“The purpose of quality student assessment is to help students learn! And teachers teach!”
nwea.org
I love this quote that can be found on the website of our assessment partner, the Northwest Evaluation Association. It truly demonstrates how quality assessment can enhance a student’s overall educational experience, while providing teachers with the information they need to best assist your students’ education.
Next week, the students will be taking the Measures of Academic Progress assessment to ensure that they are making measurable growth in their studies here at ISO.
With that in mind, we will use the MAP test for this last quarter to “help students learn, and teachers teach.” Please keep the following in mind while reviewing the schedule:
- MAP tests are individualized measures of performance in Reading, Math, and Science. Tests are taken on the computer, and the results help teachers, parents, and administrators improve learning for all students in grades K – 9. Results help our teachers and parents work together to make informed decisions that promote the students’ academic growth.
- MAP tests are not timed. The test normally takes about 45 minutes to an hour to complete. Please make sure that your students have a large and healthy snack (or extra Snack Shack coupons) for our test days, which will be on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of next week (May 10th – 12th …. with possibly make up days)
- MAP tests are adaptive, which means that the test is designed to target each student’s academic performance. The tests are tailored to each student’s current achievement level; the computer adjusts the difficulty level of the questions as the test progresses. Therefore, each student takes a unique test. This is not a test you can study for. However, a good night’s rest will help your students focus.
Parents, please remember that you are your student’s first and most important teacher. The best support you can provide to help them “prepare” for next week’s MAP testing is:
- Good night’s rest
- Large, healthy snacks
- Speaking positively about what they are studying and learning in school. Studies show that in homes where parents speak to their students positively about what they are studying and learning in school, the students have a 42% gain over those whose parents accept answers such as “I don’t know,” … or “nothing.”
- Review with your students the “goals” that they have established earlier this year.
This final NWEA MAP assessment will continue to give our school community the opportunity to work together to guarantee that your students achieve measurable growth. It will help our students learn and our teachers teach! in a diagnostic fashion for continued growth and student achievement!
Have a good end of day.
Jeff