Hello Room 19 Families,

I hope you are well and had a nice long weekend. Thank you for continuing to ensure that your child has completed the assigned work in Schoology each day.
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The TRO reading assessment, which your child accesses by clicking mClass Student, was supposed to be completed by tonight, but I still have several students who have not finished, so I will extend the deadline to Friday. Two people wrote me to let me know of an error message that they received. I contacted Amplify support, and they are getting back to me. They were not sure of the cause, but said that if you are getting error messages, clearing the cache may resolve the issue. If you are having trouble, please let me know so I can have the technical team at Amplify look into your child’s account.

There are also a few people who have not completed the first Benchmark Assessment. First grade is required to administer these tests online. If you are having trouble, please communicate your issues to me so that I can pass along the information to Dr. Collier. You may need to use a different device for these weekly assessments. 

As you know, I am meeting 1:1 with students again this week to assign guided reading levels. Your child should wait in the waiting room until I admit him/her. I run mostly on time, but there are occasions when I am a few minutes late because each child takes a different amount of time to finish. One important reminder: Please do not help your child during this assessment. It is probably a good idea for parents not to sit right next to their children during this test because you may slip and whisper a word or correct them after the fact. Just a quick note about why I do not correct readers after a word is mispronounced during this assessment: One of the things I am looking for is whether readers are able to self-correct. This can happen even after readers start the next sentence; Something clicks for them and they realize that what they read doesn’t make sense. If you tell your child the correct word or even that they made a mistake, you are not allowing your child this opportunity to monitor their reading. Readers need to learn how to catch their own mistakes, and are taught several strategies to begin this important work. The first step is to see whether they even realize a mistake has occurred. Thank you for your attention to this matter!

Lastly, Ms. Rosario will be painting with the children during art tomorrow. They will need the materials sent home for painting (watercolors, paint brush, a sheet of white art paper), a small cup of water, crayons with a white crayon, and 1 or 2 leaves.

Have a great evening,
Christina Polay

Hello Room 19 Families,

I hope you are well. Thank you for all of your help this week while we get our reading assessments underway. It’s going really well.

There are 3 total parts to our Beginning of the Year Assessments.

1) DIBELS: This is what I am administering this week. The assessment seems to be taking about 10 minutes. I work one-on-one with students.

2) TRO: Text Reading Online uses speech recognition to give teachers information about oral reading fluency, accuracy, and comprehension. This assessment will be done by your child at home. I would like your child to take this assessment by no later than this Tuesday, September 29.

It takes about 10 minutes. During that time, students will read 2 texts and answer text-based comprehension questions.

Students read the text out loud and the system uses speech recognition to score the assessment. After reading and answering questions about the first text, the system adapts the second text based on the performance on the initial test. After the assessment, your child will be given an overall score of either Above Proficient, Proficient, Below Proficient, or Well Below Proficient. This level is an indicator of the student’s ability to read accurately at an adequate rate of comprehension. 
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To access the assessment, students log onto Schoology and click "mClass Student" in the left-hand side menu. Please prepare a quiet place and allow an adequate amount of time (15-20 minutes to be safe) for your child to complete this assessment without distraction or interruption. Headphones are recommended, but not required. Please remind your child that he/she must read the passage out loud. It is really important that your child completes the reading and answers the questions without help. 

3) TRC: Text Reading and Comprehension is what I use to place your child in a guided reading level. I will be meeting one-on-one with students again next week to do these running records. Your child will read books to me until I find his/her independent and instructional reading level.

Whew! That’s it. I know it seems like a lot on paper, but these tests are completely worth the effort and will help your child get the instruction he/she deserves. I will communicate the results to you in the upcoming weeks.

Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns. I want to help. 

With gratitude,
Christina Polay