September 22, 2010

Good Elephant Appreciation Day!~

If some of you are wondering where I am getting these days, it is from a variety of  places. Just a little fun.

Grade checks 
Beginning next week, you will be able to see your child's grades online. I will provide your child with a  password that they will bring home to you. If you lose it, you can always request it again. I will still send home mid-terms and quarter reports. But this enables you to view your child's grades at any time and provides another means of communication.

Grading: Remember, most grades are "effort" grades (daily work). In the online grade book, you will see "E1" for an effort grade of 1, E2 for an effort grade of 2, and so on, up to E5 for an effort grade of 5. There have been 1 or 2 students who have received a grade of E6. Those are very rare. Effort grades do convert to percents.

Performance grades (mini-projects done primarily in class at the end of a unit or book) are given in percents.

Test grades are given in percents.

Poly Select Choir
The students who were selected for the choir received notes today about practices and choir. Please ask your child about them if they tried out.

Book Orders
Since I am new to "the classroom", there are a few things that have changed in 16 years! One of them is that students can now order books online (from Scholastic & Tab). I sent home a note to all parents last week in the Wednesday Watch with information about ordering online. Therefore, I delayed sending in the regular orders so that people who wanted to take advantage of the online venue would have time. But orders have been sent in and books should be arriving soon.

AR
In today's folders are printouts of the students' reading levels and an AR goal. This goal is negotiable. If you think the number of books your child chose to set as their goal is too high or too low, please indicate that when you sign. I conferred with the students regarding the goals. They are not set in stone and can change.

AR tests will be taken in school. We will read AR books 4-5 times a week in class. It is important they have an AR book here at school everyday. I do take the tests into account when grades come out since they are a part of reading, and I dedicate time during the week to the reading of the book.

4th grader Recorder Money
All 4th grade general music students in School District #2 learn to play the recorder. The music teacher is asked to collect $5.00 from each student for the purchase of these recorders. We have almost all of the money collected.  :-)

PTA Class list booklets
 If you joined PTA, you will be receiving a lime green spiral bound booklet today with all the classes & students' names in them. Depending on the amount of information you indicated you would like shared on one of the forms that came out at the beginning of the year, you may be able to find addresses, emails, and/or phone numbers of students at Poly Drive.

Math
We have started the Moli Stone Mystery. This is a part of the gifted curriculum from William & Mary. Students will be pulled back for small group work in areas that need shoring up, as indicated by pretests.

Reading
I am evaluating the first Performance task that students completed for their grade level novel. Later this week, students will begin another novel. However, they will be in smaller groups (about 6 or so). In these groupings, students will read and discuss the novels.

Spelling
Pretests are given on Mondays. If the student scores in the 90s, they are excused from the test on Friday. Today the first set of individual words should be coming home. These words are taken from their daily work. Even if they received a grade in the 90s on Monday, they must take their individual words on Friday. Some students will not have a list of individual words.

Social Studies
We are receiving TIME for Kids. Students read about the Gulf oil spill last week. They also have taken a pretest on Unit 1.

Science
Using questions students had about dry ice, we searched for answers. One person had to call Albertsons to find his answer. Boy! Were the kids surprised that they could not find the answer on Google!  :-)

Grade updates
Again, being new to the classroom, the midterm date snuck up on me.  Since I have spoken to almost all of you on the phone, I will NOT be sending out the grade updates today. It seems rather silly to run that amount of paper twice. Call me if you have a question.

New information for the week: Students are earning transition tokens. We are trying to fill a 1-gallon ice tea container with small marbles.   :-)  Things are improving!

Enjoying your kids and our conversations.........

Terri