Episode
Week 28: Close to the Mark
- Podcast
- Bearcat Wrap-up Podcast
- Published
- Mar 13, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 856
- Processing state
not_requested- Canonical source
- https://bearcatwrap.substack.com/p/week-28-close-to-the-mark
Actions
POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/bearcat-wrap-up-podcast-5611618/episodes/week-28-close-to-the-mark/transcription-requests
Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode.GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/bearcat-wrap-up-podcast-5611618/week-28-close-to-the-mark.md
Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource.
Summary
Happy Friday! Thank you to everyone across our district for the work you continue to do each day for our students. As we move deeper into the spring semester, the instructional focus of our classrooms becomes even more important. This is the time of year when the adjustments teachers make in instruction can have a significant impact on student learning as we move toward the spring ATLAS assessment. One of our goals as a district has always been to avoid simply hoping that learning is happening. Instead, we want to know where our students stand and respond with the best instruction possible. This week, I would like to share several observations from our Winter ATLAS Interim assessments in English Language Arts, Mathematics, and Science. Interim assessments serve an important purpose. They provide evidence of student learning at this point in the school year and help us determine where additional instructional attention can help students move from approaching proficiency to being proficient. They also allow us to compare our performance with the state average so that we have a clearer understanding of where we stand and what our next steps should be. Achievement Level Descriptors and Strong Thinking One of the most important themes that continues to emerge from the interim results is the importance of helping students understand what strong thinking looks like. We have been talking about assessing student performance using Achievement Level Descriptors, or ALDs. These descriptors outline the level of thinking students must demonstrate to reach proficiency. A Level 3 response, which represents proficient performance, generally requires students to explain their reasoning, apply knowledge to unfamiliar situations, support ideas with evidence, and analyze information rather…