Happy Monday

Good Morning Team Soar Families & Friends,
We hope you all had a relaxing and rejuvenating weekend. We are already in our third week of school and are in the full swing of things. In the first month, we have very rigorous testing and assessments that we use throughout the year to guide our instruction. Students have already finished their Lucy Calkins writing assessments, and are now working on our new phonics program evaluation, guided reading leveling, PALS assessment, and soon MAPS assessments.

As we have gone through and evaluated students current reading levels, we have noticed significant drops in reading levels from the end of last year. Now, this is not true for some students as they have retained their same level as last year and even a few students have shown growth! We applaud you!!!! However, we can not stress the importance of reading for AT LEAST 20 MINUTES a night. A good way to assess students understanding of the reading that they just did is to ask them about the main characters, setting, plot, details about the story etc. Many families and students have asked for homework or the lack there of; reading for at least 20 minutes EVERY DAY if not more, is the homework our school, and district, has found to be the most beneficial for all students.

Once we have completed leveling for all students, we will be sending home your students current independent reading level; this means that this level, is the level that they can read all by themselves without assistance. Our West Allis Public Library has put together an area where books are already leveled and have them listed for easy selection. Also, we will continue to put out the Scholastic Book Orders; most of these books are listed with their level on them as well.

With this in mind, we can not stress the importance of students reading books that are on their level. Reading a book that is too easy or too hard for a student will not impact their reading.

Although it feels like Autumn, it is still Summer! However that doesn't stop cold and flu season. If your child is sick please be sure to call the Jefferson Office (they open at 7:30am) as soon as possible. If there is a scheduled absence; we ask that you either send Team Soar an email or send a note the day before the absence.