PTA Family Night and Fundraiser!

Hawk❤️

To our Hawk families, friends and community:

                Happy Valentine's Day 

The staff @hanawalthawks send you our love and thanks for allowing us to be part of your lives! 

#hanawaltcares

FAST Assessments

 FAST is the test which stands for Formative Assessment System for Teachers. FAST is given to every student  in grades K-3 three times a year to identify students who are reading on grade level and those students who need additional help in reading. We have just completed the Winter screener for the FAST assessments and the teachers will be going over that data with you at conferences nest week. Below you will see the various foundational reading skill assessed at each grade level K-3. 

KINDERGARTEN

Throughout the school year, Kindergarten students are assessed on a variety of skills that are essential to reading. The FAST assessment screens on the following skills:

● Reading letter names and identifying letter sounds

● Understanding concepts of print (eg. We read from left to right on a page.)

● Identifying individual sounds they hear in a word (eg. “at” has two sounds:  /a/ and /t/)

● Reading commonly used words by sight (eg. "the”)

● Blending sounds together to read simple words

FIRST

Throughout the school year, first grade students are assessed on a variety of skills that are essential to reading. The FAST assessment screens on the following skills:

● Reading simple sentences

● Number of words read correctly in one minute—related to decoding, vocabulary, and comprehension

● Identifying individual sounds they hear in a word (eg. “at” has two sounds:  /a/ and /t/)

● Reading commonly used words by sight (eg. "the”)

● Blending sounds together to read simple words 

SECOND and THIRD

Throughout the school year, students in grades 2 & 3 are given the CBMReading test.  This is an overall measure of reading skills where the student reads aloud a story for one minute.  The teacher records the number of words the student reads correctly along with reading accuracy.  CBMReading provides an overall indication of how well the student is reading and is related to other reading skills like decoding, vocabulary, and comprehension.

For more information about FAST, please visit the Iowa Reading Research Center’s website at www.iowareadingresearch.orgunder the “Parents” tab. If you would like to see what the assessments look like feel free to contact me. 

                  

Engage

Always a Learner

I visited many sessions while at the National Conference in Houston. The main message that ran throughout is that we have to engage our students in high quality learning experiences, we have to engage our teachers in high quality professional development, we have to engage our parents through high quality relationships, we have to engage our community in high quality conversations about the needs of our schools and we have to engage our policy makers with high quality discourse on the issues we face in education. 

There are so many educators and leaders engaging every day to support the success of all our young people. I urge you to engage in some way to the work of a equal and quality education for all students. Engaging now will allow them to engage with a successful and joyful future. 

#engageinchange

Report Cards

Report cards will be coming home with your child tomorrow. ( January 29th)

New Car Rider Procedures to Start Tuesday, Feb 2nd

New Car Rider Procedures

 

We are implementing new car rider procedures. We appreciate the feedback from parents and the morning car rider parents (who are rock stars). In order to make dismissal safer and more efficient we will be starting a car rider line.

Procedures Starting Tuesday, February 2^nd.

Car Rider students will go to the gym and sit by grade level.

Cars will pull up through the parking lot and load in the designated loading zone indicated by the cones. Hanawalt staff will be loading students in your car. We will load 5 cars at a time by calling students names, loading those 5 cars and exiting those cars. Then continue pulling up 5 cars at a time. A staff member will be asking your student’s name and grade level then calling them  with the microphone to line up to load.  We will have plenty of staff helping direct you and load students in the first few days.

If you are going to park to pick up your child you will no longer be able to park in front of the school or the school parking lot, as this is part of the car rider line. You may park further down on Robertson Drive and walk up.

All walkers and parent pick-up students will be in the front of the school. If you are walking to pick up your child you may pick them up there. There will also be staff supervision there.

You will be getting a letter home from the school on Thursday. There will be a place for you to indicate your child’s regular dismissal procedure: car rider, parent pick up or walker. Of course you can always change this with a note to your teacher.

Thank you for your continued support to make our school a safe and joyful place to learn.

 

 

Dates of Interest Updated

These are some of the happenings we have on the calendar right now. I will update posts monthly to keep you informed. 

February

17-18 & 24 Spring Conferences
17- 4th Grade Art Field Trip
19- 2nd & 3rd Grade Dental Screening
25- 3rd Grade Opera Iowa Field Trip
26- Movie Night, Book Fair & Auction

March

March Madness About Reading

8- PTA  Meeting 6:00-7:30

8- 4th & 5th Grade Science Fair
11-18 Spring Break

23- Spring Pictures

29- 5th grade Field Trip to Symphony
 Iowa Assessments

28- 5th grade Reading

29- 3rd & 5th grade Reading

30- 3rd, 4th , 5th Math

31- 3rd, 4th, 5th Science & Social Studies

April

8- Day in The Arts 

12 PTA 6:00-7:30

12- Kindergarten Open House 6:00-7:00
18-22 PTA Fundraiser-Spelling Callenge