Dear Parents,
Thank you to those of you who came to school for Open House last night. It was exciting to be back in person! We had great attendance. Thank you to the generous PTA who provided staffing for babysitting.
Please remember to become a member of our PTA! Join Here!!
Hopefully, you have scheduled your Parent Conference for December. If not, you will be receiving a message from your child's classroom teacher soon. Mark your calendars for December 5th and December 6th that are both Early Release Days for students and parent conference days for parents. We will also offer some evening times on December 7th.
Have a wonderful weekend and don't forget to stop by JC and buy your Krispy Kremes tomorrow!!
Regards,
Trish McGuire and Matt Hartigan
STAR, LinkIt!, and SBA
On Monday afternoon, additional scores will be posted in the parent LinkIt! portal, notably Fall GPS Benchmark results for grades 2-8, and STAR Reading for grades 1-3. In addition, families will see 2022 SAT, AP, NGSS, and SBA scores, all of which have already been communicated directly to relevant families. Please note that for grades 4-8, there are no STAR scores because we have transitioned to use of the GPS/LinkIt! benchmarks and those students do not take STAR.
If you activated your LinkIt! account last spring, then Monday afternoon you should go to the LinkIt! Parent Portal and login using your email address and password that you selected. A password recovery option is available if you have forgotten.
If you did not activate your LinkIt! account in the Spring, or are a new family, you will receive your personal activation code in an email on Monday afternoon. Look for the subject line: LinkIt! Parent Portal Account Registration - Greenwich Public Schools from registration@linkit.com. If you have trouble with your account, or want more information on the LinkIt! parent portal or the GPS Benchmarks or STAR, please visit the GPS LinkIt! FAQ page
Greenwich is returning to the Pre-COVID best practice of giving all Grade 2 students the Cognitive Abilities Test (CogAT) in October in advance of ALP Enrichment placement. Because these abilities are closely related to an individual’s success in school in virtually all subjects, data gathered from the CogAT is included as one aspect of the multiple measures which help the staff make decisions regarding students’ instructional needs.
The assessment will be given between October 24 and November 4. Scores will be made available to parents on or before November 11.
More information regarding the CoGAT Assessment is available here.
Have a wonderful weekend!
Trish McGuire and Matthew Hartigan
What are the LinkIt BenchmarkAssessments?
- LinkIt! is the online platform where students in grades 2-8 take the District Benchmark Assessments in Math and Language Arts.
- The Benchmarks are designed to be taken in the early Fall, Winter and Spring so that students and teachers can gauge progress on grade level growth.
- Each Benchmark Assessment is approximately 30 questions and covers key concepts (ie. “State Standards” taught in that particular grade level.)
- Each of the Benchmark Assessments in LinkIt! assess students on their progress towards END OF THE YEAR MASTERY of grade level Standards.
- Therefore fall benchmark data is used SOLELY for instructional purposes as the teacher begins to plan for the whole class and small group instruction needed.
- The Benchmark Assessment is assessing the end of year expectations/Standards. When viewing the Fall report, as a parent you will notice whether your child has already developed areas of relative strength for the coming year. Again, we do not expect students to have mastery of any Standards at this point in the year as the students have not begun to be instructed on the curriculum.
- Do not be alarmed if your child does not score well on the Fall assessment. We do not expect them to; this is a pre-assessment for instructional planning purposes.
- A student scoring around 50% on the Mid Year Assessment is appropriate and what we would hope to see as we are approximately half way through the curriculum. This would mean your child is right on target for end of year mastery.
- For further information about the Linkit! Platform and all assessments in GPS please use this link-
