Biddeford Middle School 10/26/16 Dear BMS Families,

25 Tiger Drive Biddeford, ME 04005

The first two months of our school year have flown by and we have reached our November Parent-Teacher Conferences. These conferences are an opportunity for parents to discuss their child’s academic and behavioral progress this school year. To register for a conference time please visit the Biddeford Middle School webpage. BMS teachers have spent the better part of two years working to make learning transparent to students. Each unit of study has Essential Learning Standards on which students must demonstrate proficiency. In order to make learning transparent for students, teachers and students have been working together to break down these larger Essential Standards into their more discrete foundational parts. These pieces of foundational knowledge are called Learning Targets. A sequence of Learning Targets make up a Learning Progression. As teachers check for student understanding of the foundational Learning Targets they are scoring students on a 2 point scale. A score of 2 indicates the students is proficient on the Learning Target being assessed. These assessments we call formative assessments. Formative assessments give both the teacher and the student feedback about where the student’s learning is at on the Learning Progression. We call this assessment​ FOR learning as it is low stakes and allows students to practice new skills and new understandings.

T (207) 282 - 6400 F (207) 282 - 6040 Kyle Keenan

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Jennifer Vitiello

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Angela Avery

Anna Gordon

Jeff Mears

​ Karl Lebreux

Once the student has demonstrated proficiency on all Learning Targets they are ready to be assessed on the Essential Standard(s) for the unit. This assessment might be a unit test, a final paper, a presentation or some other project. These larger assessments we call Summative Assessments as they assess the students’ learning of all the skills and knowledge needed to be proficient on the Essential Standard(s). These are assessments ​OF learning. Summative Assessments are scored on a 4 point scale. A score of 3 indicates the student has demonstrated proficiency at the grade level expectation. A score of 4 indicates the student has shown a deeper or more sophisticated level of understanding or skill than what is stated in the language of the Essential Standard. Parents are able to track their child’s learning progress through the Parent Portal on our grading software called JumpRope. Please note that formative assessments have a weight of zero and therefore have no effect on the student’s summative score but are an indicator of the student’s learning of the foundational skills and knowledge. A

Biddeford Middle School student’s score on an Essential Standard depends entirely on their summative assessment scores. Parents who are interested in getting an account will be able to by going to the BMS webpage and clicking on the Parent/Student Portal link for JumpRope. I’ve included the link below for your convenience. Parents will be prompted to use their child’s Biddeford School Department email address as the username and the student’s 5 digit ID number for the password. Students have all been assigned a school email account and should know the address. I have attached a visual representation of how learning and assessing happens for a typical Unit of Study for a students at BMS. This attachment will come in a separate instant alert email. If you have any questions regarding the JumpRope Parent Portal or our assessment practices at BMS please don’t hesitate to contact me either via email or at 282-6400. My Best,

Kyle Keenan

JumpRope Parent/Student Login