Category Archives: homework

Reading and Myon

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Important!

Parents,

Please click here for an important reminder.

The school has purchased the use of the Myon reading program that we discussed during parent teacher conference in October.  This is a great resource to help with the recommended 20 minutes of reading daily.  If your child visits a reading specialist within our school or reads in their class reading group with me, this means your child is not on grade level and I would expect your child to be using this program at least 4 to 5 times a week.  If your child is reading on grade level, I would recommend them using this program a minimum of 2 times of week.  This program provides great opportunity for reading comprehension at the end of each story.  The program is also a great resource for home projects.  This is a personal library at your finger tips.  It contains many of the subjects students are interested in and this month all home projects are free choice interest based.

Please know, I understand how busy life is, but reading is critical for these students.  We are partners in your child’s education.  I ask that you take a serious evaluation of your home routine and seek a time that fits best for reading.  The Myon program does not require for you to sit with them, they only need access to a computer.  They have learned to log on, in class, and should not need much assistance.  While this program is great, listening to your child read should also be included during the week.

I wanted to make you aware that for the next 2 to 3 weeks all students will be completing their mid-year reading assessments.  This means that if your child meets with our specialists for additional support, they will not be having their groups during this time.  As you are already aware, many of your children did not complete reading over the winter break and now they will not be having their additional support for another few weeks.  This adds up to be a large chunk of time.  I completed in class reading assessments last week for all students who currently read below a third grade level and I was able to notice a considerable slide in those struggling readers from not reading over the break.  This means your child needs your help, especially in these coming weeks in order to keep the momentum going that they have been working so hard to build.

If you have any questions about your child’s reading, please feel free to email me.  I would also be very open to spending time with any parent after school who would like to know more about their child’s reading level, see reading samples, and offer any additional support.  ( I will also present this at February’s conferences).  Scholastic wizard found here, is a great resource that allows you to enter book titles in order to see the books reading level.

Phone books and leaves

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Level 2 students are studying leaves this year in botany.  If you happen to have a phone book you would like to donate to the classroom for leaf pressing, please send it with your child.  Level 2 students have been asked to gather leaves.  We already have a small collection, but would love more.  This work is really open to any level student, but the primary focus is for level 2.

Home Projects

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As I mentioned before, we are focusing our home projects around our Zoology studies this month.  Students have already begun bringing their projects and are always excited to share the information they have learned with their peers.  Home projects are a great transition into helping your child gather information from what they read.  Please help your child to read and gather information from books, articles, and the internet.  Make certain they are using words they know how to read and understand in their final written work and are not just copying information.  If your child is not yet fully reading, please read with them and have them dictate to you what they want to write.  Then have them trace over your writing for good practice.  Then, they may orally practice and present without notes.  This is much more interesting and makes their project their own.  Often times student will copy something from the internet and have a friend read it for them.  This defeats what a home project is meant to be.  Home projects need to have some sort of visual aid and a written paper equal to your child’s ability level.  Level 3’s will be encouraged to start typing their reports.  They will be expected to type on the SAGE test this year and this is good practice.

LEVEL 1’s -Please help your child find a vertebrate they are interested in.  Level 1’s are studying vertebrates all year long.  They have begun identifying the different classes of vertebrates.

LEVEL 2’s- Anything to do with the human body.  This can include nutrition, exercise, skeleton, brain, etc.  Make it fun!

LEVEL 3’s- Any invertebrate of their choice.

This home project is due by the end of the month.  Please make this a quality learning experience with your child.  We want this to be their work, but they will need some guidance.  It isn’t a project you complete in one night, it should be a process, and an enjoyable one.

I have posted the all of the home projects for the year on the blog under pages or you can access it here.  If you have questions about home projects, please feel free to ask me during conferences.

IXL

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Hi, the following letter was sent home in their take home folders today.  If your child forgot their folder, please have them bring them tomorrow.  Their paper will have their user name and password.  (You can access the  IXL link directly from the blog.  It is posted under school links.  On a desk top these links on the their right hand side and on tablet and phones scroll to the bottom.)

 

Dear Parent,

 

I am pleased to tell you that we will be once again using a website called IXL in our classroom this year.  For those of you new to our classroom, IXL is a comprehensive math review site with an unlimited number of practice questions in thousands of skills—all of which are aligned to state standards. One of the best things about IXL is that your child can access it from home, so you have a chance to see your child’s progress!

 

To get your child started on your home computer, please follow these easy steps:

 

  1. Go to https://www.IXL.com/signin/mariamontessori

 

  1. Enter your child’s username and password and click Sign in.

Username_____________________

Password_____________________

 

  1. Click on Math at the top of the page and navigate to your child’s grade level.

 

  1. Find a skill to practice by doing one of the following:

 

  • Select a specific skill to practice from the list of skills. You can place your mouse over any skill to see a sample question and click on the link to begin.
  • Go to the Awards Each grade level presents challenges for your child to conquer and virtual prizes to be uncovered. Place your mouse over any challenge to begin.

 

In addition to making math practice exciting, IXL is designed to help your child learn at his or her own pace. The website is adaptive and will adjust to your child’s demonstrated ability level. The site also saves all of your child’s results, so you can monitor your child’s progress anytime by clicking on the Reports at the top of the page.

 

This resource is paid for by the school and it is an expectation that students will use this program on a regular basis.  Throughout the year, I will post IXL lessons that coordinate with the unit of study in the classroom.  You will find these on the classroom blog, under the page IXL.  These Lessons will be homework.  Please do not limit your child to only the homework lessons.  Please encourage your child to work on IXL a little each day.  Occasionally your child might struggle with a concept,  please don’t have them continue on this concept if they are still not answering them correctly after reading several help prompts.  IXL should be a fun learning tool and we don’t want any tears of frustration.  If you do not have internet access in your home, please let me know.

 

Sincerely,

Ms. Brittany

Homework Folders

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First, thank you so much for helping your child learn accountability and making certain they are completing their nightly reading and returning their folders each week.

Today, in your child’s take home folder, they brought home a small slip of paper explaining our school literary magazine.  This is an opportunity to create original work to be submitted to The MMA Review.  The deadline for submissions is November 5th.  If interested, students will be given class time to work on projects.  Please feel free to talk with your child about some possible submissions pieces they would be interested in creating.

Also, we as a school are working hard to be mindful of our paper usage.  I did not send home reading logs this week.  My hope is that the habits are being established and that the reading is taking place for 20 minutes each night.  If you feel that having an actual log helps your child be accountable for their reading, please let me know and I will place one in their folder, otherwise, I will not be sending them.  Starting next week, we will be sending home a brief reading assignment to complete in relationship to their reading.

Home projects will start in October.  Our first topic will be Zoology.  Level 1: vertebrates, Level 2: the human body, and Level 3: invertebrates.  I will first explain the criteria to the students tomorrow and then I will send out a blog post explaining the criteria and the topics through the end of the school year.   So please be on the lookout.

Also, there was no flier sent out, but MMA cafe is starting tomorrow.  Students may purchase items from the cafe for lunch.  The menu will initially start small and will grow over the coming weeks.  The following are items are available at this time:

Chocolate Milk  ($1.00)  Capri Sun ($.75)  Microwave Mac n Cheese ($1.50)  Pancakes (chocolate chip or blueberry 3 for $.75)  Fruit Snacks (.$50)  and Fruit/Nut bites ($.25 cents)

My understanding is that Jr. high will run the cafe on Tuesdays and 6th grade will run the cafe on Thursdays.  The cafe is a fundraiser for their travel field trips in the spring.

As always, please feel free to share celebrations, concerns, or questions via email at bherrera@mariamontessoriacademy.org

Oh!  Just a small side note, Ms. Susan will be out until Thursday due to training.

 

Take Home folders

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Today, we sent home a red permission slip for our field trip to the dinosaur park on March 12th.  Please read it over and send it back to school.  We also sent home a purple paper stapled to your child’s work charts.  Please, look these over, sign, and return that you have reviewed these with your child.  We have seen some great things happening, but this past week several student have really lost their momentum.  We thought creating some accountability may help get things back on track and focused during the Spring months.  We also have a new reading log.  The students will break down their reading according to fiction and non-fiction and write a brief writing sample relating to what they have read.  These will be due back, in their folders, for next Monday.  At this time, I will not assign specific IXL math lessons (several don’t follow the recommendation lessons, anyhow), but I do wish for students to still work daily on IXL.  We are getting into the year where several students are at different progression and I don’t want to hold others back or create for others to fall behind.  I find most of the students are just choosing what they want to work on anyway and are not following the outline.  This is fine, just remember, if they are struggling and don’t understand after some brief guidance, IXL will show them as well,  please have them close out the lesson and move onto another concept.  We want this to be enjoyable and helpful.  Also, don’t forget home projects are due this Friday.  This project is the State home project.  I feel that having a balanced life is important.  Aside from reading,  if students are working little by little on their home projects and not procrastinating until the end, a good time gauge is about 10 minutes a night of homework per grade level.  This would equate to 10 minutes for first grade, 20 minutes for second grade, and 30 minutes for third grade.  We should be modeling that reading is an enjoyable recreational activity and I would not necessarily count this time as homework.  If your child is a struggling beginning reader,  this time may need to be counted as homework.  You make the judgement which best fits your child.  Just to put things into perspective, in our classroom alone, we have students who are just barely combining letter sounds all the way to reading on Jr. High level.  It makes it difficult to give everyone the same assignment when everyone is at different places in their personal growth. Thanks for your support and we look forward to seeing the student’s creativity with their State projects this week.

Gala

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Families, recently your child brought home a paper reminding you about our 5th Annual Gala event, taking place on Saturday, March 21st.  This is our big fundraising event for the year.  This is a great time to have a night out for a great cause, your children!  Money raised helps provide funds for your child’s school.  Ticket prices will go up after Parent Teacher Conference.

Reminder that Parent Teacher Conference sign up is currently posted.  If your child works with both myself and another teacher, please sign up at the same time on both schedules and we will all sit together for conferences.  Students are encouraged to attend this round of conference, it is a great way to discuss their accomplishments and create accountability.  Reminder that next week, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, are all early out days for conference.  School will be off  Friday the 13th and Monday the 16th.

Student will be able to bring Valentines to exchange on Thursday the 12th,  Any treats will need to be in sealed envelopes to enjoy after school.  Please know that Valentines exchange is completely optional.  For those who wish to participate, I will get a list of our class names to send home with the students in their folders for next Monday.

Home projects were fantastic for January!  Please get started soon on this months assignment.  We will soon be discussing rubrics as an evaluation tool for our home projects.

As always, questions, concerns, or celebrations, please email me.  Thank you, to those of you who have been supporting your students on their IXL, this weeks lessons are posted.  Also, thank you to our third grade families for supporting your child on Utah Compose.  I wish we had more computers to accomidate more time during class for these computer based assignments.  So please, remember to attend our Gala, this money helps to fund our technology and create more computers for our classrooms.

I look forward to visiting with you soon.

Homework

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We have several students who have not completed their home projects for January and Friday is the last day of the Month.  If you have any questions regarding which State your child signed up for in February, please send me an email.  They should have brought home their paper in their folder.  We have had a big decline recently in homework folders being returned.  Please know this is a great way for me to communicate and send papers home.

Level 3’s have been working on Utah Compose.  I wrote the web site and log in, with their user name inside their folders.  Students who did not bring their folder were sent home with a card with the information.  They are to be working on the roller coaster writing prompt.  I would like to have these all completed and ready for editing by Monday.  The students have had class time, but it is very limited in the time they are able to use the computers.  I have encouraged the students to work on their prewriting with paper and pencil, verses doing it on the computer.  They just do not have the typing skills at this point to make it time efficient for them.  They do need to have their final draft typed into Utah Compose.  When I say final draft, this is the draft ready for editing and lesson building. It will not be perfect, but should be their very best work and effort.

I hope everyone noticed IXL homework was updated yesterday.  Things have been so busy, I didn’t even have a chance to send out a blog saying it was updated.  I know many families were grateful for the extra time to catch up on missed assignments.  Please know students are very welcome to complete assignments outside of what is assigned weekly. The more exposure the better, just don’t let their be tears of frustration.  I know several students are having so much fun with it.

Reminders

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Don’t forget Box Top store is tomorrow.

Thank you for sending home projects and homework folders.  I still have a few students who still need to bring theirs to class.  Homework folders included handwriting packets for several students to complete over the break.  Please help your child do their best work.  I included reading logs for the next few weeks.

Families are welcome to attend the International Festival on both Wednesday and Thursday.  Our class will be visiting the upper el on Wednesday morning from 9-11 a.m. and you are welcome to do this with your child.  Then, Thursday afternoon from 1-2:30 p.m. the lower el with be presenting to their projects, everyone is welcome to come and see our classes projects.

Don’t forget, our classroom Holiday program this Friday from 8:45-9:15 a.m.  We will be performing in the library.  We hope to see you there!

Monday

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Families, please remember to send your child’s homework folder and home project Monday.  We have a long winter break and I want to emphasize the importance of keeping reading momentum going.  I will be including additional reading logs to cover the time away from school.   Please, create time for reading over the break.  I have a few things for various students to work on over the break.  I will be including these in your child’s folder to work on over the break.