Dear Friends and Families of Assumption School,
Wow, we had a great time on Monday! Thank you to SLT’s Marlana and Maddie the MCs of our annual parade as well as the parent volunteers who hosted and brought snacks for the class parties as well as SLT and teachers and staff for a wonderful Halloween on October 31.
This transition into November marks an important one for our Catholic faith with the Feast of All Souls as well as the celebration of Dia de los Muertos during today’s liturgy. Our 8th graders sang beautifully while students from grades 4 and 6 as well as our 8th Grade teacher, Mr. Del Castillo shared the importance of this day in their families. Our school’s Dia de los Muertos school altar created by Assumption Art and Spanish teachers, Mrs. Munoz, Mrs. Barbera, and Mrs. Contreras, is on display and until Thursday, November 3. Thank you to Mrs. Baldovinos, grandmother of the Lopez family in Grades K, 2, 3, and 7, who came to decorate Sugar Skulls with different classes in the school.
After a VERY exciting Halloween and while students likely recovered from an amazing Halloween night, on Tuesday, teachers and staff came together to review, revise, and discuss our ongoing self study accreditation process in partnership with the Western Catholic Educational Association and Western Association of Schools and Colleges.
“The mission of the Western Catholic Educational Association is to advance quality Catholic education for all students in member schools and arch/dioceses through an accrediting process that promotes the primacy of faith formation, the rigor of educational excellence, and the vitality that comes through continuous school improvement,” according to the WCEA website.
We are in the process of preparing a five-year Action Plan in an effort to improve student learning and faith formation. We are excitedly in the final stages of this process and yesterday was such a great opportunity to collaborate as a complete staff and faculty. The completed self-study and action plan will be shared with our shareholders including our School Board, PTG, Foundation Board members, parents, and parishioners in late February and reviewed by a panel of visiting educators from the Diocese of Oakland as well as the Archdiocese of San Francisco and private schools in early March 2023. By taking this time yesterday, the faculty and staff were able to dedicate quality work time to this effort.
Next Thursday marks the end of the First Trimester of the school year. For many of our teachers, this means receiving summative assessments to evaluate learning. It is important to work in partnership with our teachers to support student learning. We will be closing grades on November 10 and preparing report cards for disbursement in the first week of December.
November 8 is Election Day and as always, we encourage those eligible to vote to take part in our democratic process and role model to our students how we, as citizens of our nation, can take part in our government.
Have a great week!
With God’s Love on this special day of remembrance,
Lana Rocheford
Principal
Second STAR Assessment window opens this week
The Renaissance STAR Assessment window for the end of the first trimester is starting for students in Kindergarten through 8th grade in Assumption School along with other Diocese of Oakland Catholic Schools. This assessment is the second in four testing windows throughout the year. We hope to use this November assessment to gauge learning so far and get a better understanding of student growth. Teachers will continue to use these assessments to inform their lesson planning for students. Teachers will send out an assessment schedule to let you know when your students will take their assessments from November 3 to November 18. We ask that students are in school daily with a good breakfast, good night’s sleep, and readiness to learn. After analyzing the assessment results in professional learning groups as a faculty, we will share the November report with families with the first report card.
From Renaissance Learning’s STAR Assessment Webpage:
Star Assessments are short tests that provide teachers with personalized learning data for each student.
Star tests are computer adaptive, which means they adjust in difficulty to each answer students provide. This helps teachers get the best data to help students in the shortest amount of testing time (about one-third of the time other tests require).
Students may take a Star test for early literacy, math, or reading. Teachers analyze the data they receive from Star Assessments to learn what students already know and what they are ready to learn next, to monitor student growth, and to determine which students may need additional help.
Star Assessments are research-based and scientifically proven to help teachers guide each student on their unique path to proficiency.
