My name is Cathy Trimble and I am District 50’s Associate Superintendent of Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment. This is my 9th year in the district. I have many exciting roles in our district that ultimately all support our students! Our District strives to continually analyze curriculum and instructional practices to promote a well-rounded and rigorous educational learning experience for our students. 

All district curriculum is aligned to the Common Core State Standards. To review and learn more about the standards, check out the links below!

Eureka Math is the primary curriculum for all students from kindergarten through 8th. The curriculum meets the three shifts in math that came from the Common Core Standards. Parents can create FREE accounts on this website to obtain additional information to support your students including parent tip sheets!

If you want to know more information about how today’s math is taught versus how parents learned math, these resources are for you!

ELA

UFLI Foundations

UFLI is a an explicit and systematic program that supports students in becoming proficient readers. It comes from the University of Florida Literacy Institute.

UFLI Foundations targets the following foundational reading skills: 

• Phoneme blending and segmentation practice 

• Accuracy and automaticity of grapheme-phoneme correspondences

• Decoding automaticity of words with previously learned concepts

• Explicit introduction of new concepts

• Decoding and encoding practice 

• Reading and spelling irregular words 

• Reading and spelling connected text

HEGGERTY

Heggerty is used in grades K-2 for building phonemic awareness. Below is a link for parent information

There are a variety of activities parents can do at home to support their child in building phonemic awareness.

• Letter Names and Sounds

• Work with your child to learn the names of the letters and the sounds the letters make through fun activities:

• Look for letters in environmental print (signs, packages, labels, book titles, etc)

• Model how to write the letters in your child’s name and encourage him/her to copy the letters

• Play with magnetic letters to build words or match the first sound to pictures

• Build letters out of Play-Doh or modeling clay; use cookie cutters for letters and spell words with dough or clay

• Make an alphabet book with pictures of things, animals, and people that are familiar to your child. Write the uppercase and lowercase letter on each page and label the pictures.

• Read alphabet books aloud with your child. Ask them to find letters in the book.

• Sing alphabet songs – you can find some fun ones on YouTube!

ASSESSMENT

STAR

Research-based Star Assessments are both a screening and progress monitoring tools to help educators identify and prioritize student need, drive appropriate instruction, set realistic goals, and track progress throughout the year, ensuring all students are on the right path toward future success. STAR testing is done three times each year with students in grades 1st-8th in reading and math.

Illinois Assessment of Readiness

The IAR is given to all students grades 3-8 for reading and math in the spring.

IAR Test Information

Illinois Science Assessment

The ISA is given to students in grades 5 and 8 in the spring.

ISA Test Information