The Rilke Schule German School of Arts and Sciences follows the Anchorage School District adoption of the Common Core State Standards in all subjects. The standards for German are based on the National Foreign Language Standards, which include the Alaska and ASD world language standards. You can learn more about the Anchorage School District curriculum programs at http://www.asdk12.org/depts/cei/ Students in grades 4 through 8 are administered both the American Association of Teachers of German assessment exam and the A1, A2, and B1 exams produced by the Federal Republic of Germany. Students who perform well enough on the B1 are eligible to attend Junior College in Germany free of cost.

Assessment and Grading

Each student’s math and language arts skills are assessed to determine proper academic individualization within the program. To determine placement, assessments provided by the publishers of textbooks will be used. Rilke Schule faculty is actively involved in the Anchorage School District RTI (Response To Instruction) Initiative. In so doing, students are routinely assessed in both Language Arts and Math and parents receive AIMSweb reports. Rilke Schule also participates in all Anchorage School District standardized testing. Testing dates can be found on the Anchorage School District website. Individual student progress is tracked and attention from an intervention specialist is utilized when a need has been identified. Additionally, among the many club offerings is an Academic Support club that meets once a week. Students are assessed regularly, using both oral and written assessment tools. The staff and the APC review the overall results of both the standardized tests and the German assessments to determine how the program can be improved.

Kindergarten instructors provide a narrative along with a developmentally based report card. All other grades receive report cards from the ASD district-wide Q/Zangle system

Grades By Level

Grades 1-3

Grades 1-3 receive effort and academic grades and they are entered as O, S+, S, S-, and N. The equivalent to those letter grades would the following:

PE gives effort only grades on the O, S, N scale Art gives effort grades on the O, S, N scale in K-5; A, B, C grades for 6-8 Music gives an effort grade on O, S, N in K-3; effort and academic in 4-6, just academic in 7-8

Grades 1-3

Students receive effort grades (O, S, N) in all subjects that are taught in German.

Grades 4-5

Students receive effort grades (O, S, N) and academic grades (A, B, C).

Grades 6-8

Students receive academic grades only.

Sprachmeister Awards

At Rilke Schule we have a special way to encourage the children to improve their German speaking skills. For first grade students and above, the children are encouraged to speak only German during the German half of their school day. If they succeed in speaking a minimum amount of German (Nur 'Ja' oder 'Nein' ist nicht o.k.!) and NO English, they will earn a Sprachmeister point. After a student has spoken ONLY German for 25 days in German class, the student will receive the first Sprachmeister award, a painted wooden German flag to keep and wear around his or her neck. Subsequent flags from German speaking countries are awarded as follows:

25 points          German Flag

50 points          Austrian Flag

75 points          Swiss Flag

100 points        Luxembourg Flag

125 points        Liechtenstein Flag

150 points        European Union Flag