Curriculum Night 2011-2012

 Highlights:

1. This year I hope my students will: become more caring,  develop higher level thinking skills, and become more responsible.

2.  Be Here; my students must be here in the classroom every day they possibly can.  But not only physically present, their minds must be focused and attuned to the learning environment.

3.  Inside the MOON binders you will find the Evening and Weekend Star papers.  Your signature as well as your child's signature on those pages signifies to me that you and your child have had a discussion about the particular contents of that paper.

4.  Homework- Please see my earlier posting.  I would expect no more than 45 min. per night spent on homework, though perhaps a bit more on early release days.  If they are focused and intentional about their homework but are still having difficulties in this area please let me know and adjustments will need to be made.  I ask for their best effort on the homework.

On math homework the overall expectations are: 1) show your work, explain, justify; 2) answers should be labeled unless they are a straight computation problem, i.e. 7 lb. instead of just 7; 3) answers written in complete sentences for most problems; 4) on multiple choice problems they should at least explain why their choice is the best and if time why the others are not the best choices; 5) there will be very few problems in which an answer only will suffice.

5.  See the separate posting regarding IXL.

6.  I strongly believe that giving my students the opportunity to use a blog as one of the vehicles for their writing will lead to them being better thinkers, writers and collaborators.  I will be posting on this soon.  Here is just one student's take on blogging ==> To Blog or Not To Blog.  I believe he was 11 years old when he wrote this.