Dear parents and friends of Lake Harriet Lower Campus,

As you may know, we completed a “just right” math unit in first and second grade in January. The focus of both grade levels was on understanding numbers and operations. The teachers gave a pretest and assigned students to different classrooms for math. Here is what we learned:

• 88 parents out of approximately 260 responded to the Survey Monkey I sent out at the end of the unit. Most parents were pleased with their students’ learning and reported that their child was excited about going to math class. A few parents would have liked to seen homework sent home during the unit.
• Our pre-test was very useful in identifying students who had already met the grade-level standards. Our post-test was not sensitive enough to capture what the growth was with the same group.
• First grade did not really need two classrooms for the grade-level proficient students. Although the students tested well on the pre-test, not all were developmentally ready to go deeper into the content.
• Our data showed that our students at or below grade level made growth, but we don’t know if that would have happened without the changing of classrooms.

So what is next?

• Second grade teachers have been looking at how the students perform on word problems. They have discovered that our students need to learn and understand the steps solving a word problem. That is especially true as the problems require more than one step. They will administer a pretest on word problems and create a short unit teaching the steps in solving word problems. They are currently working on developing a pretest that will differentiate the different levels of proficiency and sensitive enough to be used as a posttest. The unit will be taught March 18-26.
• First grade teachers have decided to regroup students for the unit on patterns. They are also working on developing a pretest that is more sensitive. The teacher for the above proficient group will administrate a rigorous pre-test and pos-ttest specifically designed for that group of students. That unit will begin March 18 –April 19.

We continue with our goal that all students who come to school consistently will make at least a year’s growth.

Respectfully,

Jan Parrish, Principal

Lake Harriet Lower Campus