What is Happening in the New Year?

FAST Reading Assessments............
Three times per year, the students in grades K-5 are assessed on their reading skills. The Lone Tree Elementary uses the FAST Reading Assessment as recommended by the State of Iowa. The teachers just completed the winter assessments and the results are in. Below you will find the percentage of students that were proficient (those meeting expected grade level benchmarks) in the fall compared to those in the winter.
                                                Fall                              Winter
Kindergarten                           73.91%                        95.83%
First Grade                              81.08%                        84.21%
Second Grade                          53.66%                       54.76%
Third Grade                             56.67%                       55.17%
Fourth Grade                           47.47%                       59.46%
Fifth Grade                              52.17%                       67.39%

The kindergarten and first grade assessments focus primarily on word parts and putting them together. Beginning in second grade, the assessment is a fluency passage that students must read in one minute. During that one minute, the teacher is checking for accuracy and rate.

Helping your child to become a better reader..........
Each night, the teachers send home reading passages or grade level practice work as homework. This practice work is just that; for practice. It is important to build their reading skills, endurance, and fluency with reading that they complete this every night. Additional ideas for students would be to read simultaneously with your child, read aloud to your child, model good reading skills,and ask questions throughout the reading for comprehension purposes.

Rocket Math....
Rocket Math is a math practice program being implemented in the elementary. The purpose of this program is to help students with math fact fluency and automaticity. Automaticity with math facts is important because the whole point of learning math facts is to use them in the service of higher and more complex math problems. We want students to be thinking about the complex process, the problem-solving or the multi-step algorithm they are learning — not
having to stop and ponder the answer to simple math facts. So not only do we want them accurate and fast (fluent) but we also want them to be thinking about other things at the same time (automaticity).

Helping your child to become more fluent with math facts.........
Students have math practice sheets they bring home each night. Remember, these are practice sheets. Each night these should be completed to help the child become more fluent with a specific set of math facts. Another activity would be to use flashcards with your children. When doing this, if the child gets the math fact wrong, it is imperative to tell the child the correct answer and then have them repeat the problem and the answer again orally. Playing math games is also another way to practice math skills.