LA & Social Studies MidTerms

We will be administering midterm exams this year again for both LA and Social Studies.  

(Exams are not given in Math and Science as those subjects do regular cumulative tests already, and it was felt four midterms for the reasons below was unnecessary.)

These will be multiple choice exams and will be administered first thing in the morning.  

Each exam is expected to take about an hour.

Language Arts will be administered on Tuesday, January 20^th, 2015.

Social will be on Wednesday 21^st, 2015.

 These exams serve the following functions:

 For students:

 1.  They provide students an opportunity to learn and practice study strategies to prepare for larger scale summative-style exams.

2.  This also means they won’t be attempting review of materials from September for the first time, come June.

3.  These exams provide students a dress rehearsal for final exams so that they will experience less anxiety about them and stress in June.

4.  They will gain valuable experience in test-taking so that with other large scale exams in the near future they will be less intimidated due to their experience. 

 For teachers:

 5.  This will provide teachers with a final item of assessment to add to the body of knowledge that informs our report card decisions.  As we are putting emphasis on recent work- this will be the most recent at the time of reporting.  (These will NOT be high stakes tests.  This will be a valid assessment at the end of the term though, and may help to pull kids to higher levels of assessed achievement in some areas.)

To prepare for these tests:

Students should review any notes or materials they have from September on.  Making index study cards or highlighting key points in notes are both good ways to study. Study Guides are also available and students will be given these by LA and Social teachers, as well as direction as to how to prepare for tests.  Further, there will be RTI sessions available to help students who wish more direction for these tests.