Reading, writing, change

I am currently assessing all of the children in language arts.  I am giving every child the DRA and revisiting the word study assessment to see the growth that they have made since September.
After we return from the winter break your child may or may not be placed into a different language arts group.  If your child happens to be moved around into a different group, your child may come home with the same word sort that he or she has already done.  This simply means that he or she needs more practice with a particular word study feature.  Like I mentioned in our word study training, we want the children to be applying these features in their reading and writing  consistently and independently. 

During daily journal writing I am constantly taking formative assessments.  Today, the children wrote a non-fiction piece on their knowledge of magnets. 
Ask your child to write down a fact or two that they remember about magnets.  You will instantly see how well they are doing with their writing, what skills they are able to perform independently, and what areas they need to work on.