April Newsletter 2018

will also be using the week of May14 to complete
the Science assessment.
Students will be taking the assessment in their homeroom and we are excited to
see their progress. If you have any questions or concerns or thoughts, please let
us know.
Your child's teacher will let you know the exact test days
as the days will vary for each class during the school's test
window. More information about testing can be found on:
Smarter Balanced Assessment: State Testing
https://smarterbalanced.alohahsap.org
Tardies and Attendance: Be Here or Learn Less?
As you can probably imagine, students who are at school each day and on time
learn more. Please make every effort to reinforce this idea with your child and
thank you in advance for all you do to help your child to attend school each day.
Tardies: Students who are late to school should report directly to class and should
no longer come to the office for a tardy slip. We want to avoid students waiting in
line for a slip while missing class time.
Attendance: Did you know that one of the measures used by the state is “Chronic
Absenteeism”? Chronic Absenteeism is determined by the percentage of students
who miss 15 or more school days a year whether those absences are excused or
not. Our school percentage has fluctuated between 11% and 16% over the past
five years. Our average daily attendance continues to hover around 94%.
Holualoa Instructional Leadership Team
One of the West Hawaii Complex wide initiatives that our school has participated
in over the past 8 years has been Instructional Leadership Team process. The
concept is that teacher leaders from each school help facilitate, develop, and lead
instructional improvement efforts at their school and other schools in the complex
by:
-Our ILT meets regularly to set professional development/instructional practice
goals for teachers based on student data with teacher input. At our school these
have included: Text Coding, Close Reading, Opinion Writing, RACE writing
strategy, and the Frayer Model for Academic Vocabulary.
-The members of the Holualoa ILT meet regularly with ILT members from other
schools to share and plan around instructional strategies.
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