Mr Schaefer

Advanced Content Test Completion

We are now completed with the Advanced Content Testing for February 2009.  We tested over 40 students to give them the opportunity to be placed in these classes. 

As a reminder, your child does not have to take the Performance Series test to qualify for Advanced Content classes.  The Performance Series test is a secondary qualifier, as we use the ITBS from 5th Grade as the primary qualifier. 

Advanced content includes the subjects of Science Seminar, Language Arts and Social Studies.  It does not in the subject area of Math or Connections.

If you have further questions about Advanced Content placement, feel free to contact me at school. 

Advanced Content Placement Testing

We will be doing Advanced Content placement testing for all students that do not have current ITBS scores on file starting in February.  We will also be testing students have ITBS score who are not in Advanced Content classes.  These students will be selected by their teacher to be high performing.  We will also allow students to take this test who have parents request that we do Advanced Content testing. 

We will use the Performance Series test which will give each student national percentile rankings for Math, Reading, Science, and Language Arts.  This test will substitute for the 5th Grade ITBS scores.  These test scores will be placed into an Advanced Content matrix to determine if these students are placed into one or more Advanced Content classes.  CRCT scores will not be used to place students into Advanced Content classes.

If you have further questions about Advanced Content placement, feel free to contact me at school. 

Skills Tutor

Skills Tutor is a web based tutoring program that allows students to work at skills in many different subjects at many different levels.  Teachers may assign specific work for their subject area to remediate or enhance learning.  Since the program is web based, the work can be done either at school, at home or anywhere the student has the ability to log onto the Internet.

A special class has been created inside of Skills Tutor for parent and student use 24 hours a day.  The name of the class is "All Skills Tutor".  Every subject within the Skills Tutor program is offered within the "All Skills Tutor" class.  For more information about this class or to get information about how to log into Skills Tutor contact myself or any teacher in the building.

Skills Tutor is a great resource to help any student be successful here at Durham Middle School.  We are looking forward to helping you use this program to help you child be successful.

Welcome to a New School Year

Everyone at Durham Middle School would like to welcome our students and parents to our learning communities.  Durham is rich with experienced and caring teachers along with a bounty of technology to make learning exciting.  We are looking forward to an exciting year that is filled with learning and great memories.