Language Arts

Ms. Traci Matturro

Hi! My name is Traci Matturro and I am the new reading specialist here at Luxmanor. This is my 19th year in the county and I have taught Kindergarten, first grade and third grade. I am excited to be here and looking forward to getting to know the community. My role as a reading specialist is to conduct and oversee testing in all grades, assess students that are new to Luxmanor, work with teachers to ensure best practices in both writing and reading, and work with individual students. Overall, my job is to support students as they construct meaning in reading through training the classroom teachers to become "mini" reading specialists, working with the community and promoting reading and writing throughout the grades. This year I will be heading a reading committee that will sponsor some school wide programs/ activities.

The Testing Season is OPEN!

Grades K - 2
Children in grades k-2 will begin reading testing starting Monday, September 8th. This is a county test called mClass that is given three times a year and it is given individually. Text of students' books is loaded onto their teachers PDA. Teachers make notations directly on the PDA as students read. Theses results are calculated immediately after the teacher finishes the assessment, and synced with an off-site server. Teachers use the information collected to target their instruction. Depending on your child's level, there is a writing component or a brief constructed response (B.C.R.) your child must answer. This is scored and it is determined whether or not the child meets the standard. Please understand that even though your child may read at a high level, it is our job to make sure that his/her writing in response to reading matches that level. If the writing does not match, a new text is selected and a new BCR is given so that your child will have success. The teachers do a lot of preparation and teaching the children strategies for answering the BCRs but it takes practice. Writing is the last of the four processes (speaking, listening , reading and writing) to be developed. In kindergarten, the children are given a battery of tests assessing their knowledge of print/reading behaviors; oral language; listening and writing; and sight word recognition. Again depending on the level of reader in grades 1 and 2, your child may have the following additional tests: phoneme segmentation; reading nonsense words; oral reading; letter naming fluency and initial sound fluency. These assessments provide an excellent source of information that help the teachers meet the needs of each child so that he/she can become an independent reader and problem solver.

Grades 3 - 5
Children in grades 3-5 will begin MAP-R (Measures of Academic Progress-Reading) . Students in grades 3-5 take Map-R three times per year. MAP-R provides two measures of student's achievement. The RIT score is an equal interval score, like feet and inches. RIT scores range fro 150 to 300. Students typically start at the 150-190 level in the third grade and progress to 240-300 level by high school. RIT scores make it possible to follow a student's education growth from year to year. There is also a Lexile score that is a measure of the student's reading level independent of age or grade. By measuring reader ability and text difficulty on the same scale readers can be guided to books that can provide a degree of comfort or challenge. Again our teachers use the data to drive their instruction. Children take the assessment in the computer lab and it is untimed. We want the children to take the test seriously as we get overall scores for the grade level as well as individual scores. Your child will know his/ her score at the conclusion of the test.

Newspaper Club to begin!
On Tuesday, September 16th in the media center there will be a brief meeting for children in grades 3-5 interested in being part of our brand new Luxmanor Newspaper club. The club will officially begin on October 7th. Space will be limited and children will need to return a permission slip by September 19th. The club will open up to new children each quarter. The meeting should be brief and end by 3:30. Parents will need to pick up their children as there is no transportation at this time.

Call for Volunteers! I'm looking for parent volunteers to help with stamping and processing new books once or twice a week. Please email me if you can help and let me know what days and times work for you.

Websites to check out:

Scholastic Activities builds literacy and is great for speakers of other languages

Rhyming This site is great for phonemic awareness (rhyming) to help promote reading skills

Sight Words This site is for building site word vocabulary in kindergarten and first grade.

Gamegoo - (first grade) Your child is given words and has to put them in order to make sense.

Gr. 3-5 Vocabulary building

Word Jungle

Recognising Homophon

Audiostories Stories with audio; great for all ages.

Ms. Matturro would love to receive your email. If you have questions or concerns about our Reading/Language Arts program, grades K-5, please contact her at the following address:

Ms. Traci Matturro