September 13, 2019

Dear Secondary Parents,

If your child is in middle school, please make sure to complete the WWW trip preparation forms that were emailed to you on Thursday. If you need help, please contact the secondary office.

This Week In Secondary School 

Saturday 

• MS/HS Movie Marathon- (Infinity wars and End Game) 11:00AM -5:00PM in the Drama room 

Monday

• Yale-NUS visit- 9:30-10:30
• MISCA college fair at YIS 12:00-4:30 PM all twelfth-grade students and interested grade 11 students will be attending. 
• WWW MS Parents Information Sessions at 5:00PM 
• Grade 6 in SAS 411E
• Grade 7 in SAS 501E
• Grade 8 in D104

Tuesday 

• HS Volleyball  at I.S.M
• The State University of New York at Oswego visit at 9:30
• The University of British Columbia, Chinese University of HK visit at 12:30
• IB Transition and Looking forward at 5:30 PM in the cafeteria

Wednesday

• MS Basketball with ISM at ISY
Hong Kong Baptist University Visit at lunch

Thursday 

• HS Volleyball vs ILBC
• MS Basketball with YIS at ISY

Friday

• 11:45 dismissal for students

Flood Drive: Community in Action service learning group will be holding a flood drive next week where materials including; soap, toothbrushes, toothpaste, mosquito nets, blankets and basic English and Burmese books are to be collected school-wide. The donations will be given to Mr. U Win from the Ayeyarwaddy Foundation, and also to the Daw Khin Kyi Foundation, and will be sent to relief camps in every township, in the city of Mawlamyaing, Mon State, where the flood has made the heaviest impact.

According to Mr. U Win, the flood has reached 12 feet and in places up to the roofs of people's homes. More than 100 lives have been lost in these heavy floods, and villagers have lost many of their possessions. The Service Learning group's aim is to collect the most required items (listed below) from grades Pre-K through 12th grade and donate them.

The collection will start next week on Monday 16th and last all week until Friday 20th.
Relief food is being provided by the organizations so they have asked for other kinds of items much in need. Here is the list of items required by each grade level:

• Elementary students, please donate any items
• Grades 6 to 8: toothbrush/toothpaste
• Grades 9 to 12: bar soap and English/Burmese books that are simple to read

Labeled baskets will be left in front of the gym between Monday to Friday where the donations will be collected.

MAP Testing: Next week will be our last week of Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) assessments for our Grade 6 to 9 students. Grades 1 to 5 have already completed their assessments. As we are preparing to analyze our data, I would like to take this opportunity to explain why and how MAP assessments are administered at ISY.

What are MAP assessments?
MAP assessments are online adaptive assessments that provide useful data in developing a fair and accurate assessment of student academic achievement and growth. MAP Growth uses a scale to measure what students know, regardless of their grade level. It also measures growth over time, allowing us to track our students throughout the school year and across multiple years.

Why do we do MAP testing?
The academic achievement and growth data obtained from MAP assessments forms one part of a student’s data profile. MAP assessment data is combined with data gathered by classroom teachers to ensure that we have a fair and accurate understanding of each student’s academic and learning needs. This understanding of student academic and learning needs then guides teacher planning and instructional practices in meeting the needs of individual students.

As well as providing important data that guides planning and instruction for individual students, MAP data also guides our continuous school improvement efforts. We can use school, grade and subject level MAP data to identify which academic areas we need to focus our improvement efforts on.

How do we do MAP testing?

Our processes around MAP testing at ISY are designed around the reasons why we have our students sit the tests and our commitment to fair and accurate assessment practices. For a summary of our MAP testing processes, please refer to this document.

Student MAP data is shared, along with other teacher collected student achievement data, with parents during parent conferences. However, if you would like to have access to your child(ren)’s assessment data prior to a conference, please email Mike Simpson, our Director of Curriculum and Learning at msimpson@isyedu.org and he will be happy to forward that information to you. Student MAP reports are also posted to Powerschool after conferences.