Biteslide!

WOW! This is a really cool site and would be great for students to use for their projects in class! It's free and similar to PowerPoint but simple, creative and fun for kids!
http://www.biteslide.com/

SRI and SMI Testing - What's it all about?

During the next two weeks in technology students will be engaging in the SRI and SMI testing.
These tests are taken on the computer in the computer lab. Each test is about 40 minutes long although most students finish the tests prior to that.

SCHOLASTIC READING INVENTORY™ (SRI)

•      A research-based, computer-adaptive reading assessment program for students for Grades 2, 3 and 4.

•     Measures reading comprehension on the Lexile Framework® for Reading.

•      It’s a fast and reliable low-stakes assessment to inform instruction and make accurate placement recommendations.    

•      Aligned to state tests.

•      SRI helps educators forecast student achievement to those important goals.

 

 

What is A Lexile Score?

A Lexile measure is a valuable piece of information about either an individual's reading ability or the difficulty of a text, like a book or magazine article. The Lexile measure is shown as a number with an "L" after it — 880L is 880 Lexile.

A student gets his or her Lexile reader measure from a reading test or program. For example, if a student receives an 880L on her end-of-grade reading test, she is an 880 Lexile reader. Higher Lexile measures represent a higher level of reading ability. A Lexile reader measure can range from below 200L for beginning readers to above 1700L for advanced readers. Readers who score at or below 0L receive a BR for Beginning Reader.

For more information check out this video!

 

SCHOLASTIC MATH INVENTORY™ (SMI)

• A research-based, computer-adaptive math assessment program for students in Grades 2 – 9+ that measures math understanding on The Quantile Framework® for Mathematics.
• The most powerful feature of SMI is its ability to administer fast and reliable low-stakes assessment to inform instruction and make accurate placement recommendations.
• Aligned to the Common Core State Standards, SMI helps educators forecast student achievement to those important goals.

 

·    SMI was developed in partnership with MetaMetrics, the creators of The Quantile Framework® for Mathematics – a proven measure of math achievement and math concept difficulty.

 

·    The Quantile Measure

 

·     The Quantile Framework for Mathematics uses the Quantile measure to evaluate both math achievement and the level of math skills and concepts. By placing both student and instruction on the same scale, the Quantile Framework allows educators to evaluate curriculum needs based on each student’s level of performance.

The Quantile Map

Great Website for Kids

First Term Comes To An End!

Our first term in Technology is wrapping up! Students in grades 2,3 and 4 have successfully participated in our Internet Safety Program called Netsmartz. If you have not visited the Netsmartz website at home with your child, please be sure to check it out. There are many neat games and activities to do at home both online and off!  Grade 4 students are also creating a poster using Microsoft Word about a particular rule or idea they learned to help teach a younger child about Internet Safety. Grade 3 students are moving into using Excel and are currently creating surveys to collect data from their classmates. They will use this data to create several types of graphs in Excel. Our second term in Technology will certainly be filled with many creative and exciting technology based projects!

We have had a terrfic start to our school year! Students in all grades are successfully logging into their computers with usernames and passwords. We are using programs such as Microsoft Word in grades 3 and 4 and Kid Pix in grade 2. Poetry is the spotlight for grades 3 and 4 and students in grade two are beginning an All About Me project creating slides in Kid Pix.
Internet Safety will be our focus in the next few weeks. Feel free to check out the website that we structure our Internet Safety lessons around. There are great videos to watch at home together too!
www.netsmartz.org

Thank you Clough PTO!

I would just like to take a moment to publicly thank our PTO at the Henry P. Clough school for their generous donation of $13,000 which was directed toward the purchase of technology for our classrooms. Such items that have been purchased were several SMARTBoards, 3 ipads, a Kindle as well as headphones to help support a website call VoiceThread which will allow classroom teachers to record a student's voice and integrate it into digitally displayed student work! This is exciting news and I am personally so grateful to work in a district with such supportive parents! We are truly heading in the right direction with technology integration which will only enhance and support the educational progress for our students!
Thank you Clough PTO!!!

http://kidoz.net/

 Kidoz is a browser that only goes to sites that are pre-approved for kids!