Letter about Homework

Good News from Room 303

Dear families,

       I was going to give out a reading log, math packet, and spelling list for homework this week, but I think something more important may be in order...  

Lately, our world has been seemingly filled with all kinds of horrible events. It seems like every time we turn on the news, get on the Internet, tune into the radio, or pick up a newspaper we are immersed in negative stories about crime or violence. Some of these stories are important; we want to ensure we are “in the know” because some of these stories hit close to home, maybe it reveals wounds that were simply covered up and can lead to productive dialogue that can actually change the course of history.

          Yes, we do live in a world where “bad things happen”. But, I think the reason we phrase it like that is because we recognize that it’s a shame that so much good in the world gets overshadowed by the bad. I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to celebrate the good things in the world instead of dwell on the bad.

          Our class is in the middle of a unit on nonfiction. We were going to work on pieces about weather, but something came up in our morning meeting today that I think would be immensely more powerful and authentic. The students want to create a newspaper that only has stories, opinion pieces, instructional pieces, sports pieces that focus on the good in life.

          This is a massive overtaking. We want to get it put together before Winter Break begins; we’ve already begun coming up with some possible ideas:

·       South Carolina flood recovery

·       President Obama pardoning the turkeys

·       The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade

·       The lighting of the tree at the State House

·       Clemson’s 30,000 person pizza party

·       A community helping replace a woman’s stolen Christmas lights.

·       The Panthers being 12-0

·       Important things that make us personally joyful

·       Passing of the Cans

·       Donating gifts

·       Recipes/directions

·       Student Voice Council

·       Morning Milers

·       5^th graders getting ready for 6^th grade

I’ve decided that I’m going to do a story on President Jimmy Carter being cancer-free. I want to learn more about the man and what his life has stood for. Your child wants to come up with an idea for a piece that is positive and worth a read. It can be:

·       A story from the local community

·       A story from your personal connections about someone doing good to others.

·       A sports story that highlights something positive

·       A national story that is positive

·       An opinion piece about something positive your child wants to convince others about.

·       A story about our school.

·       Recipes and other how-to pieces

·       Interviews

Your child’s homework tonight is to come up with a possible idea to write on this week. So we can publish it next week. I appreciate your help with that. Your child will have a sheet of paper to guide their thinking tonight. If you would ensure that it is completed and brought back tomorrow, that would be awesome.

-Mr. Foote

Homework

Homework is pretty straightforward this week. Your child has their weekly spelling list in their folder. They should study for 10 minutes on 2 different days before Friday. Also, there is a math packet with the due dates at the top of each page. All of the pages deal with comparing values of numbers. Other than that, I'm leaving the kids some free time so they can try to earn cans for Passing of the Cans.

Homework

Math Packet: Three worksheets due on different days, just like last week. The second worksheet is not one that requires any answers on the paper, just practice. I need to see a signature from a parent on this sheet on Friday for your child to get credit.

Reading Log: Students should log 4 days of reading equation style by next Tuesday.

Th- Spelling List: The list the students came up with contains these words: thought, thanks, through, third, threw, those, these, think, they, and thousand. They should study for 10 minutes a day on 2 days before this Friday's check-in.

11/9 Homework

Hello families,

Something strange happened to me over the last two months; I was able to experience life with kids in school for the first time ever. It has been an incredible experience, but extremely thought-provoking as I am now experiencing the "joys" of making sure that tired, hungry kids get their homework done and everything signed and OH WAIT a permission form that's due tomorrow and...yeah.

I've spent the last few weeks reflecting deeply about how homework in our classroom is structured. I want to give the students authentic, sometimes enjoyable engagements or assignments. There also is a balance between giving independent practice in math, reading, and writing. I value the quality time that you get with your children and I don't want your evenings to be chock-full of assignments. Most of the work I'll send home will be things that the students will not need much scaffolding with and will not consume their evenings. If a larger task needs to be done, say a project, then it will usually be the only assignment for that week.

Here is your child's homework for this week, they have different due dates so it's not all done on the same day.

Weekly Word List: Check-in on Friday
I have revised our spelling practice. Instead of looking at the words on the recommended list, we are looking at a spelling pattern or sound each week, doing a minilesson about the structure of those words, naming several words, and voting on the words we think we would use most often in our writing. That's where the spelling lists will come from now on.

stronger, burn, dinner, purse, nurse, member, remember, number, culture, November (festive, I know)

Place Value Math Game: Play by Thursday
There is a score sheet, front and back, for you to share with your child.
1. Roll 2 dice. Add the numbers up.
2. Pick which place you want to put that number. The goal is to build the larger number than your child. Hide your number so there's mystery about where you put it.
3. Your child goes. You hope they roll low numbers.
4. You repeat until the 10th round.
5. Whoever wins the most rounds does a victory dance. Or, you could maybe get some additional chores out of them? Just trying to give you some good ideas.

Scoring: 2-9 is worth 2-9. 10 is worth 0. 11 is worth 1. 12 is a reroll.

I'd like for you to write out what you learned as well. This is to be turned in on Thursday.

Reading Log: Due Monday
Your child will need to log 4 days of reading by next Monday. They should read 20 minutes each day. Please make sure they do their equation to figure out how many pages they read.

Homework for the Week

Homework

Three math worksheets are in a packet. They are based off of the math we will be working on in class this week. The due dates for each sheet are written at the top of the page. We have only done the lesson for the first sheet, so that's all that should be done before Wednesday. The second sheet is due Friday. The third sheet is due next Monday.

Also due next Monday is your child's second weather observation/illustration. Alot of students put in great detail with their written observations. Please look over your child's work to make sure clarity and detail are present.

Homework

We're going to hold off on spelling this week because I need to revise the list and make new copies for the students.

This week's homework will have two parts.

Part 1: Due Wednesday
We are learning about nonfiction texts beginning this week. We talked about the famous quote: "A picture is worth 1,000 words." Your child is going to write a response about what they think this quote means. We will be discussing our responses on Wednesday.

Part 2: Due Monday
Your child will go outdoors and observe the weather. They will write down their observations on one half of the sheet of paper and make an illustration of the outdoor scene they observed. We will share these out next Monday when we begin our weather unit.

As we are learning about the part that photography plays in nonfiction, I am sending out an all-call. If you have collected amazing images from magazine covers or photographs you have taken yourself, we would love to have them in class so we can discuss in our class. Thanks!

Beginning Memoir

We are beginning our first genre study and it will result in our first published memoirs. A memoir is a personal narrative about important memories. They are detailed and contain a lot of emotional meaning. Today, in class we read one of my favorite memoirs, Crow Call by Lois Lowry. It's about her going on a hunting trip with her dad who just returned from the war. I asked the students to come up with some observations from the book.

"It's very realistic."
"The pictures looked lifelike."
"I thought she was very enthusiastic."
"She chose words that were calm and peaceful."
"She had other people talking in the story."

These are all very important observations that will help guide us as we prepare memoirs of our own. The class came up with some memories and we categorized them. Obviously there could be other categories, but here you go:

-Vacations
-Visiting relatives
-Medical emergencies (broken arms, bumped heads)
-Birthdays
-Important firsts
-Beach trips
-Major accomplishments (Aquil said he hit a home run!)
-Overcoming fears
-Fun memories
-Tiny but important moments (Addison mentioned a time a girl stopped what she was doing to help her get a basketball that rolled in the street)
-Sad memories
-Time with parents
-Brothers or sisters being born
-Hero moments

After we made the list, the students went off and made a personal list of 3 memories. They are bringing it home tonight. Their homework is to talk through their list with you and work on narrowing it down to the BEST choice. The best choice would be the one that your child has the most details in their retelling. You can show them pictures of these events, or you could even say, "Remember when this happened?" so they come up with a brand new idea that they didn't think of today. The goal is that every student has picked a topic that will be a good choice for them as we begin this genre study. Monday, we will begin writing.

B