Free Tool for Sharing Out Student Progress!

(Insert theme from Jaws)  It's coming.... charge up your laptops... plug in your apple spice Febreeze air freshener... and hang up your students' best work.  Conferences are almost upon us!

As our kindergarten team met last week we talked about how confusing our new report cards, er, progress reports can be for parents.  Take the category of "phonemic awareness" for example.  There is no explanation.  It simply says, "phonemic awareness."  What does that mean?? How can we show them in uncomplicated terms what it is?  What do parents really want to know about their kiddos?

We figured they want to know the basics.  Letters, sounds, high frequency words, counting, identifying numbers, and reading ability.  So let's give it to them straight.

I created a document to fill out for each child based on the assessments I'm completing over the next couple of weeks.  It will be send home prior to conferences as a quick snapshot for parents to see regarding their child's basic kindergarten abilities.  Yes, there are much more complicated things we're working on that will be on the report card such as "text to self connections, editing writing, revising writing, data collection, and fiction/nonfiction knowledge," but these are the basic building blocks that support the rest of these more challenging skills.  Feel free to use it or tweak it to meet your school's needs.

Click here to download the Kindergarten Skills assessment.  (It didn't upload exactly as I had it done in Word, but you'll be able to rearrange things as needed.)

Happy conferences!