New Report Cards, Grade K-2: An Update

Last year, in response to urging from teachers and parents across the district, the Curriculum Coordinators began the work of revising the Report Cards for grades K-6.  There were many concerns about the Report Cards in use – for years teachers had talked about how they didn’t reflect the Teaching and Learning that was happening in the district. We discovered that the report cards were not the same from school to school and they had a different number of performance indicators (grades) for 1st grade students, compared to 2nd grade students, compared to 3rd grade students. A wide-ranging team of teachers from all levels at Oak Ridge, Forestdale, and HT Wing joined the curriculum coordinators and the principals to build a better report card for Sandwich.

All teachers were kept informed via meeting notes that were emailed to all staff after each meeting and many teachers and staff members who were unable to attend the Report Card Meetings contacted the coordinators via email with their input. Principals also devoted staff meeting time to discussing the report cards with staff. Families were informed, too. Presentations (which you can view and download below) were made to the School Committee in December 2013 and to the PTAs in the spring of 2014.

The Report Card team researched best practices in providing feedback to families and determined that it was time to implement Standards Based Report Cards.  The team hunted for report cards from other school districts across the country and analyzed them. Driving questions during this inquiry were: What do we notice about the organization of the report cards? What do we notice about the categories – academic and non-academic categories? What do we notice about the Performance Indicators? What do we like or not like about a particular sample report card and why?

We also read the latest educational research about Report Cards and Parent Feedback and clarified our goal.

Our goal: To inform students and families about each student’s progress toward mastery of specific content and performance standards.   The standards are reflective of the 2011 Massachusetts Frameworks in Math and ELA, the 2004 MA Frameworks in Social Studies and Science and will be revised in Science as the state adopts the Next Generation Science Standards.

Our focus is on student growth and we look at evidence of their growth in their oral, written and performance-based work.

By spring, the team determined that the district would launch the new report cards for Grades K-2 in 2014-2015 and for Grades 3-6 in 2015-2016. 

To help support this transition to Standards Based Report cards, the teachers in grades K-2 have been working in district grade level teams to make rubrics and consider the student work that will provide evidence of student growth toward mastery.

Additionally, there are multiple opportunities over the next two months for parents and guardians to learn more about SPS Standards Based Report Cards in Grades K-2.

• Parent Council Meeting -Wednesday November 12- 10am, Superintendent’s Office
• Wing PTA – Thursday November 20 – 6:30, Wing Library
• Oak Ridge PTA – Monday, December 1 – 6:30 Oak Ridge Library
• Forestdale PTA – Monday, December 8 – 6:30 Forestdale Library

Curriculum Coordinators Clare Brady and Maureen Wiklund will be hosting “Report Card Mondays” – an opportunity for parents and guardians to get questions answered and information clarified.

Report Card Mondays will be from 9am-11am at the Curriculum Office, at the Superintendent’s Office on:

• November 17
• November 24
• December 1
• December 8
• December 15

Please reach out with questions or comments.

Clare Brady, PreK – 6 Math Curriculum Coordinator

Maureen Wiklund, PreK-6 ELA Curriculum Coordinator

View and/or download the presentations about SBRC made to School Committee in December, 2013 and to the PTAs in March & April, 2014.

SchoolCommitteePresentationDec2013

Parent Presentation April 2014

 OTHER REPORT CARD NEWS, K-6

We are moving to three semesters instead of four semesters for K-6 this year.

• The first term ends on Dec 1, 2014
• Report Cards go home Dec 8, 2014
• Parent-Teacher Conferences are Dec 10 & 11, 2014
• An annotated School Calendar with the dates for Report Cards is available here.

Grades 3-6 will essentially have the same report card this year.

• There are changes in the grade 5 & 6 ELA Categories which have been changed to better reflect how we teach and to make them the same across the district
• Grade 5 no longer has Honor Roll. Grade 6 will have Honor Roll for this year only. There will not be Honor Roll in 2015-2016.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

You can learn more about Standards Based Report Cards at: http://www.greatschools.org/students/academic-skills/350-rethinking-report-cards.gs

And

https://www.naesp.org/resources/2/Leadership_Compass/2006/LC2006v4n2a3.pdf