Dear Parents,
Thank you for your patience, as the time between blog posts seems to grow exponentially as the year progresses.
Some announcements and 'fun' things for your children to do on this cold snowy day:
A Valentine's Day party is planned for Thursday afternoon, if we have school. In the email I am going to send out to all of you to announce this blog post, I will attach a list of names for all of the students in class, so that if your child chooses to participate in giving valentines, they may give them to the whole class. Please limit the sweets in the valentines. We have allergies, and dietary restrictions in the classroom that might limit the enjoyment of some of those sugary candies that always seem to be stuck to valentines.
This fall I had 2 wonderful former students volunteering in my classroom. I gave them a task to think of some of their favorite educational resources to add to my webpage. They did a great job of finding a lot of information, though I haven't had a chance to navigate through every piece of these websites. If you are interested, you and your child can access them here: Click Here to Go To Mrs. Hart's Resources Page!
We have started our second assessment pilot called "iReady" this month. Your child has already taken assessments on it in reading and math. I stressed to them, and now to you, that the iReady assessment is a little different, in that it is looking for possible gaps in understanding, and creating lessons based on those gaps. This means that during the assessment, if the program was not confident in your child's answers to a certain skill, it will most likely have them work on lessons in those skills for practice. This doesn't mean that they aren't capable of doing higher level math problems, it only means that the algorithm has decided that a certain skill is a good starting point. This was a little distressing for some of the students when they went online to try out some of the lessons. Also take note, that the iReady lessons will not progress into more difficult skills unless the student shows master in the skill it decides to start with. This means, that if your child isn't showing proficiency in the skill they are working on, they don't keep going.
All of that said, they are welcome to work on those skills here:
login.i-ready.com
Their username: Student ID Number
Their password: Birthdate in this order: (year)(month)(day)
** the month and day both have to contain 2 digits, and the year is 4 digits.**
For other math and grammar practice, I have made several assignments on Khan Academy These assignments include a lot of math concepts, as well as a "Mastery Challenge" in Grammar!
I will be creating an assignment in Google Classroom where students can respond to the assignment with what they worked on, learned, for how long. Students do NOT have to work on iReady or Khan Academy only, they can learn something new, do some research on a topic they are interested in, do an experiment or project offline and tell me about what they did/learned as well.
Students who complete this assignment will receive between 1 and 5 PAWS slip(s) depending on the amount of work that they completed!
PAWS slips are a new "currency" at Bear Creek. Students get PAWS slips for: "Practicing Safety, Acting Responsibly, Working towards their very best, and Showing Respect." Every Friday, Mrs. Penrod comes around with a "menu" for students to spend their PAWS slips on. In addition, I give my own classroom "raffle" tickets for every PAWS slip earned, and students who are chosen in the raffle get to choose a toy from my "prize box."
Finally, Parent Conferences and Report Cards. I appreciate the emails with questions regarding some of the "missing assignments" listed on your child's report card. While I accept late work, I will not print out another copy of the second step worksheets for them to complete. They will just start fresh this semester, and can turn in the worksheets from our new lessons. (We did Lesson 15 last week! They can do that one!)
As for the language arts choice boards, these can be completed and turned in any time. If your child has completed 1 of the 2, I will advise them to work on our current board: Setting, or they will be spending the rest of the year on only those choices.
If you would like to schedule a parent conference to discuss your child's report card, and/or their performance in school, please email me so we can arrange a day and time (weather depending, of course.)
That was a lot of information for you, so please don't hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.
Stay warm!
Mrs. Hart
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