As you move along in your middle school career and get closer to high school, classwork can get challenging. It's normal to need some new strategies or to need support with more advanced work. That's what I'm here for! You may find that you need a little extra support at different times of the year or with different classes, or you may need strategies to get back on track or to get organized. I can work with you and your teachers to help you try different things to help you be successful and be the best student you can be. 

I'm also a reading specialist and teacher, so you may work with me to help you become a better reader. Remember, reading gets more challenging as you get further along in your academic career, so I am able to help you with your advanced reading skills. My goal is for you to feel confident in your reading abilities so that when you get to 8th grade and beyond, you will be prepared and able to choose from all the elective classes that are available. 

Please reach out to me any time! I am in the library, right next to the technology room!

Sincerely,

Mrs. Hershey

Hello, Parents!

Reading Screening Assessment Information

Dear parents,

Our goal is to provide the best educational services for all of our students and to help them achieve success at all levels. Therefore, our school follows a process to allow for early intervention strategies for literacy, math, and behavior. 

Specifically, teachers and administrators at our school are committed to helping your child become successful in reading increasingly complex content-area text. As part of this commitment, our school has chosen to use a screening assessment called the maze in sixth grade and a comprehension benchmark assessment in sixth and seventh grades to help us examine how your child is doing in learning important content-area reading skills. 

• During the first two weeks of school, all students in 6th grade general education reading classes will take the maze screener during class time. 

• During the first half of the first trimester, all students in 6th and 7th grade general education reading classes will take the comprehension benchmark during class time. 

• Please view this link for more information about these assessments.

Based on a review of the results of these assessments, along with previous academic data, we will contact you with any next steps. We are working hard at school to make sure that every student is on target for success, and we thank you for your efforts at home.

The maze screeners look like this:

Students silently read one passage over the course of three minutes. Throughout the passage, words are removed and replaced with a multiple-choice box. For each missing word, the student chooses the correct word from three different choices. 

An image depicting what the maze assessment looks like is shown here:

The assessment consists of three parts: (1) Passage Comprehension, in which students read passages silently and answer questions about the passages; (2) Vocabulary Knowledge, in which students choose a word or phrase that best matches the given word; and (3) Sentence Comprehension, in which students choose the word that best fits in the blank within the provided sentence.

• This assessment tests and measures:

• Vocabulary: Word decoding and vocabulary knowledge

• Sentence comprehension: Ability to comprehend a sentence as a whole or complete thought

• Passage comprehension: Ability to comprehend extended text as a whole

The types of questions asked on the comprehension exam include questioning (basic recall / understanding), clarifying (plot, characters, elements of a story, separating important details from unimportant ones), summarizing (main idea, theme, fact vs. fiction, drawing conclusions), and predicting. 

Based on a review of the results of these assessments, along with previous academic data, we will contact you with any next steps. We are working hard at school to make sure that every student is on target for success, and we thank you for your efforts at home. 

Sincerely,

Emily Hershey