Friday, October 2nd

Happy Friday!  Congratulations to our Superstar of the Month for September, Isabella!!  We are so proud of you!

Thank you for coming to our Village Gathering this morning.  Students enjoyed celebrating their learning!

 Students were very excited to receive their FAVE t-shirts today!

Ms. Theisen did a great lesson with our class about the relative size of planets.  Students learned what a scale model is and how it helps us understand and compare the size of planets.  They were able to identify which piece of food would  be each of the planets.  Ask your child to tell you more!

Students worked with multiplication of a two digit multiple of 10 times a two digit number.  They were able to model using the area model place value strategy, which utilizes their knowledge of partial products.  These students LOVE area models!! :)

CogAT testing will take place on Tuesday through Thursday of next week.  Please look over the information below from Ms. Newton.

Dear Parents,           

Fourth grade students will take the Cognitive Abilities Test on October 6-8, 2015.  The purpose of this letter is to offer you some information about this test.

The Cognitive Abilities Test or CogAT is an assessment that measures a range of reasoning skills most linked to academic success in school.  The CogAT examines reasoning and problem solving in the following areas:

Verbal	Quantitative	Non-verbal	Composite
● Verbal reasoning processes and analogies ● Relationship between the meaning of words	●  Computational rules ●  Problem solving techniques ●  Number series and patterns ●  Number values	●     Geometric patterns and figures ●     Classifying designs ●     Solving figure analogies ●     Recognizing figures in dimension	Uses the other three areas to offer a summary.

The CogAT is a nationally-normed assessment.  It has been given to a sample group of students across the nation to develop comparison standards. This allows the performance of one child to be compared with the performances of other children who are the same age. The percentile rank tells what percentage of students scored lower than your child.

Teachers can use CogAT scores to better understand a child’s pattern of strengths and weaknesses. This information can help teachers provide challenging opportunities for a child to do the kind of thinking he/she does best. Similarly, teachers can support aspects of new tasks that rely on a student’s relative weaknesses. 

Our school district also uses CogAT scores to identify academically-gifted students.  CogAT scores that fall at or above the 96^th percentile rank qualify a student in mental ability, one of the four areas that require assessment to determine gifted eligibility.   

Please contact me if you have any further questions about the CogAT Test. 

Sincerely,

Karen T. Newton

Principal

I hope you have a restful weekend!