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September 15, 2005
Too Long
It has been too long since I have posted to our site. I apologize for not letting you know how everything was going sooner. We took an unplanned day off for Hurricane Ophelia. It was wet and awfully rainy at Norwayne but from what I hear the southern part of the county had it much worse than we did. Because of this missed day, we will have classes on October 28th. It was supposed to be a Teacher Workday but will be a regular school day.
We have begun working in our Vocabulary Workshop books and it has been a difficult process for the students to get used to. They did not use Vocabulary Workshop in sixth grade so that makes it that much more difficult to get accustomed to. What the Vocab program does is expose the students to some mature vocabulary that should help them develop their writing skills. Please speak with your kids about their vocabulary book and get them to share the book with you.
We have completed our North American map as a whole class, our South American maps in small groups, and are now working individually on Europe. The European map will be a homework/classwork grade and then the students will complete an African Map as a test grade. Since the skills are so new to many of the students, I really try to “go slow” and make sure they “get it.”
The most frustrating thing is when we go over material so completely and some do not work to make sure they “get it”. Unfortunately these same individuals are the ones who are missing assignments and falling behind academically. The students have begun calling parents during their elective block to make sure they are aware of their child’s lack of productivity. I hate to bother mom or dad at work but these individuals are not getting their work done. Please check the Classroom Calendar and your student’s agenda book to make sure they are keeping up with the expectations. We have not sent out Progress Reports because of some technical difficulties with NCWISE. It has been worked out and you should expect Progress Reports on Monday the 19th.
Posted by hlperson at September 15, 2005 08:33 PM