Superintendent Mike Borgfjord

The Seine River School Division is bringing a group of teachers onto the same page when it comes to figuring out how well students read.  Superintendent Mike Borgfjord says administration has been reviewing the Strong Beginnings Program.

Strong beginnings is a two day time at the start of the year where teachers meet one on one with students to do an individual assessment of the various skills the students has developed.  Borgfjord explains, "Teachers use this information to develop individualized programming to plan their classes and programs for each student in their class."  As administration looked at the program it decided to establish a common assessment model for all teachers in grades one to eight.

He says all their teachers create and use their own assessment tools and they are very good at doing that but it's important to have one standard.  "You want to have similar information so no matter where you work in our school division, if you move to a different school, you are not learning a different assessment.  This will provide a good snapshot of data that we can look at over time to see how we are  doing and provide good information to parents."  He adds this common system will also give teachers a model to talk about when they get together to discuss reading levels and allow them to compare apples to apples.

To get all teachers using the same criteria the division will be holding a series of inservice sessions.  Borgfjord notes teachers will come in for half a day and be taught how to implement these assessments.