We will be taking the NWEA MAP Growth Screener August 25th, 26th, 27th, 28th, and 31st. There is a math and reading portion to this test. This will give us vital data to determine how to best meet the needs of your student throughout the school year.

Students-Be sure to eat a good breakfast and get a good nights sleep so you can do your best!

Learning Coaches-Remember that in order to have a valid assessment your student must complete this screener on their own! You may monitor and help with tech issues but that is all. Thank you!

If you want your student to be able to use their webcam be sure to fill out the permission form!

Use the link below to fill it out now:

https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=LUmWRm1kPE2UZWxaNvMaFsm0U-LKUyFCgWjXYHTSpjlURVU1REtHSU9LMU81Tk85QUhSNVkzNDlCRS4u

Over the past few days, several families have asked about their child’s grades within the gradebook. At this time, we are continuing to adjust settings within the gradebook as well as adjust the expected progress – or the overall number of lessons – that students will complete within each course for the school year. We anticipate having this all adjusted by Friday, August 28th. For now, please be aware that grades may not accurately reflect your child’s current grade.

Additionally, we are continuing to adjust the daily plan for students in the OLS to align to assignments on the Bison On-Track calendar. This should all be completed by the end of the day today, August 21st. We appreciate your patience as both of these are items that cannot be completed until the first day of school and we work on them behind the scenes after classes and communications with families. If you continue to see a discrepancy beginning Monday, August 31st, please contact your homeroom teacher and we will look at this on a student by student basis.

Please don’t worry about grades during the first few days of school. These days are spent learning routines and getting to know students as you build a foundation for the year. Teachers will alert you to when everything is ready and you can start monitoring gradebooks. For now, just remember daily logging in and using the Bison On-Track Calendar is the priority.

By the end of the school year, your child will need to correctly read 100-148 words per minute and have built up their reading stamina. They should be able to read and focus on a book without interruption for at least 30 minutes.

Your child should also be fluent with sight words. We use the Literacy First sight words. Your child should have Sight Word List A (100 words) mastered by the middle of 1st Grade and Sight Word List B (100 words) by the end of the 1st Grade. If they have not mastered these words already, start there! Sight Word List C (300 words) will need to be mastered by the end of 2nd Grade. Click here to access all the sight word lists.

In 2nd Grade we really work on our fluency and comprehension.

Reading at least 20 minutes per day is a great way to increase reading fluency. Your child can work on building up their stamina by starting with just 5 minutes. You can also change up your reading space to make it fun and new! Some ideas are: reading outside, build a fort-then read in it, reading during a picnic, or read a book in bed. This website has more creative reading challenge ideas: https://www.ateachableteacher.com/free-reading-challenge/

As they read, help them practice comprehension skills like identifying the main parts of the story including details about characters, setting, beginning/middle/end, etc. They can also read a book and describe the main idea and details about the people, places, and thing in it.

By the end of 2nd Grade your child should be able to write 5-7 simple sentences on one topic. They should be able to write 1 to 2 paragraphs in the same way. An example of this would be writing a story with details about characters in a beginning/middle/end format. We will be working towards being able to write in all 3 Modes: Narrative, Opinion, and Informational.

We will start with number sense and build upon that throughout the year. Fact fluency (up to 20) is a major part of 2nd Grade. We will also work on telling time, money, fractions, and arrays, just to name a few!

Complete one lesson a week until each course is complete.

Be sure to track your active minutes to count for PE! You will get a survey to fill out periodically to get credit.

In Science and History you will complete 2 lessons a week in the OLS.