Begin the New Year Right!
This is the first day of school for many as we enter 2021. The first third of the school year is over. Christmas, in spite of Covid, provided a nice break. But, the break is over and it’s time to get back to work. Did you make the progress you hoped for? If you’re like most of us, the answer is mixed- in some areas yes and in other areas no.
As you begin home schooling once again, do you start where you left off in the textbooks you just put down a couple of weeks ago? Most families choose this option with the hope that their children didn’t forget too much while on Christmas break. But what if they did forget? You’ll need to back up some. To know if this is the case, you’ll need to do some assessing.
Teachers call this assessing a task analysis.
- Begin with the “end in mind.” Think of a specific learning objective your child should know.
- Relative to this objective, find out what your child knows now. Oral questioning or maybe a short quiz can be used.
- Once you know what they know, plan the incremental content and steps your child must master to reach the specific objective.
Our product, Essential Learning Objectives provides you with a check list of learning objectives children should master at the end of grades Kindergarten through eight.
Our product, ELO Quick Assessment provides you with a way to find out what your child knows.
The textbooks you are using should provide you with incremental content (explanations and exercises) to take your child from what they know, to what then need to know by the end of the school year.
Just so there are no surprises is there another way to gauge how your child is doing now? Yes! Give them a mid-year achievement test.
An achievement test measures overlapping learning objectives at various grade levels. As you know, it compares your student’s performance to other students’ performance nationwide. It also does something perhaps even more important. It pinpoints the learning objectives typically taught to students at your child’s grade level and lets you know how well your student did relative to these objectives.
Would giving your child and achievement now be beneficial? Perhaps.
During the month of January, all of our testing options (private, semi-private, group, and parent-administered testing) are at last year’s prices. Even if you don’t choose to test now, you can take advantage of last year’s prices by registering and paying for testing this month. Then you may schedule to test anytime in 2021.
Beginning February 1st, prices go up.
To take advantage of this offer, go here. The 2021 prices can be found on this page. If you register in January, last year’s prices will be applied after you register and go to pay.
Thanks for reading!
Curt Bumcrot, MRE
