Standards Based Teaching and Learning
Assessment is crucial in responding to the learning needs of our students. At Kinard, we believe that frequent assessment informs our instruction and communicates to students and parents a measurement of understanding. The Colorado State Standards and the Core Knowledge curriculum provide the content, and formative and summative assessments give a clear picture of student progress. Formative assessments improve learning because they show students how they need to improve and provide encouragement in the areas of success. Summative assessments are used to monitor the overall learning of a particular unit or skill set. We provide a separate work habits assessments to reflect a student’s participation in the learning process.
Kinard teachers collaborate to align and integrate the Core Knowledge Sequence with the Colorado Academic Standards, which creates a guaranteed and viable curriculum for our school and deepens our commitment to standards-based teaching and learning.
Standards-Based Grading
We use standards-based grading and reporting to communicate students’ progress and information about student achievement. The overall course grade will be a numeric score for all classes.
The overall course grade is based on assessments and teachers’ professional analysis of student learning.
Assessment
Assessments measure what students know and are able to do at a particular point in time. They are also used as part of the instructional process to provide information needed to adjust teaching and learning while they are happening. Students may be provided multiple opportunities to demonstrate proficiency on practice assignments and assessments.
Individual assessments will be evaluated based on the Colorado Academic Standards and the Core Knowledge Sequence. Students’ level of academic proficiency will be reported for each standard and assessment using the following proficiency scale:
Work Habits
Our work habits rubric is designed to separate a student’s participation in their learning from the actual comprehension of the content. The work habits rubric indicates a student’s preparedness and productivity in class. The purpose of reporting work habits is to provide insight into how student behaviors may impact their learning and proficiency.
Middle School Courses Earning High School Credit
Some of our courses allow students the opportunity to earn high school credit for classes taken at the middle school level. These courses include Algebra 1, Geometry, Algebra 2, Spanish 1B, Spanish 2, French 1B, and French 2. For these classes, a letter grade will be reported using the scale below. These letter grades will be used for high school transcript/credit purposes.
Grade Reporting
Grades are a tool for providing feedback to students and communicating information about what students know and are able to do. Using the ParentVUE and StudentVUE features of Synergy, our student information system, we will report information about students’ overall progress measured against specific class standards, work habits, and non-graded information.