Daily Update 1-26-13

Parents, 

AR Pizza party.  The party was a lot of fun Friday!  Thank you for encouraging your child's nightly reading 2nd quarter.  Let's keep this positive momentum going 3rd quarter as well.  Your child has a new point goal and a new expectation to earn the pizza party this quarter.  In addition to meeting 100% of their points, students will be expected to read books that are (on average) above their book level goal (see their folder insert for this).  Students are allowed to read below this goal number, but the average of the books read for the entire quarter must stay above this to earn the party.  The point of this goal is to encourage students to read at levels that will challenge them and help them build their vocabulary,

Valentine's Day Party.  I think we are all covered for items for the Valentine's Day party.  Thank you for the great support once again.

Grade cards.  Your child should show you their grade card envelope this weekend.  Please remove all of these papers and return the envelope signed on Monday.

STAR Math & STAR Reading reports.  Please examine these reports closely as they give you an excellent overview of how your child is growing in those two area.  I think they are pretty self explanatory, but the key area I focus on as I read them are the Percentile Ranks (PR).  The PR number shows the percent of students nationally that scored below your child.  If this number is increasing from the beginning of the year, this means of course that your child is showing more growth than expected.  If the number stays the same, this means the growth is as expected and your child is learning at the same pace as their peers nationally.  If the number drops then the growth is less than expected and this can sometimes be a concern.  There is also testing variability based the child's effort on that particular test and other factors.

Reminders:

• Send in your Boxtops if you have any, please.  We are having a building competition and we have had many brought in so far.  Thank you!

-Mr. Pransky

Language: 

None.

Reading:  

Read your AR book for 15-20 minutes each night

AR Goal for Thurs., January 24 is 9%

Social Studies:  

None.

Science: 

None.

Math:   

None.

Spelling:  

Lesson 16 Test - Thursday, January 31

Quick Links:

Class Blog- frequently used links and daily updates.

Home Connect - check AR reading and Accelerated Math, or practice with Math Facts in a Flash

Google Apps - check school e-mail and use google applications (un: last name_firstname    pw: aw + 6 digit lunch code)

Moodle - web links and resources for every subject! (un: lastname_firstname    pw: 6 digit lunch number)

Pearson  - Access math book and worksheets from the math book (un: last name_firstname    pw: aw + 6 digit lunch code)

AR Book Find - Do you have a book at home or from another library that you are wondering if it is AR?  Look it up here.

Infohio - Awesome resource for web research with online encyclopedias for kids among other things (un: infohio  pw:power)

SpellingCity - quiz and play games using each week's list words

Scholastic Book Order - Class Activation Code: F8273

--
Shane Pransky
Whitehouse Primary
4th Grade