Lyle Families;

Thank you to our Lyle families for your support as we've successfully started the 2021-2022 school year. It is so wonderful to have all of our students back in the building again! We continue to put all safety measures in place to ensure the health and wellness of everyone who enters our school. Students and staff are working hard in their classes on lessons, assignments, and projects. The smiles on everyone's faces as they are back in the classroom make you appreciate the gift of education.

As a reminder, students enter the building at 8:00 am. All doors are shut at 8:15, and students must enter through the front entrance and be buzzed in. We ask that parents/guardians walk their child/children into the building if they arrive after 8:15. Students who arrive after 8:15 will receive a tardy for the day.

To support our students with academic and social-emotional learning, we will implement both the Second Step program and MAP testing with all grade levels. I've included detailed information below if you are interested in gaining a deeper understanding of any of these programs.

Our Lyle Open House will be held virtually this year. We are saddened not to see our Lyle families in person; however, we promise to create an excellent virtual program. Our Virtual Open House will be sent to our families via email/text on September 8, 2021.

To access your child/children's grades, families will need to utilize PowerSchool. For information on how to access PowerSchool, please see the PowerSchool section below. After reviewing the information, if you are still having trouble, we will be holding a parent/guardian class titled How to Access PowerSchool on September 14 at Lyle School. The class will be 30 minutes long, and sessions will run from 8:30 till 2. We will be providing translation support in the following languages: Arabic, Polish, and Spanish. If you are interested in attending the class, please sign-up using this link. We will send you a confirmation of your session time on September 10th.

Stay well and be safe,

Mrs. Nuray Kavustuk, Principal

We are excited to be partnering with FUN PASTA FUNDRAISING! Shop now and order some creative, delicious pasta goodies. It's simple, and you'll love the selection. Each purchase earns 40% profit for our group and helps support our fundraising effort– so thank you! Your order will be shipped from Nashville, TN within 3-5 days. FREE Shipping on all orders over $55.00! If your order is under $55, there is a flat rate of $7.95

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September 7- MAP Testing Begins for grades 4th-6th

September 7th-10th- Book Fair

September 8- Lyle Virtual Open House

September 13- MAP Testing Begins for grades K-3rd

September 20- Early Dismissal (Students dismissed at 11:15)

September 21- School Board Meeting

September 22- Progress Reports Issued

September 22- Fire Drill

We want your child to be successful in school and that means supporting and encouraging their whole development. While excelling in academic classes is important, children also need skills to take on learning challenges, make good decisions, manage strong emotions, and get along with others.

This school year, we’ll be bringing Second Step, a research-based social-emotional learning program designed to improve children’s social-emotional skills. Second Step skills and concepts are designed to help children both in and out of school. Four units will cover the following:

Growth Mindset & Goal-Setting: Children learn how to pay attention and manage distractions, develop a growth mindset, and apply goal-setting strategies to their social and academic lives.

Emotion Management: Children learn how to identify and label emotions and use emotion-management strategies-including stress management for older students- to calm strong feelings.

Empathy & Kindness: Children learn how to recognize kindness and act kindly, and have empathy as important elements of building and maintaining relationships.

Problem-Solving: Children learn how to identify and state a problem, recognize if a problem is an accident, and use the STEP problem-solving process:

S: Say the problem

T: Think the solution

E: Explore the outcomes

P: Pick a solution

You’ll receive communication in our monthly newsletter to help you reinforce Second Step language, skills, and goals at home. If you have a question about Second Step, please don’t hesitate to contact me or your child’s teacher for more information. Thank you for your support as we work to build a safe and supportive school community.

Sincerely,

Mrs. Nuray Kavustuk, Principal

How to Access My Child(rens) Progress Report

Progress reports will be available through your child’s PowerSchool portal. We will not be sending home paper forms. In order to access PowerSchool:

If you’ve created an account, you can log in using the profile you created. Click on the link for a quick review:

How to check grades in Powerschool as a Parent

If you haven't created an account, you will need your child(ren’s) ID and password, which will be given to you by your child's teacher on September 3rd. If you don't have that information please reach out via email to your child’s teacher. You will then need to follow the parent sign-in steps (link below):

PowerSchool Parent Sign-In (English)

PowerSchool Parent Sign-In (Arabic)

PowerSchool Parent Sign-In (Polish)

PowerSchool Parent Sign-In (Spanish)

If you are struggling with accessing your account please sign up for our parent class: How to Access PowerSchool that will be held on September 14th by using this link.

MAP Growth defined

MAP Growth is an interim, responsive, computer-based assessment for K–12 students. That’s a really dense definition. Let’s break it down.

• Interim: The test is taken up to three times a year, usually at the start of the school year, halfway through, and near the end. This lets teachers get clear snapshots of how students are doing often and early enough that they can adjust their lesson plans as needed.

• Responsive: Each question on MAP Growth is generated based on the question—and answer—that came right before it. If a student gets it right, the next one is harder. If they get it wrong, the next one’s easier. Students can’t ace the assessment, even if they’re answering questions well beyond their grade level correctly. But what they get is even better than an A at the top of a test paper: they get an accurate measure of their zone of proximal development, or ZPD, the sweet spot for learning and growing. (More on ZPD in a minute.)

• Computer-based: This just means kids take MAP Growth on a computer. Long gone are the days of filling in bubbles on a sheet of paper.

• Assessment: An assessment is a test. MAP Growth is a test, plain and simple. While students don’t get a grade on it, they do get a score, which makes it possible to plot their growth over time, whether that’s a single school year or several years in a row.

Kids can take MAP Growth in math, reading, language usage, and science. Your child’s RIT score reflects how they did on the test. (That acronym stands for Rasch Unit, a concept that gets pretty technical pretty fast. In the mood to geek out? Wikipedia to the rescue!) Your child’s RIT is the number that lets teachers know where they are academically and what to focus on to move learning forward.

MAP Growth is a unique testing experience for kids because they don’t pass or fail. In fact, for teachers to get that accurate ZPD view into what each kid knows, students will get about half the questions wrong. That doesn’t mean their score doesn’t belong on the fridge (it does) or that cracking open a celebratory pint of ice cream is out of the question (in fact, we strongly recommend it).

How teachers use MAP Growth

MAP Growth is a powerful tool for helping your child’s teacher understand how best to support every kid’s academic needs. In the fall, teachers use MAP Growth scores to understand individual student needs and set personalized learning goals for the year, based on the learning expectations set for your child’s grade at the state level. In the winter, they use the scores to gauge progress and course-correct as needed. In the spring, scores predict how a student is likely to perform on the state-mandated end-of-year test while there’s still enough time to modify instruction.

Helping kids focus on mastering grade-level skills during a school year is critical; we all want children meeting grade-level standards and successfully moving from one grade to the next every June. But helping kids stay engaged and develop a deep love of learning is important, too. Because MAP Growth shows teachers what a student knows and is ready to learn next—that’s the zone of proximal development I mentioned earlier—it makes it much easier to design lessons and assignments that keep children active in their learning. When kids are in the zone, so to speak, the new material they’re tasked with learning is just hard enough to motivate them but not so hard that they shut down. It’s not so easy that they get bored and check out, either.

What are some of the ways you might see your child’s teacher make decisions based on MAP Growth results? If test scores reflect that the whole class needs to brush up on fractions or reading comprehension, for example, they’ll likely rework their lesson plan so there’s time to revisit and conquer those topics before moving on to more difficult tasks. If scores show student needs are widely different, your child’s teacher can use that data to personalize instruction. One of the coolest things about MAP Growth is that it helps teachers quickly and easily access materials that can help each student get to the next step in their learning. For example, teachers can use MAP Growth scores to build personalized math learning paths for kids in grades 3–8 using Khan Academy (your school may rely on a tool we created with Khan called MAP® Accelerator™), or they can find the right text for practicing reading and comprehension with Newsela.

Get ready for testing

You’re an essential part of your child’s learning support system. To help them get the most out of MAP Growth, here are some things to try—and just one thing to avoid.

• DO read everything your school shares with you about MAP Growth. Your school is the best place to get answers.

• DO talk to your child’s teacher about what to expect leading up to, on, and after testing day. In most cases, when teachers use data to inform or guide their teaching, they’re using a lot of data from a variety of sources, including daily classwork and observations. Ask your child’s teacher how MAP Growth data fits in. If they don’t share a Family Report with you at your next conference, ask them for one.

• DO help your child prepare. That’s “prepare,” not “study.” Students shouldn’t study for MAP Growth, but it’s always good to know what to expect. A little confidence building can help nervous test-takers feel more at ease, too. Read “Preparing for MAP Growth: 20 tips for families” for more details.

• DO check out our Family Toolkit. Videos, guides, and more will let you dig even deeper with MAP Growth.

• DO see what it’s like to take MAP Growth. Driver’s ed is great, but nothing beats getting behind the wheel. Try our sample tests and get the same experience your child will (and remember, there is no passing or failing MAP Growth, even if you’re a grown-up).

• DON’T view your child’s RIT score as a grade. Your child’s MAP Growth RIT score isn’t a grade. It’s a single data point that helps their teacher know what they’re ready to learn next. It’s there to inform a teacher’s instructional decisions, not to label or pigeonhole your child.

Dear Parents and Families:

Reading for pleasure unlocks the power of information and imagination and helps children discover who they are. Here’s what you can do to help children develop stronger reading skills and a love for reading:

• Set an example. Let children see you read.
• Have a collection of books in your home. Update this collection routinely to keep up with changing tastes and reading skills.
• Support our school’s Book Fair. Allow your children to choose their own books to read.

Our Scholastic Book Fair is a reading event that brings the books kids want to read right into our school. It’s a wonderful selection of engaging and affordable books for every reading level. Please make plans to allow your child to shop at the Book Fair and be involved in shaping your child’s reading habits.

Book Fair dates: September 7-10, 2021

Shopping hours: In School during Library Time

Shop online: https://www.scholastic.com/bf/lyleelementaryschool3

We look forward to seeing our students at the Book Fair! Remember, all purchases benefit our school.

When sending money with your child, please label the envelope with your child’s name and/or teacher’s name and “Book Fair Money” labeled on it. Don’t forget to add sales tax.

Questions? Contact me at rculafi@isd109.org

Sincerely,

Mrs. Culafi,

Lyle Librarian

Email: nkavustuk@isd109.org
Website: https://lyle.isd109.org/
Location: 7801 West 75th Street, Bridgeview, IL, USA
Phone: 708-496-8722
Facebook: facebook.com/lyleptc
Twitter: @LyleDragons