Leveraging Classroom and i-Ready Data

Dear Parents,

As we begin this school year, we want to share how we approach the "just-right recipe" for every child’s academic success. Our goal is to nurture the whole child, and this involves gathering and leveraging a variety of data sources to create personalized learning experiences.

At the start of the year, we focus on collecting classroom observational data across several areas such as math, reading, and spelling. In the early grades, we use Pathways to Reading assessments to dive deeper into phonemic awareness, phonics skills and sight word recognition. As students move through Lower School and the Intermediate grades, we use the Words Their Way spelling inventory to track student progress in spelling patterns. We also gather reading comprehension and fluency information during the beginning of the year and begin building your child’s writing portfolio, which will track their progress throughout the year.

You may have already heard about i-Ready, a diagnostic tool we use to assess your child’s core competencies in both reading and math. The i-Ready diagnostic provides a snapshot of your child’s strengths and areas for growth across five critical components, offering us a baseline for instruction. This data is combined with classroom observations to help us tailor instruction and create targeted learning plans.

i-Ready: A Personalized Snapshot

i-Ready is an adaptive assessment that your child will take on a computer. It adjusts to each student’s answers—becoming more challenging when they answer correctly and simplifying when they answer incorrectly. This makes the assessment highly personalized, allowing us to pinpoint exactly where your child is excelling and where they might need more support.

What’s powerful about i-Ready is that it doesn’t just provide a score—it gives us detailed growth data. This data allows us to see:

• Strengths: Areas where your child is performing at or above grade level.

• Growth: How much progress they’ve made since their last assessment.

• Typical Growth: This compares their growth to what we expect for students at the same level. If your child isn’t making the progress we would anticipate, we adjust instruction to better meet their needs.

• Personal best goals: We work with student and teachers to make growth goals that are just right for them.

The results from i-Ready help us make informed decisions in the classroom. For example, if we see a student needs extra support with reading comprehension, we can provide targeted small-group instruction. Similarly, if a child is performing above grade level in math, we can offer enrichment activities to keep them challenged.

Additionally, our Panther Pioneer Program and technology-based surveys on learning styles and interests contribute to building a comprehensive student learning profile. These snapshots, developed in September, provide teachers with valuable insights into how your child learns best, ensuring that every aspect of their academic journey is designed to meet their individual needs.

Through this data-driven, whole-child approach, we ensure that your child receives the support and challenges they need to thrive. We look forward to working together to make this year a success!