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Mrs. Connie Smith

csmith@lourdes.org
 

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NewsFlash

Dates
November 16 - Writing Samples - Grade 7
November 17 - Parent-Teacher Conferences 3-7 p.m.
November 18 - Confirmation Investiture 7 p.m.
November 19 - Parent-Teacher Conferences 3-7 p.m.
November 21 - High School Placement Test
November 23 - Thanksgiving Liturgy 8:30 a.m.; Filming for 8th Grade Video
November 25, 26, 27 - No school - Thanksgiving Break
December 4 - Interims
 
Report Cards
If you have any questions regarding your child's grade or effort, please email or call me. As stated earlier this year on the website and at Open House, students may always do Extra Credit to improve their math test scores. (See Extra Credit link.)
 
What is the HSPT Test?
The HSPT, or High School Placement Test, is used by many Catholic schools as a way of comparing applicants from different middle-schools.  The test is developed by Scholastic Testing Service (STS) and is sometimes referred to as the STS exam or STS-HSPT.  You can find out a limited amount of information about the test at www.ststesting.com

The original HSPT has five multiple choice sections that break down as follows:

Section

Questions

Length

Verbal Skills

60 questions

16 minutes

Quantitative Skills

52 questions

30 minutes

Reading

62 questions

25 minutes

Mathematics

64 questions

45 minutes

Language

60 questions

25 minutes
A section on Science and a Writing Sample were added two years ago.
 
The verbal skills section includes synonyms, antonyms, analogies, logic, and verbal classification questions.  The quantitative skills section includes series, geometric comparisons, non-geometric comparisons, and number manipulations.  The reading section asks students to answer questions on short passages of varying styles on a range of topics.  The mathematics section includes mathematical concepts and problem solving drawn from arithmetic, elementary algebra, and basic geometry.  The language section tests capitalization, punctuation, usage, spelling, and composition.

How is the HSPT scored?
HSPT scores are reported on a 200 to 800 scale. Before calculating the scaled score, STS first calculates a raw score. The raw score is computed by adding the correct answers. STS converts raw scores to scaled scores in order to adjust for small variations in difficulty among different test forms. 

It has been shown that students do better the second time they take a standardized test. For this reason, we will administer a similar test on Thursday, November 19.

 
Student success requires communication between home and school!
I welcome your comments, suggestions and concerns. At any time, just click
my email address listed on the left side of this page to contact me.




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