Great Hearts Live Oak Family Newsletter-August 18th, 2020
Dear Founding Families,

The contents of this special edition family newsletter focus on two important topics: preliminary takeaways from our Distance Learning Feedback Survey, and details about our upcoming NWEA MAP Growth assessment for students in grades 2-7. 

Thank you to all families who took the opportunity to provide specific feedback! While we are still analyzing the data, your detailed comments gave us the opportunity to identify and act on a few important themes:

  • Many video links were not accessible. While this is a complicated issue involving software, updates, permissions, and multiple parties, we have taken steps to provide more reliable links. We will continue to monitor this issue.
  • The formatting of the Google Classroom needs to be more user-friendly for both parents and students. We are working on this as a team, and you can expect to see gradual improvements throughout the week as we refine and standardize our use of Google Classroom.
  • There is confusion and a certain amount of apprehension about due dates. This was caused by a lack of familiarity on the part of our faculty and administration of the different alerts and messages parents and students receive when assignments are posted. You can expect to see gradual improvements in the messaging of submission deadlines. In the meantime, please know that significant grace has and will continue to be extended for due dates as we all learn more about distance learning.
  • Instructions and materials for assigned work needs to be explicit. In a distance learning format, teachers and students do not have access to immediate verbal and nonverbal feedback, which makes explicit instructions even more necessary and harder to deliver. This too is an area in which we will be striving for continuous improvement.
  • Finally, there was much discussion on the value, quality, and quantity of synchronous discussion. This will be the topic of our Friday professional development time, and we are excited to dig deeper into this topic with our talented teachers.

We commit to creating regular opportunities for our families to provide feedback. In fact, you can expect another distance learning survey this weekend. This is indeed a time when we are all being stretched, and we are honored to be on this journey with you!

May you soar on wings of wisdom and strength,
Headmaster Audelo
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NWEA MAP Growth begins next week!

Beginning August 25 and continuing through September 4, scholars in grades 2-7 will take the NWEA MAP Growth assessment in both reading and mathematics. The MAP Growth is a formative assessment that equips administrators, teachers, and interventionists in the development of high quality instruction:

  • MAP helps our schools meet the learning needs of all scholars by identifying where scholars are in their learning and current skills and knowledge gaps.
  • MAP helps teachers understand their scholars’ learning needs and adjust their class instruction to ensure every scholar is growing and progressing.
  • MAP helps our learning interventionists fill in foundational learning gaps for all scholar populations.

Stay tuned for specific information about the administration of the MAP Growth assessment from your grade-level team later this week. In the meantime, please review the schedule so that you will know when your scholar will be taking the assessment. It's important that scholars have access to and are logged onto their device for the entire testing period. As the assessment is adaptive to the scholar, times will vary from one student to the next. You can anticipate that your scholar will be actively working on their device from one to two hours per testing session.

For more information about the NWEA MAP Growth assessment, we suggest that you visit the NWEA website which includes several informational resources, including a Family Toolkit and a Family Guide to MAP Growth.
A few words about social media...

Many families find the parent and grade-level Facebook pages to be wonderful tools for connection. Families will use them to support their students with a variety of concerns such as acquiring used uniforms, or arranging carpools. These are wonderful uses of social media and we encourage our families to stay connected. 

However, please be advised that these pages are NOT official Academy sites. Because parent and grade-level pages are not sponsored or followed by the administration, these pages are not an effective forum to raise concerns or ask questions about faculty, curriculum, or Academy policies. For this reason we ask that you utilize official school pathways to communicate with the faculty and staff of Great Hearts Live Oak.