OMS Parent Letter

Dear Parents,

If your child is in 6th or 7th grade they will be taking the Pilot test for the Smarter Balanced Assessment next week.  Sixth graders will be taking the math test on Wednesday morning (our early release day). Seventh Graders will test on Tuesday and Thursday in English/Language Arts.  The 7th grade ELA assessment is split into two sections.  Later this week will will administer a short practice test (4-9 questions) just to get students familiar with the computer based process. Both the practice test and the Pilot test are for SBA use only. We will not see the results, but next year every school will be required to take the assessment and we wanted our student and staff to have a chance to practice and prepare.  This will help us with core instruction, computer skills, technology infrastructure, and scheduling.

If you care to see what the assessment looks like simply cut and paste this into your web browser (google chrome).

http://sbac.portal.airast.org/

You will see three boxes:

1. click on Training Test box.
2. click on Student box.
3. click on Training Test (or calculator if you only want see how that works)
4. click Sign In box (this is the guest portion)
5. Select a Grade from the pull down menu and click Yes
6. select either ELA or MATH
7. Choose Settings…Click on Select
8. Is This Your Test…Click on Yes, Start my test.
9. Test Instructions….click on begin test now