Mr. Beckeman's Blog

January 18, 2010

Preparing for the Michigan Merit Exam

The Michigan Merit Exam (MME) is scheduled for the week of March 8th throughout the state of Michigan for all public high schools.  We have been making preparations to leverage the success of our juniors who will soon take this high stakes examination.

The MME uses the ACT as its foundational assessment tool.  With this in mind, our LMC specialist, Mrs. Joan Vincent has prepared a number of support documents to assist our juniors in preparation for this examination.  I have attached these documents for support purposes so students and parents may prepare at home as well.

I hope you find the documents helpful!

ACT General Test Taking Strategies

ACT English and Reading Overview

ACT Math Overview

Test Taking Strategies ACT Science

Test Taking Strategies for ACT Reading

Test Taking Strategies for Math ACT

Test-taking Strategies for English ACT

Mid-Term Exam Schedule

Filed under: Archive,Parents,Staff,Students — Mr. Beckeman @ 11:56 am

The high school mid-term exams are scheduled for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of this week.  The exam schedule can be accessed from the link below:

Mid-Term Exam Schedule

Tax Support

Filed under: Archive,Community News,Parents,Uncategorized — Mr. Beckeman @ 11:39 am

This post is targeted to our parents…

The attachment might be of benefit to you when considering an outside source for income tax filing purposes. 

Please consider sharing this with a friend that could possibly use this free service opportunity.  Times are tough for many and this money saver might be helpful to those in need.

Free Tax Service

Accreditation Standard IV: Documenting & Using Results

“Igniting Minds, Fueling Futures” (R-PHS Mission Statement)

An update on Accreditation Standard IV: Documenting & Using Results

As reported in the spring of 2009 report, the commendations noted by the Quality Assurance Review Team (QART) for Documenting & Using Results were:

  • Individual student data is provided in R-PHS’s Parent Internet Viewer
  • Interviews with staff, parents and students offered great pride in their school
  • Parents are very grateful for Parent Internet Viewer, Progress Reports and Report Cards
  • Staff is very supportive and respectful of one another
  • Students are well informed of their assessment/test scores and appreciate that they are informed of their scores in a timely manner.
  • MME data is reviewed in all subject areas
  • Each department maintains an easily accessible file containing important assessments.

The QART suggested the following recommendations for action planning during the 2009-10 school year:

  • Increase use of instructional walls in room to include items such as student exemplars, knowledge walls and solution stations
  • Use common assessment data to drive improvement goals to close the gap in student achievement
  • Visually state daily learning goals on board or overhead to provide a valued purpose for learning

The action plans that staff have initiated in this standard are:

  • All department have developed common assessment systems to improve and differentiate instruction
  • We are SRI Testing all 9th, 10th and 11th grade students 3 times during the school year so to disaggregate data to determine growth
  • We are using Lexile data to help differentiate instruction
  • We have analyzed scores for EXPLORE, PLAN and ACT to identify students needing additional repetition as well as noting areas that need improvements
  • Analysis of EXPLORE/PLAN/ACT indicates drop in reading scores, which allows us to respond with Reciprocal Teaching as an intervention
  • We are working to triangulate data from key assessments, such as our common assessments, MME and SRI, which allow us to disaggregate student data, find strengths and weaknesses and improve instruction

Please take the time to “surf” the high school website.  I believe you will be impressed with the information and support provided to our students, parents and community!

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