news from the Hawks Nest

By  Nannette M. Mills
    Students at Hodgdon High School completed the NWEA testing on the 16th of this month.  Northwest Evaluation Association is a not-for-profit organization committed to helping school districts throughout the nation improve learning for all students.  As a result of NWEA tests, educators at HHS can make informed decisions to promote student academic growth.  
    The NWEA assessments are Measures of Academic Progress or MAP Tests.  These computerized tests are adaptive and offered in Reading, Language Usage, and Mathematics.  When taking a MAP test, the difficulty of each question is based on how well a student answers all the previous questions.  As the student answers correctly, questions become more difficult.  If the student answers incorrectly, the questions become easier.  In an optimal test, a student answers approximately half the items correctly and half incorrectly.  The final score is an estimate of the student’s achievement level (NWEA Parent Toolkit).
    NWEA assessments are used to measure student progress or growth in school.  You may remember keeping a chart in your home on which you marked your child’s height every birthday.  This was a growth chart.  It showed how much he or she had grown from one year to the next.  NWEA assessments do the same sort of thing, except they measure your child’s growth in mathematics, reading, language usage, and science skills.  The scale used to measure your child’s progress is called the RIT scale(Rasch unIT).  The RIT scale is an equal-interval scale much like feet and inches on a yardstick.  It is used to chart your child’s academic growth from year to year (NWEA Parent Toolkit).
    NWEA tests are important to teachers at Hodgdon High School because they keep track of progress and growth in basic skills.  They let teachers know where a student’s strengths are and if help is needed in any specific areas.  Teachers use this information to help them guide instruction in the classroom.
    You may be wondering if there is anything you can do as a parent to help your child prepare for tests in school such as the NWEA. Here are some helpful tips:
    Meet with your child’s teacher as often as needed to discuss his or her progress.  
    Provide a quiet, comfortable place for studying at home.
    Make sure that your child is well rested on school days and especially the day of a test.  Children who are tired are less able to pay attention in class or to handle the demands of a test.
    Provide books and magazines for your child to read at home.  By reading new materials, a child learns new words that may appear on a test.  Children learn to read best when they have books at home and plenty of chances to read.  Research shows that reading to your child is the most important activity that parents can do to increase their child’s chance of reading success.
    Children should learn to read and interpret charts and graphs such as those found in daily newspapers.  Collecting and analyzing data will help your child draw conclusions and become discriminating readers of numerical information.
    Spend time with kids on simple board games, puzzles, and activities that encourage better attitudes and stronger mathematics skills.  Check your television listings for shows that reinforce mathematics skills in a practical and fun way.  
    Follow your child’s interests-find fiction and nonfiction books that tie into ideas and activities they enjoy.
    Give a magazine subscription for a gift.
    Make time for the library.
    As a parent, you play a critical role in promoting your child’s academic growth and overall well-being.  Thank you for allowing Hodgdon High School to help and support you in this effort by fulfilling our mission of adolescent literacy which states, “Adolescents who are fully literate know and use reading, writing, listening, speaking, and thinking strategies to learn across all content areas and can demonstrate and communicate that learning to others who need to know and can transfer their learning to new situations.”