Achievement and Assessment at Our School
Teachers strive to provide a well-rounded education that focuses on the intellectual, physical, social, emotional and behavioral needs of our students. Assessment is a continuous process. We assess children by many methods, observation, anecdotal records, portfolios, daily work and tests. Students are also engaged in their own assessment.
One of the primary ways that Altadore staff and students capture and share their learning is through Google Drive. This is an online platform for creation, storage and sharing of student work. Whenever possible, student work will be viewable as it looks in process.
This is a critical time in any work that is done at school. We believe that critical learning happens by looking at the process and making decisions about how to step forward from “where we are right now”. We strongly encourage you to look at your child’s Google Drive account on a regular basis and have discussions with them about their learning process.
Questions that you could consider include:
- What is the learning goal/what is the point of what you’re doing?
- How do you know you’re doing a good job?
- What have you learned during this process and how have you used that information to adjust your work?
- What is most important about what you’re learning right now?
- Why is it important?
- Why is it important to you? etc.
Asked regularly, these questions and others like them will result in much deeper conversations about school than “What did you do/learn at school today?”
Presently, we are mandated by Alberta Education to administer achievement tests in grade six and Student Learning Assessments (SLA’s) in grade three. Grade six students complete tests in writing (a narrative story and an informative news article), reading, mathematics (number operations and concepts and math problems), social studies and science. Grade three students complete assessments in literacy and numeracy.
Student Progress Reports
There are two reporting periods/report cards throughout the year. The first report card is sent home in January and the second in June on the last day of school. Parent-Teacher conferences will happen three times during the year and will NOT coincide with reporting periods. The focus of these conferences will be to discuss each student’s learning process and how home and school can work together to best enhance that process.
Families are asked to have looked at and discussed student work (including in Google Drive) prior to attending conferences. If you have a question, please contact your child’s teacher. We would be happy to meet with you.
Altadore Parent and Student Survey
We like to see how our students and families are feeling about Altadore. Last spring, we sent out a survey to parents and students, asking them specific questions about their experiences at our school. Some of the highlights from the survey are included on this page. They are divided into parent comments, parent graphs, student comments, and student graphs. Please note that personal, identifying information has been removed.
