Thursday,  March 6, 2014 • Vol. 16--No. 233B • 16 of 18 • School Newsletter

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Strom Memorial, Brenda Harms Memorial, Renee McKiver Memorial, Susan Weismantel and Shawn Weismantel Kramer Memorial, Groton Chamber of Commerce, and Phyllis J. Jark Memorial Scholarship.
• If a student is interested in obtaining more scholarship information, the free internet scholarship searches are a great place to start.  All students have been given the web sites of five free scholarship searches. If you have any questions about scholarships, please contact me in the GO.

• FINANCIAL AID -  Jodi Sternhagen
• Financial Aid Information Night was held on December 9th in the Groton Area High School library at 7:00 pm.  If you did not yet submit your free application for federal student aid (FAFSA), it is not too late.  Federal student aid applications are accepted by the federal government for many months.  However, each school has its own priority deadline.  If you do not submit your FAFSA by the stated deadline, the amount of money the school has left to allocate may be limited.  Most of the deadlines for the South Dakota schools are March 1.  If you have questions, please feel free to call me at (605) 397-8381.
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• TESTING INFORMATION -  Jodi Sternhagen
• Write To Learn
• The Writing Assessment is now an online formative assessment in which students address writing prompts and receive feedback.  This program, Write To Learn, provides a better measure of student progress and provides immediate feedback for students.  Grades 5, 7, and 10 test yearly. 

• ACT Testing
• Groton is a test site for the ACT in April and October.   The school felt it was a nice option for students to be able to test in a familiar location and to not have to travel a long distance.  The next ACT tests are scheduled for April 12 and June 14.  On Monday, December 9th, all juniors were able to take a practice ACT test during school and then look at the test preparation section of SDMyLife called Method Test Prep.  The computerized program will generate a study plan designed to increase student ACT scores based on the results from short test sections.  Hopefully, the juniors have been working on this personalized study plan. 

• Dakota STEP/Smarter Balanced Testing
• Dakota STEP/Smarter Balanced testing for students in grades 3-8 and 11 will be

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