

Grade-Level Breakouts

Kindergarten Math: Students are working on comparing lengths, weight, capacity and numbers to 10. Next Kindergartners will work with number pairs, as well as addition and subtraction to 10. Reading: Kindergarten students will find that their books are going to grow and get harder! We will be looking at patterns and how they can use their “pattern power” to think more deeply about a book and what it is saying. Readers also will be working on “sound power” and using their knowledge of letters and sounds to read tricky words.

Writing: Classes will finish writing true stories about their lives and move into writing to teach others. They will write “how-to” texts! “How –To” writers teach others the steps for doing things.

Field Trips: Students will enjoy a winter visit to the Audubon and a trip to the Post Office!

Art: Students will explore their ceramics unit for the year as they roll and stamp clay to create ceramic necklaces inspired by a variety of world cultures. Following this unit, kindergarteners will explore their fibers unit as they learn to create paper weavings inspired by African Kente Cloths. Towards the end of the quarter, kindergarteners will explore color mixing and brushstroke during a painting unit focused on self-portraiture and master artist Henri Matisse.

Physical Education: Students are refining and strengthening skills: throwing, catching, kicking, and blocking for accuracy. They are working on special awareness for safety. Sportsmanship is highlighted.

Music: Music students will be learning songs with a theme of transportation including songs about boats, buses, cars, and trains. Songs with a variety of tempos will give students opportunities to sing, play instruments and dramatize with creative movement.

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1st Grade Math: The third quarter in Math will bring the end of Module 2 and the beginning of Module 3. Module 3 is centered on the Measurement and Data standards of the Common Core State Standards. The students will learn to order objects by length, directly and indirectly compare the lengths of objects, measure objects with non-standard units, and represent and interpret data by sorting, categorizing and graphing.

Reading: In Reader’s Workshop during the third quarter students will move into the third unit titled, Readers Have Big Jobs to Do. Throughout this unit students will strengthen their ability to monitor their reading, develop efficient strategies for solving more complex words, learn strategies to maintain comprehension in longer texts, and then put all of these skills together to read fluently.

Writing: In Writer’s Workshop the first graders will be progressing through the fourth unit, which was started in the third quarter. This unit focuses on opinion writing and the students will write different types of reviews and persuasive pieces.

Science: 1st graders will be moving from the Balance and Motion Unity into the study of organisms during the third quarter.

Social Studies: During the third quarter students will learn about Chinese New Year and the places they live, with an emphasis on community. In conjunction with this students will learn about maps. The three classes will be traveling to the Milwaukee Public Museum and Sendik’s Food Market to enhance our study of these topics.

Art: First graders will begin third quarter by finishing their mixed media exploration of color mixing, abstract art and the artist Wassily Kandinsky. Following this unit, students will embark on their sculpture unit for the year during which they will explore glass artist Dale Chihuly as they make assemblage based sculptures. To finish quarter three, the first graders will embark on their printmaking in which they will explore how to make a print using monotype.

Physical Education: K-2 students are refining and strengthening skills: throwing, catching, kicking, and blocking for accuracy. They are working on special awareness for safety. Sportsmanship is highlighted.

Music: 1st graders are learning to read and perform quarter notes (walk) and eighth note pairs (jogging). In February, students will begin to read high and low pitches by using a music staff.

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2nd Grade Math: 2nd graders are using our knowledge of place value to apply to adding and subtracting two-digit addends to three digit addends. Students will be using place value as the foundation of their understanding when bundling tens to add and subtract with regrouping.

Reading: Classes are working on noticing character traits and emotions during third quarter. They will also explore literary language such as similes, metaphors, and idioms.

Writing: The work on writing gripping fictional stories will continue. Additionally, students will begin writing poetry using literary techniques.

Science: Students will explore the states of matter in our next unit. Students will use the scientific process to conduct experiments.

Social Studies: Students will explore famous Americans.

Art: Many art adventures are ahead for 2nd graders including a drawing unit focused on the exploration of contour lines and the artist/architect Hundertwasser. Following this unit, students will begin their fibers unit as they learn how to create their own textiles using resist, stamping and dying techniques.

Physical Education: K-2 students are refining and strengthening skills: throwing, catching, kicking, and blocking for accuracy. They are working on special awareness for safety. Sportsmanship is highlighted.

Music: 2nd graders will be performing in their music concert on February 4. The concert theme has a focus on the book “Owl Moon” and will feature songs about nighttime, snow and animals of the woods.

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3rd Grade Math: Students are learning to understand multiplication and division using units of 0, 1, 6-9, and multiples of 10. Students revisit the commutative property, Level 2 skip-counting strategies, and Level 3 distributive property. Students learn to compose up to and then over the next ten, the conventional order for performing operations when parentheses are and are not present in an equation, and multiply by multiples of 10. Students will then begin learning to understand fractions.

Reading: Students have begun series book clubs. They are learning how to write and share their thinking in their book clubs. For example, they are asking “how can I live inside the world of the story, identify with the main character, see the world from the person’s perspective, and let all of this help me predict?”

Writing: Students will work on the art of informational writing. This is not a research unit, but children will need to choose a topic they are familiar with to write about. They are learning different ways to elaborate on their topics and other important details. Once completed, students will begin to work on opinion writing.

Science: Students continue their units of study about Rocks and Minerals or Sound or Mixtures and Solutions. In Rocks and Minerals students are learning about properties, types of rocks, the rock cycle, soil and minerals. In Sound, students are exploring pitch and volume. In Mixtures and Solutions students are making and separating mixtures and solutions.

Social Studies: We continue to study the economy, land and culture of a region of the United States as well as reading and answering questions about maps (map skills).

Major Projects: Students who are studying Sound, and Mixtures and Solutions will have a project to complete.

Art: 3rd grade artists will begin quarter three with their ceramics unit for the year, during which they will learn about face jugs and how to create their own using slab construction techniques. Following their ceramics unit, students will explore painting as they learn how to tint, shade and tone to create a dot painting inspired by Australian Aboriginal art.

Physical Education: Students in grades 3-5 are increasing the length of their warm-ups to improve cardio-endurance. They will work on volleyball, bowling and team game units. Student awareness of safety and interfering with classmates’ learning are areas of focus.

Music: 3rd graders will be performing in their music concert on February 4. The theme is “What a Wonderful World” with various songs regarding the beauty of the earth and sky.

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4th Grade Math: This quarter students will continue Module 3 in Eureka Math, which is focused on multi-digit multiplication and division. We will then start the web-based fraction units. During our “Conceptua” lessons students will find equivalent fractions, order fractions and fraction expressions, convert improper fractions to mixed numbers, and add/subtract fractions and mixed numbers with common denominators.

Reading: During Reader’s Workshop students will begin the Learning Through Reading: The Civil War Reading Unit. The students will learn how to read nonfiction with purpose, decide what information was most important and how to organize the new information. Students will also be taught to compare and contrast different texts. They will look at the author’s point of view and how the information is presented across multiple texts, and then decide how to synthesize the new information to teach others about the topic.

Writing: During Writer’s Workshop students are just completing the Personal and Persuasive Essay Writing Unit. With this type of writing, the children formed a thesis about their topic and reasons to support it to show how it is true. The thesis was a new idea for the children, and they feel as if they are already in middle school since they able to write full “essays.” Once the children formed their thesis on an idea, they wrote mini-stories and examples to prove their reasons. We will then start the Informational Writing Unit. The students will research the American Civil War, and a key person who contributed during that historical time period. They will then be able to apply their research and knowledge to the writing of their own nonfiction chapter books. As part of their research, they will learn about citations, primary source documents, conflicting views on a subject, synthesizing and incorporating the key information, and will then organize the information into logically structured chapters. Science: Mrs. Bucheger will be teaching the Land and Water Unit, Mrs. Day will be teaching the Electric Circuits Unit, and Mrs. Rosado will be teaching the Floating and Sinking Unit. Science is heavily concentrated on a hands-on experience, in which students are engaged in inquiry learning. Students will also be expected to complete written observations while engaged in the activities, which is a skill we will continue to develop. Social Studies: This quarter students will learn about Wisconsin’s first people. The focus will be how things change and how things stay the same. We will also be discussing the treaties that were formed with the Native Americans and how they still play a role in Wisconsin life today. We will then begin learning about the early explorers in Wisconsin. From there we will be exploring the fur trade and early settlement in Wisconsin. We are striving for the students to understand that when new groups move into the area, many things stay the same but there is also change. The Native American’s lives were changed when the Europeans began coming to Wisconsin. Art: 4th graders will begin quarter three by exploring gridded drawing and watercolor techniques. Along with the study of several contemporary artists, students will use these techniques to create a realistic, yet imaginative, self-portrait of themselves as superheroes! Once complete, fourth graders will study the Tree of Life by Gustav Klimt as they create tree sculptures using an armature.

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Music: Playing the recorder continues in the third quarter as many new pitches are introduced. Kids are able to learn at their own pace with the Recorder Karate program and will demonstrate their skills individually to the instructor each week.

Orchestra: Students in 4th grade orchestra will be learning how to play and read the notes on the A string, developing and building independence to play their first song with multiple parts and applying many new and old skills to learn how to play their part of “Les Preludes” which they will perform with the middle and high school orchestra students at the upcoming MTSD Orchestra Festival on February 24th at 7:00 pm in the Homestead High School Field House.

5th Grade Math: After completing a unit on adding and subtracting fractions, students will be using computers for a Conceptua unit. This unit focuses on multiplication with fractions.

Reading: We rotate a variety of books through our classrooms as students participate in book clubs. Students work on social skills and will benefit from the intellectual support of book club conversations, learning to use their book club buddies to build collaborative interpretations. One book club is author studies where we hope to tap into some of the power of knowing, loving and studying an author's work, of eagerly anticipating another work by this author, and of becoming enriched by the craft and life lessons this author's books provide. Another book club genre is fantasy. Fantasy books clubs will focus on the elements of fantasy, the epic struggle between good and evil, characteristics of protagonists and antagonists, archetypes, and the themes or life lessons readers find in their books.

Writing: Students will learn to write research-based argument essays. In this unit, as argument writers, students are expected to structure their writing so that it includes claims that are supported by reasons that are backed by research. Students will learn to sort, weigh, and order evidence in this unit. Students will learn to suspend judgment, read critically, take notes, build an argument, and revise, rethink, and rebuild their writing.

Science: Students experience the historical development of our understanding of magnets. Student activities include making a compass, building electromagnets and conducting experiments to test their strength and experimenting with a simple motor.

Social Studies: Students will begin to focus on Colonial History and Settlement. Students will learn how and why the first settlements were established and compare/contrast the New England, Middle and Southern Colonies.

Art: Fifth grade artists will start quarter three by completing their drawing unit, during which they used blending, shading and three-dimensional drawing to create their own celebratory cakes inspired by artist the culinary arts and artist Wayne Theibaud. Following this unit, the fifth graders will begin their ceramics unit for the year, in which they will learn how to combine coiling, slab construction and pinching techniques to create freestanding sculptural forms out of clay.

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Math

A 2-minute video clip is worth a thousand words! Please visit the site below to learn more about how momentum for math learning continues to grow at Donges Bay! http://greatminds.net/support/parents

Department Breakouts


Music: 5th graders will cover concepts such as the music scale and major and minor keys. Focus will continue with improvisation and composition using classroom percussion instruments.

Orchestra: Students in 5th grade orchestra will be learning how to play an accidental, double stops and developing leadership skills as they perform a few songs with the 4-12th graders at the upcoming MTSD Orchestra Festival on February 24th at 7:00 pm in the Homestead High School Field House. Band: The fifth grade band is excited to perform for our upcoming Collage Concert on Monday, February 29th. This fast-paced concert eliminates transitions and allows the audience to hear every ensemble in our district, grades 5-12, in under an hour. The band is learning about different key and time signatures and expanding their range of notes to play with more variety in their music.

Specialists

Literacy: As part of our district's literacy plan, classroom teachers are continuing to receive professional development on-site to implement Writing Workshop using the Units of Study by Lucy Calkins. This next quarter we will continue our work on utilizing individual conferences and small groups to move all students forward in their writing development. Another part of the literacy plan has our literacy coach, Mrs. Webster, meeting with teachers and teaching with them in each classroom this year. John Hattie's research on effective teaching emphasizes that the most significant effect on a child's learning comes from good teaching. Having coaches in classrooms with teachers as much as possible supports this idea and ensures that teachers have more opportunities for support implementing best teaching practices in their classrooms. All students benefit from this important work. These collaborative practices allow more analysis of student work and planning precise lessons that are responsive to student need in each room. We thank the district for making this possible.

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Special Education

IMC : Third quarter is always an exciting time in the IMC because both primary and intermediate grades will be engaging in non-fiction reading and research! Although we explore these areas during IMC class, additionally, I am able co-teach with classroom teachers as students progress through their research process. Since our second quarter work with computer coding was such a hit, we are still learning about the books we can vote for in the Golden Archer Award competition in WI. We will meet this year’s Caldecott and Newbery award winners as well! Remember to visit our website, http://www.mtsd.k12.wi.us/oriolelane/academics/olimc.cfm, for links to

K-1st Grade: Students will begin the bullying unit and discussed the difference between bullying and teasing. We will then focus on what it means to be a good friend.

2-3rd Grade: Classes will also be starting our bullying unit. We will learn what to do if you are bullied or if someone else is bullied.

4th Grade: The bullying unit will wrap up and the career unit will begin, which examines individual interests.

5th Grade: Students will begin the career unit and complete their individualized “Learner’s Resume”.

MTSD special education families are encouraged to visit the following google site managed by Special Education Coordinator Michael Mooren.

https://sites.google.com/a/mtsd.k12.wi.us/advocacy-for-all-mtsd/home

Guidance

Students in 4th and 5th grade are engaged with a variety of learning tools to support the development of a positive, academic identity. The ability to take thorough, usable notes is the foundation for student success and AVID Elementary provides students with structures to hone their note-taking skills through the use of 2 & 3 column notes. Teachers will be intentionally embedding note-taking opportunities in their daily instruction, whether that is in Math, Social Studies, Science, or Readers & Writers Workshop. Since AVID Elementary focuses

on the process of learning how to take notes more than the specific note-taking format itself, teachers and students are collaboratively developing an understanding of which format is best suited for each subject area. Invite your child to share examples of his/her note-taking during 3rd quarter and discuss why it is an effective tool for learning!

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Gifted & Talented There will be a Growth Mindset Parent Meeting on February 22, 2016 at 7:00 p.m. at Range Line School in the Conference Room. This meeting will be presented by the MTSD Gifted and Talented Coordinators. The focus of the meeting will be on gifted and high achieving students, however the information may be useful to any parents who are interested. (Directions to the Range Line Conference Room: Please enter the building via the south door adjacent

to the parking lot. Proceed straight down the hall to the Conference Room.)

Assessments Winter MAP Assessment

Elementary school students will complete the winter administration of the Northwestern Evaluation Association Measures of Academic Progress Assessment (NWEA MAP) by January 22. During the winter, students complete the assessment in the areas of reading and math. Student progress reports will be mailed to parents in February.

The scores from the MAP assessments are used, along with other data, to monitor a child’s growth over the course of the school year, as well as measure growth from year to year. MAP scores help teachers determine the skills and concepts a student is ready to learn.

Wisconsin State Assessments

In April and May, students in grades 3 through 8 will be completing the Wisconsin Forward Exam. The Forward Exam is the state assessment that will measure student performance in the areas of English language arts and mathematics. In addition, students in grades 4 and 8 will also complete the science and social studies components of the Forward Exam. The Forward Exam is a new assessment for the 2015-2016 school year and replaces the Badger Exam that was administered in the 2014-2015 school year and the WKCE in previous years. More information will be available in February.

Next Newsletter: Oriole Lane families can expect to receive the next academic-based newsletter in March, as 4th quarter approaches. Please contact the school office with questions or concerns.

assessments! - mequon-thiensville school district · 2016-01-22 · they will also explore literary...

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