Nuts & Bolts Info

Posted on September 30, 2016

It was great to see so many of you at back to school night.  If you were unable to make it, no worries, your child can take you on a tour of the class any time you want.  I didn’t do a presentation for people last night because the kids were so pumped to show off their stuff.  I think my boring presentation would lose out to your own child’s excitement to show off.  However here are some things that are common questions that parents have in the beginning of the year.

1.  When do I see work that my child has completed?  Why are there no marks on these papers?  Does she even grade them?  I will admit that my system for sending work home is not the most efficient system.  It has not had the attention paid to it as other parts of my practice.  Essentially what happens is children turn things into their red drawer and I fish them out and grade them.  Sometimes I just go through the entire drawer, enter the scores digitally and file their papers.  Sometimes I cherry pick from the drawers and take out a specific assignment that I need data on immediately.  But either way their assignments get looked at and then filed into a little file for each child.  Periodically I will take out all the papers from the file and send them home.  I am hoping to do this on Friday’s, or maybe every other Friday.  They almost never have any sort of mark or score on them.  I do this for 2 reasons.
   1. I enter everything digitally so that the computer can quickly come up with groups for me.  When I enter in data, my trusty software quickly puts kids in color groups based on their scores.  This allows me to have flexible groupings.  Each child is considered for their needs for each skill, not their over all level in the subject.  For example, if I handed out two assignments in  math one week, one about fractions and one about 2 digit addition, your child may be in different working groups for each skill.  They were aces in fractions and they are now ready to move on to more complicated fractions.  They can work with other kids who are ready with them, the next time we do fractions.  But they struggled with place value so they will be placed with other kids with similar needs and we will have a small group to try and go over what they are missing.  I simply do not have time to grade digitally and manually.
   2. The kids do not care what I write on the paper.  3rd graders tend not to take in information I write to them on assignments.  I can write capitalize you I’s 1 million times and they will never do it.  All they want to know is that the work has been seen and they have received credit for it.  I have classroom volunteers stamp papers so they know that I have seen it.
2. What is my kid going to learn in 3rd grade?  Brandi and I have put together this handy dandy guide 3rd-grade-benchmarks-for-parents
3. When are specials? Monday: Art     Tuesday: Library    Friday: P.E.  Lunch 12:15-12:55
4. Do you have an invention center?  Yes we do.  If you wanna send in recycling, please do.  Also feel free to make a rule that your kids must put their inventions back in the invention center at the end of the week.  They do not need to bring it all home.  Discuss that with your kiddo.  If they are having some trouble letting go of their inventions let me know and I can help you out.
5. Storylines!  What are they and when do they start?  We have two Storylines this year.  One I have done for years.  The Portland Storylines.  One little twist this year is we are going to make guide books instead of a newspaper.  This one is all about Portland and informational writing.  We will start in October.  The 2nd storyline is new so I am going to ask you not to spill the beans.  I only really get one true surprise.  It is going to be a Bee Fair.  It is going to be a science based storyline.  We are very excited.
6. Is Mindup still a thing?  For those of you who need a reminder or are new, we use a curriculum called Mindup to to help students focus on their brains in order to understand themselves better and in turn understand others better.  We focus on core practice, which is a time set aside to breathe, calm down and get focused.  We will focus for a while on empathy and seeing things from other people’s perspectives.
7. Anything else you are curious about?

Homework Etc

Posted on September 21, 2016

Hello All,

You may or may not have heard the news that Brandi and I will not be sending home weekly homework this year.  It was met with a mix of excitement and disappointment.  I am sure you have seen several teachers in the news lately who have elected to forgo homework.  The reason is simple.  The research says very clearly, for students in early grades it has absolutely no effect on their achievement.   As a constructivist  school we focus on work that is meaningful to build knowledge and skills they will need and use throughout the year.  Homework is often disconnected because the the time frame it takes to get it done.   There are so many things to learn in this life.  I want a lot from them at school, I ask them to work extremely hard while they are here, I hope they can spend some time pursuing their interests while they are not in school.  I hope my students get a chance to play sports, do crafts, eat dinner with their families, bond with their siblings, go to the library, take advantage of the nature here in Portland, do chores, go to the movies, make movies, learn to code, decorate their bedroom and so many other things.  I want happy healthy kids who are able to put everything they have into school while they are here.

This being said, if they are not working hard during the day here I will reserve the right to send work home to be finished.

Here is a Washington Post Article that talks about homework and is linked to several studies.

Other things coming up soon:

Friday 23rd – Creative Arts Run

Wednesday 28th – Back To school Night – I will post a separate back to school night post with the nuts and bolts of the classroom so you an always go back and look for it and reread it if you need to.  I will also put the sign up for conferences in that post, that will go live on Friday the 30th.  If you need help with an electronic sign up let me now and I will help you out.