Homework Clarification - I apologize for some confusion about the homework, especially on nights when I assign an i-Ready math lesson to all students.
There are two places to look for homework:
- your child's planner (short form) and this website's HW page (long form)
- the Homework Guidelines page on this website
Students are given time to jot down their nightly HW in their spiral planner at the end of the day, but cannot check each student's planner. So, I post a more detailed listing of nightly HW.
In addition to HW in the planner (typically reading and math + occasionally other things, like practicing lines for Theatre tonight), parents should refer to Homework Guidelines section of this website. Here I've listed the week-in/week-out routine including:
- i-Ready reading lessons and i-Ready math lessons IF those have been assigned to your student back on August 31 (based on the results of their i-Ready diagnostic in August)
- typing.com lessons for all students weekly (see my notes on Homework Guidelines page)
I think the confusing part is when I assign "one i-Ready math lesson" in the student planner to all students. I do this on days when we do not have a HW page from the enVision math book to go home so that students are getting some useful math practice each night.
For students who are already assigned 45 minutes of i-Ready math lessons each week, my nightly assignment counts towards that total. i-Ready advises that 45 minutes per week, per subject (math/reading) is the optimal amount of time to spent. More than 60 minutes per week has not been shown to produce anymore student growth than 45 minutes per week, per subject.
The caveat here is that those minutes must be one during which your child is actively engaged in learning, not just staring at the screen. Also, students should not stop in the middle of a lesson unless absolutely necessary. Lessons completed over multiple days often produce poor results.
Room 1321 Constitution (a.k.a. our rules) - We have (finally) completed our class rules to live by this year. Using the U.S. Constitution as our model, we've revised the Preamble to suit our purposes and we've sorted our rules under the Keppel 3 (+1) Be's:
- Be Respectful
- Be Responsible
- Be Safe
- Be Kind
Slowly but surely, we are establishing our classroom routines. Restroom visits during the instructional day are still excessive by some students. Students are working toward the privilege of walking themselves up to the classroom after morning and lunch recesses. We've got a long way to go, however.
Writing - I feel like we are finally making some progress on our writing! We have been collecting small moments in our black writing NB. Tomorrow, students will choose the small moment that they will work on and take to publication.
Yesterday, Tuesday, we joined elementary classrooms from around the district on a live Zoom presentation hosted by Franklin Elementary. They had invited acclaimed author & illustrator Dan Santat. Dan was awarded the Caldecott Medal for The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend. Yesterday, he shared another of his books, Dude. We all loved it! Tomorrow's Thursday folder will have the drawing activity that Dan led.
We are looking forward to a special assembly tomorrow morning when the Glendale Elks arrive with a dictionary for every third grader! This is an annual event and we are so grateful to the Elks for bringing this program to Keppel once again.
. . . to be continued