Lots of information in this posting!
Parent Night Reminder: Wednesday, September 16 at 6:30 p.m. We will meet for approximately one hour, maybe less. This meeting is geared for the new Upper Montessori parent but returning parents are welcome as well.
Homework: Students will have homework Monday – Thursday night. We talked about homework quite a bit this week! Each student is responsible for his or her homework folder. Taking the folder home each night, returning it to school the next day…these are all tasks that should be managed by THE CHILD. Requesting a teacher signature and a parent signature…these are all tasks that should be managed by THE CHILD. Managing nightly homework is a simple but powerful task that will help to build life-long responsibility skills in your child. IF your son or daughter forgets the folder at home or in the car, please do not bring the folder to school. When this happens it is much more powerful for your child to accept responsibility for being forgetful and learn from the experience. They are much less likely to forget the folder again if the responsibility for it remains theirs. (From personal experience I can tell you I've walked by the homework folder [and even a lunch box] on the kitchen counter. It's very hard to leave items sitting there but in the long run it's been a great learning experience for my girls.)
Classroom notes and school-wide communication will also be given to students in their mailboxes at the end of each day. Students will be asked to place these in their homework folders to make the school-to-home transfer easier. If you prefer an electronic copy of the school newsletter (distributed on Fridays) please let me know or Mrs. Coney (CONEYS@westottawa.net) know and we will make sure your name and email address are added to the list. Remember that the school news is sent home via the youngest child in your family, or only child if that is the case.
Daily Writing: We begin our school day with "notebooking." Based on relevant writing research, notebooking is a period of time every day when the children "just write." Topics are sometimes offered but usually not required. The children have plenty of personal topic lists ready to use. Two key components of Notebooking: Children must write without pausing for the 5-10 minutes of notebooking. So far, this requirement has been met with excellent results! Also during this time the classroom is silent. The second component is that the children write daily. Behind this activity is the idea that children will write better the more that they write. Notebooking is just one component of our writing program and one the students look forward to and are embracing!
Math Facts Assessment: The upper Montessori students take a quick math fact assessment daily. We do a one minute "speedway" assessment and a weekly five-minute timed test. This plan was developed based on a plea from middle and high school math teachers to make sure that students knew their facts! Our math speedway is a three or four day per week one-minute test with 10 problems. It covers basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Ideally, students move forward each time they take their speedway test. The five minute timed test requires students to move through 100 basic math facts with 100% accuracy. Students do addition and subtraction in the beginning of the year each year as a baseline assessment but the main focus is multiplication and division. For those students that pass out of division we have other five-minute challenges! Students compete against their own score each week. The goal is steady progress in memorizing the facts.
These assessments can be fun and the students look forward to them (That is also why everyone starts at zero for the addition speedway.) Most importantly, they take very little time each week out of the school day but the results are seen in our daily math lessons as well as simple fact recall.
I will be posting more information soon about our September and October curriculum. Stay tuned!
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