Mays believes in fostering a strong partnership between home and school. Throughout the year, we provide opportunities to build that partnership, including:

• Meet and Greet at the beginning of each school year
• PTA (Parent Teacher Assocition) ongoing meetings forming community, providing feedback, and planning events
• Mays CAFEs - a time for familes, community members, teachers and administrators to meet and discuss what is happening at Mays
• Take Your Parent to School Days for PreK, Kindergarten, 1st, and 2nd grades 
• Ongoing Progress Reports from teachers
• Regular Classroom newsletters (bi-weekly or weekly)
• Conferences (fall and spring) where teachers and families set academic goals together
• IB (International Baccalaureate) Showcase Nights highlighting student IB work
• Classroom Apps for communication (Remind, SeeSaw, ClassDojo)
• Monthly all-school newsletter
• Mays Weekly Highlights emails

For additional resources and information on the home/school partnership and ways to support your child's education visit:

SchoolFamily.com (K-12)

A website focused on helping parents help their kids make the most of their school year by providing families with expert insight, information and resources.

BookFlix

Login/Library Card Number: 22091600 + your child's 6 digit school lunch number (for example 22091600XXXXXX where the X's are the student's lunch number/personal identification number)

BookFlix is a site that pairs nonfiction and fiction eBooks on a variety of subjects for early readers. 

Enrichment Activities  

The Office of Teaching and Learning has compiled a comprehensive list of online activities for K-12 students in subjects including art, music, science, social studies, language arts and more. Follow this link for a list of enrichment activities.

Assessments and Teaching at Mays

At Benjamin E Mays IB World School, and throughout SPPS, we use a variety of assessments to measure each student’s academic growth. When you hear the word “assessment,” you may think about standardized tests like the MCA (Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment). MCAs are one method of measuring reading and math skills for our 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders; however, these tests are given in the spring (April/May), and the test results are not fully available until late summer. Because of that timing, MCA scores are often used to look at overall trends, but do not play a large role in guiding instruction.

Other assessments are given at multiple times during the school year and are much more helpful for us as we plan and differentiate instruction for your student. These assessments include FAST, Benchmarking, and Unit/Quarterly assessments in math. FAST is given three times each year (fall, winter, and spring) and measures each student’s knowledge/understanding of literacy skills such as letter names and sounds, decoding of words, vocabulary, and comprehension. Teachers also use a reading assessment called Benchmarking to determine each student’s reading level. This information is used to make sure each student is reading books that are at the appropriate level and also used to create guided reading groups. In math, teachers assess learning at the end of each unit or quarter. Based on this information, teachers know what students have learned well and what needs to be reviewed or re-taught.

In addition to MCAs, FAST, Benchmarking, and Math unit/quarterly assessments, our Multilingual Learners take the ACCESS test, which measures their progress in reading, speaking, listening, and writing. The proficiency levels determined by this assessment are used by teachers to help plan instruction and support for students and also determines when students exit the EL program.

At fall and spring conferences, ask your child’s teacher about recent assessments and how your child has grown academically during the school year!