Next Week

Parents-

As many of you are already aware, beginning this spring the State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness (STAAR) will replace Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS). The test coincides with the new Texas Standards and has brought forth a few changes with the testing procedures.

Tuesday, January 17 and Wednesday, January 18 we will take a STAAR Objectives assessment in Writing. To be consistent with the actual STAAR assessment on March 27 & 28, students will be asked to write both a narrative and expository paper and answer a portion of revising/editing questions.  It is very important that students are on time as Tuesday & Wednesday will closely resemble actual testing dates in March. 

The new test is now limited to 4 hours. We will begin testing at 9:00am and will continue until lunch time. Students will have the opportunity to use the restroom and have snack during their testing but time will not stop. After lunch and a class restroom break, we will resume testing for the 50 additional minutes.

Please help your child with the following reminders:

• Have them get a good night sleep the night before.
• Allow time for a healthy breakfast.
• Snacks will not be provided on the practice objective days next week. Students may want to bring a snack to hold them over until lunch. We are asking that it be something that is not sticky and can be eaten with their fingers. Example: goldfish, gram crackers, cheerios, animal crackers, etc. 
• Students should bring a jacket or sweater in case they get cold in the classroom.

Next week’s writing assessment will not be scored for report card purposes.  However, it will give us an idea of where students are at this time. As we go through the writing process in class, we will provide feedback about students’ progress.  We are very excited to see how our students will do on Tuesday & Wednesday.