I make an effort to post PDFs of all important papers, project details and permission slips in the event that they don’t make it home to you. You can find documents on the blog using the link on the top of the page title PDF or by following this link here.
Thank you to those of you who were able to make it last night! It was a pleasure meeting new families as well as seeing some familiar faces.
Because I feel strongly that children, and adults for that matter, need to practice what they know in order to retain it each of your kids will have summer homework. A letter was sent home with your child on Tuesday outlining the expectations. This homework is due the first day of school, August 17. I am sharing the letter that was sent home with your children in this blog post. The links provided in the post are only ideas for practice, your child may choose any way they would like to practice as long as they log the date, activity, skill practiced and amount of time spent. If you need the passwords for the scholastic sites, please email me. They were provided to your children in the printed letter, but I did not include them in this post for obvious reasons.
In addition to the required reading and math I will be unlocking all essays on Utah Compose for your children to practice as well. I highly recommend your children practice their writing this summer. Writing in Utah Compose will give them instant feedback and allow them to revise their essays to improve their writing skills. We will be spending a lot of time writing next year and practicing this summer will give them a jump start for next school year.
Summer Homework
Summer is here and so are those long lazy days that seem to zap your brain of everything (or at least a lot) you worked so hard to learn this year. In order to avoid losing too much of that hard work, you will have summer homework. Now, don’t worry too much, it won’t take up your entire summer break. In fact, it will take about 20 minutes a day. What fraction of the time you are awake will this homework take? Let’s turn that into your first math problem of the summer.
Let’s say you sleep for about 12 hours a day this summer which gives you how much awake time? That’s right, 12 hours. How many minutes are there in 12 hours? A number sentence for the problem would be the number of minutes in each hour (60) multiplied by the number of hours (12). 12 x 60= ? That’s easy to do in our heads if we remember our magic zeros from the grey tower. 12×6=72 then we add a zero because we wanted to multiply by 60. The answer to the first part of our problem is 720 minutes in 12 hours.
But we aren’t done yet. Remember the question we are trying to answer. What fraction of the time you are awake will this homework take? Let’s turn the information into a fraction. 20 minutes of homework out of 720 minutes you are awake is a fraction of 20/720 (for you 5th and 6th level students let’s write that in simplest form by dividing your fraction by the highest common multiple, which happens to be 20= 1/36). That fraction converted to a percent (I’ve done it for you since you will learn that skill next year) is 2.7% That’s less than a nickel of your time if you think of it in terms of money, heck that’s less than 3 pennies of your time.
See how we turned the amount of time it would take for you to do your homework into a fantastic word problem? FUN!!
Summer Homework Assignment Due the First Day of School, August 17th.
10 Hours of Math Practice – IXL, Workbooks, Cooking, Gardening, Lemonade Stand are a few ways you can practice your math skills.
Dynamath – http://dynamath.scholastic.com/
Scholastic Math – http://math.scholastic.com/
IXL – https://www.ixl.com/signin/mariamontessori
2 Book Reports – Read to books of your choice with a minimum of 100 pages at your reading level. Complete a summary of each book complete with book title, author and number of pages.
As always, if you have any questions please let me know.
We are finishing up History units for all grade levels and moving into a new unit of Botany study. I am trying out a new method for the students to know what is coming and what their expectations are regarding this next unit.
If you have other students in our school their teachers may already be using “study guides” for their work expectations and project tracking. This is new territory for me, but I’m excited to try it and think the students will like it too. The study guides can be found at the Study Guide page at the top of the blog. I will update these each time we move to a new unit of study. We will be in Botany until Spring Break and will then move into another Geography Unit.
I welcome any feedback to the study guides that you may have. This tool will evolve as the year moves on in order to maximize its usefulness.
Good Morning!
I can hardly believe we are through the month of February already. Science fair is over, and we are heading into the month of March with a new book report coming up. The book report genre for March is mystery, adventure or science fiction and the report type is student choice. I would love to see the creativity they put into their last choice reports shine through again this time around. Book reports are due March 27.
6th level students have a state study that is due this Friday, February 27. They have had some time in class to work on this project, but will need to finish up at home. The criteria for the state study was handed out at the end of January. If you have not heard about this from your 6th grade child, please ask them about it.
Last week we started IXL homework assignments again. Because of the craziness of science fair and things happening in my own life, I did not post the assignment to the blog. The students should have written the homework in their planners, however. This week there is a new IXL assignment which will be posted on the blog and in class for your children to record. Please talk to them about their homework. It is important that they are spending at least 20 minutes a night on the homework. If they need extra help, please have them ask in class. The goal is 100 points. If your child is spending longer than 20 minutes on each section and still has not acquired at least 80 points, this means they need additional help on the concept. Please have them make note of this and Ms. Kari and I can help them during class time.
Our 5th grade maturation program is coming up. Permission slips were sent home a month ago. If you have not received a permission slip from your child, please ask them about it. We need these signed and returned no later than tomorrow. I am still missing a couple.
January and February are very busy months at MMA, as such, I wanted to give some reminders as to upcoming deadlines and due dates.
January 28th: Level 6 – David Holladay Lecture (During class)
January 29th: JA Biztown (Level 5 and some Level 6)
January 30th: Biography Book Report (Timeline) – All Grade Levels
February 2: SAGE Writing Assessment – All Grade Levels
February 18th: Elementary Science Fair (Level 4 and 5)
February 19th: Middle School Science Fair (Level 6-8)
In order to prepare for the SAGE writing test, we have been working on our essays for several weeks. Your students have another essay rough draft due tomorrow evening. In order to be prepared for the in class peer edit and to take advantage of the time we have left, please ensure your child completes this assignment on time. If you are experiencing any trouble with Utah Compose, have your student first write their essay using Word or Pages, saving a copy to your computer. At that point, your student can copy and paste their essay into Utah Compose and then submit it. If by chance the website errors, your child will still have a digital copy and can resubmit on Utah Compose without losing all their work. Most children did not experience any trouble, but a handful had repeated problems and this is the only work around I could think of so that they could still have the benefit of the score report.
In addition to Utah Compose, level 4 and 6 students have had math homework recently. This will continue on a relatively regular basis throughout the remainder of the school year. Please check in with your students each night regarding homework assignments they may have. I know that everyone is busy with after school activities, but it is imperative that your children are completing the required practice in order to continue progressing.