Helping Your Kids at Home

I have had a couple of parents ask how they can help their student be successful.  I wanted to share the information with everyone, because what I have learned this week is very cool.  There have been changes made to Tungsten that will facilitate your efforts to be an involved and supportive parent in a more content specific manner.

1) Tungsten has changed the format to a Web Based system called eValuate.  This means that you can now access completed tests from home and review them with your child.  This will show you their score for the month, allow you to review the test and discuss their answer choices with them and analyze their data personal strand data.

2)  The personal strand data will show you your child's content strengths and weaknesses.  You will be able to determine what their struggling points are in both reading and math.  From there, you can ask the teachers or even research strategies for helping your child in these areas.  Students in my class will become very accustomed to using this data to improve their learning as the year progresses.

3)  To access this information you go to https://assessments.edisonlearning.com/ where you will be prompted to enter a user name a password.  All students should know this information.  If they do not, please send the teacher an e-mail and they will be able to provide it to you.

When working with your students on improving their performance there are a few key strategies that have proven helpful in the classroom that I would like to share with you.  Reminding students to set small, realistic goals, this gives them the opportunity to see improvement and feel success which builds up their confidence.  Make goals specific.  A goal such as, "I want to do better,"  doesn't give the student an idea of what they need to know and do to make this goal happen.  Goal statements that are more like, "This month I want to increase my score by 5% by rereading the text before I answer the questions," is a lot more specific and will help the student focus their efforts.  Students can also set goals based on a certain strand they are struggling with.  "This month, I will practice summarizing a text so I can increase my performance on the summarizing questions by 10%."  These goals give the student something tangible to work with to increase their learning and performance.

Please let me know if you need any additional support or information as you explore this learning tool with your students.  As a parent, I've been playing with my son's Tungsten.  We had a great discussion about his choices last night and he now wishes I didn't know how to get to this information because these conversations will happen often.

Homework:  Read 30 minutes.  Students in 4th and 5th block are still working with vocabulary words from last week.  They need to study for the test on Friday.  The words are noble, insinuate, integrate, eloquent, shrewd and cynical.