February 9, 2009

By Allan 　

Hello Everyone!

Another busy week is upon us. Quite a few items of note and one that was especially interesting to me at the bottom.

• Madison Middle School Band Assembly – The Madison Middle School Band will be performing for us on Monday, April 27th (9:00-10:00 for YG, 10:10-10:40 for Corridor).
• Fire Drill on Thursday at 8:45 – Remember that we have our February Fire Drill this week.
• Math EasyCBM Progress Monitoring – There are now math progress monitoring measures on EasyCBM, K-5, 10 assessments per grade level. K and1st = mixed skills (1 strand), 2nd and 3rd = numbers and operations, geometry, and number operations, and algebra (3 strands), 4th and 5th = numbers and operations, geometry/measurement/algebra, and numbers/operations/algebra (3 strands)
• OAKS Accommodations Update – ODE regularly reviews accommodations for OAKS. The following commonly used accommodations are no longer considered OAKS accommodations, rather they are Allowable Resources:

o Frequent breaks
o Extended time

This primarily impacts the reporting requirement in OAKS Online for SPED students. In OAKS Online, you no longer need to enter this as an accommodation for students on IEPs when you are approving students during Test Administration. If you have done this already for tests taken this year, you do not have to change anything unless you have set an individual student’s default setting in the User Management System to having one or more accommodations (if their only accommodation is frequent breaks, extended time, or both). If IEP students receive other accommodations, you will still need to continue to flag this when approving students in OAKS, or set/maintain the student’s default setting in the User Management System.
• OAKS Test Now Longer – Each year around this time, ODE adds in field test items to OAKS tests. Students who start new tests will have 5 or 6 additional questions included on their tests, so tests will be longer. These additional items will not be included in calculating student scores. Tests that are already in progress as of February 2nd will not include field test items, and will retain their original length.
• “What I Wish For the World” Google Logo Contest – Google is sponsoring a contest for students to play around with the Google logo. The contest done by state and grade level groupings (K-3 & 4-6). If an entry makes it to the regional or national competitions, there are some very cool prizes. See here for details: http://www.google.com/doodle4google/index.html
• Allan’s Having a Baby – We’ll I’m not having a baby, but wife Kim will. I have been on strict orders not to say anything, but I am now allowed to announce that Kim and I will have a baby in early August. Kim is now 14 weeks pregnant and everything is looking good so far, but we do not yet know the gender. We’ll find that out at the next ultrasound. So my beagle will no longer be an only child.

Have an excellent week, everyone!

Allan

This entry was written by Allan, posted on February 8, 2009 at 11:59 am, filed under Announcements. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Both comments and trackbacks are currently closed.