Events & News Blog Entries

Curriculum and Assessment Grant

The Bay School was chosen to receive a grant from The Nicholson Family Foundation to purchase new school curriculum and assessment and intervention tools. We were thrilled to be able to purchase a brand new SRA math curriculum from McGraw Hill called Number Worlds as well as a sight word based-reading program called Edmark. Additionally, The Bay School was also able to purchase multiple assessment tools including the Woodcock-Johnson IV and the CELF-5.

 SRA Number Worlds

Number Worlds is a brand new highly engaging math intervention program designed by McGraw Hill. It utilizes research-proven adaptive instruction to increase math skills using real-world applications and game-based learning for students from Pre-K through 8th grade. Math intervention using Number Worlds is designed to be fun and engaging using manipulatives, hands-on activities, and games which are explicitly designed to expand concepts and reinforce development of skills. In addition the curriculum uses weekly project based learning to increase long-term retention of concepts.

Edmark 

Edmark Reading Program is a sight word reading program that utilizes a carefully sequenced, highly repetitive word recognition method combined with errorless learning. The program breaks learning into steps and requires learners to meet a 90% accuracy criterion prior to moving up. This helps eliminate incorrect responses and increase fluent reading. Edmark can be used both as a sole or supplemental reading program. It is easily modified to meet a variety of individualized student needs. Edmark utilizes a variety of reading activities including matching pictures to words, using manipulatives, reading story books, practicing spelling and writing, and playing interactive card and board games for reinforcement of word recognition and comprehension. This extensive practice reinforces new learning and facilitates the generalization of skills to new and varied situations. Additionally, playing reading games provides students opportunities to practice their reading skills in a social setting.

Woodcock-Johnson IV

The Bay School was able to purchase a psycho-educational assessment tool called the Woodcock-Johnson IV (WCJ-IV). The WCJ-IV is an updated and redesigned edition of one of the most widely used batteries of individually administered psycho-educational tests. The WCJ-IV’s focuses on evaluation of relative strengths and weaknesses helps identify and describe patterns of performance across achievement, language, and cognitive domains that are key to diagnosing learning problems and developing targeted interventions for individual needs.

Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-5th Edition (CELF-5)

Additionally the Bay School was able to purchase a Speech and Language Assessment. The CELF-5 is a diagnostic battery that can be used to collect evidence about a student’s communication abilities in multiple contexts. The CELF-5 includes a balance of language measurement items across receptive and expressive modalities and language content and structure. It includes standardized test scores and composite scores (Core Language and Index scores) to enhance clinical decision making as well as Growth Scale Values to help measure student progress over time. The CELF-5 has been developed and researched to enable examiners to use each group of items independently of the others. Consequently, each group of items that makes up CELF-5, (e.g., Linguistic Concepts, Semantic Relationships, Understanding Spoken Paragraphs) is referred to as a test. The CELF-5 battery includes tests for evaluating word meanings and vocabulary (semantics), word and sentence structure (morphology and syntax), the rules of oral language used in responding to and conveying messages (pragmatics), and the recall and retrieval of spoken language (memory). It also includes the Observational Rating Scales (ORS) for authentic evaluation of communication in academic settings. The Pragmatics Activities Checklist can be used to assess social language skills during authentic conversational interactions.