Parents -
Welcome to 5th grade! It looks like it's going to be an excellent year. I'm still trying to come to terms with my summer ending, but I'm excited about the new year.
I'm still waiting on several parents' email addresses, so I may send another email out with much of this repeated during the first week.
Spoiler alert (I'll be talking about):
- Our class design
- Emphasis for the year
- Open House on August 13
Many of you have heard or noticed that our class is a little different than most. I use technology in as much as I can for a few reasons. One, I like it. Two, it keeps kids more engaged. Three, the kids are using it in the real world. We're getting new technology in the class, but it probably will not arrive for another month or two. I do have a few iPads for use in the classroom (after the first couple weeks of school), along with some (somewhat slow) desktops, and a dinosaur desktop we'll only use to type (I tried internet and it's painfully slow).
We will incorporate Reading and Writing into our Social Studies and Science units throughout the year. All of the instructions and resources for these will be located online through our class website (
http://Brazile.education). If you go on before Monday, you'll see links for all of our units. I'll take those all down except for the current units once the year begins. I always tweak what we did before to make it better or adjust to the class.
In Spelling, I test the kids and then design their path based on their individual spelling needs. In the past, I have had 6-9 different groups within the class. It's a great program and I believe in how it works.
With Reading, I'll do book studies with the kids throughout the year. I'll pretest them to find their strengths/weaknesses and then give exercises to build them up. I do read alouds most of the year to model the thought process I go through when reading.
In Math, again the kids are pretested and I focus on strengthening their foundation and do forward. They'll have assignments on IXL.com to help them outside of the classroom.
In elementary, we can't grade homework. Studies have shown little benefits at this age from homework. I personally believe if the child works hard in school, they should be able to get all the work done in school and have the free time be their free time. I don't assign homework unless they do not finish an assignment in school. I do, however, have a tremendous amount of resources for things they can do at home if they're struggling or want to do more. In a perfect world, they'll be so energized about a subject, they'll go home and want to find out more.
We're a project-based, discovery classroom. It's designed to have kids take more responsibility and ownership of their learning. My aim is to challenge each student regardless of ability. I want them to struggle. It's the only way they'll learn how to overcome it. I believe they can do more than we (or they) believe and I want to show them this. We can do some amazing things in the classroom, but it can also be very mundane - it's all based on their effort.
I'll go over everything in more detail at Open House on August 13. I'd like everyone to be there (parents). Kids don't have to be there.
There will be a lot of things new to you and your student, so please don't hesitate to ask a question.
Thanks and have a great weekend! (see why
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