Skip To Main Content

Assessments

Elementary

aimswebPlus

When? September 8-19

Why? Reading is one of the most important skills your child will learn, so we want to assess how well they are doing in the different areas of reading. Students in grade 4K - 3 will be participating in the aimswebPlus assessment.  This screening assessment helps us understand their strengths and areas where they might need extra help and allows us to create plans that support your child’s growth as a reader.

What? 2023 Wisconsin Act 20 requires that students are assessed in the following five foundational skills which are the building blocks of reading. They are essential for helping children recognize, understand, and pronounce words correctly, which is crucial for becoming a fluent and successful reader. These skills are assessed differently depending on the student’s grade level. You can learn more about these important early reading skills below:

  • Alphabet knowledge: Knowing the names of printed letters. 
  • Letter sound knowledge: Knowing the sounds of printed letters. 
  • Phonemic awareness: Hearing , saying, and manipulating individual sounds in spoken words. 
  • Decoding skills: Connecting sounds to written letters to read printed words.
  • Oral vocabulary: Understanding the meanings of words when speaking or listening.

aimswebPlus Early Reading Screening Assessments

The aimswebPlus reading screeners that measure the skills above are based on a student’s grade level. You can learn more about these assessments below:

  • Phoneme Segmentation (5K-1st grade): The student says the sounds they hear in a spoken word. 15 total words presented.
  • Initial Sounds (4K-5K): The student looks at four pictures and either points to the one that begins with a given letter sound or verbally makes the sound that begins the word. 12 total letter sounds.
  • Letter Word Sounds Fluency (4K-1st grade): The student has one minute to say the sounds of visually presented letters, syllables, and words.
  • Letter Naming Fluency (5K-1st grade): The student has one minute to name visually presented upper and lower case letters.
  • Auditory Vocabulary (5K-1st grade): The student points to one of four pictures that matches a spoken word. 25 total words.
  • Vocabulary (2nd- 3rd grade): The student chooses the meanings of words. There are 16 words for 2nd grade and 22 words for 3rd grade.
  • Nonsense Word Fluency (5K-1st grade): The student has one minute to  read or say the sounds of made-up words
  • Word Reading Fluency (1st grade): The student reads a word list aloud for one minute.
  • Oral Reading Fluency (1st-3rd grade): The student reads a story aloud for one minute.

These skills are essential for reading success. When children develop them, they are better prepared to read fluently and understand what they read.

When we screen your child, their performance is compared to other children the same age across the country using something called a "percentile rank." Percentile ranks help us identify areas where additional support might be needed. A percentile rank indicates where a student's score falls compared to others in the same grade. It's a way to understand how a child's performance on a test or assessment compares to their peers. For example, a percentile rank of 25 means the student scored as well or better than 25% of their peers. Students may make growth on the raw score of the assessment but not grow in their percentile, as that is a measure of how they compare to the national population.

Results? Families will receive a notification from the school within 15 days to let them know their student’s assessment results are available in our district's data platform, NextPath.  

Aimsweb & Norms update

Starting with the 2025-2026 school year, the norms for the aimswebPLUS Early Literacy and Reading measures were updated at the national level. Norms are statistical benchmarks that help us understand how a student's performance compares to their peers nationwide. The new norms will be used to calculate your child's national percentile rankings, student growth percentiles (SGP), and risk tier scores. The content of the tests themselves has not changed, but the reference points for comparison have. This is a routine practice that typically happens every five to ten years, as a way to ensure that the assessment accurately reflects current student performance across the nation.

Here are some additional resources if you would like more information:

iReady Diagnostic

When? September 23 - October 10

Why?  It is important for school staff to determine where students are at with grade-level skills and standards.  Additionally, this assessments gives staff information about where strengths and opportunities are for individual students, which helps staff to plan for the best ways to support their continued learning and growth.
What? - The iReady Diagnostic is an adaptive assessment that adjusts its questions to suit your student’s needs. Each item a student sees is individualized based on their answer to the previous question. For example, a series of correct answers will result in slightly harder questions, while a series of incorrect answers will yield slightly easier questions. 

The iReady Diagnostic assesses the following areas:

  • Reading: Phonological Awareness, Phonics, High-Frequency Words, Vocabulary, Comprehension: Literature, Comprehension: Informational Text
  • Math: Number and Operations, Measurement and Data, Algebra and Algebraic Thinking, Geometry

After the completion of the iReady Diagnostic, students are assigned to a personalized pathway for skill practice to meet their unique learning needs in the iReady Online Instruction. These lessons incorporate kid-friendly videos and activities to introduce new concepts and reinforce what has been learned. Your child’s teacher can monitor their progress on lessons and assign different lessons as needed.

Results? - Families will receive a Family Report for both math and reading. This report will give information on how your student has performed on the math and reading iReady Diagnostics that we have completed. This is a good opportunity to look for your child’s areas of strength and areas for growth.

assessment calendar

Secondary

Information coming soon!