22 September 2010
Autumnal Equinox
This is a very interesting article about why this year's autumnal equinox is a special treat. Enjoy!
18 September 2010
16 September 2010
Fun Run
Parents and Students,
Our class is dead last in the "Fun Run" class contest, let's hope we do better on Friday! Notice the graph..haha!
Our class is dead last in the "Fun Run" class contest, let's hope we do better on Friday! Notice the graph..haha!
15 September 2010
Vote for WO! in the Pepsi Refresh Grant Competition
Please consider supporting West Ottawa Schools in the Pepsi Refresh Competition
Dear Parents and Guardians:
Please help us promote reading by voting for West Ottawa in the Pepsi Refresh Grant Competition. We are competing for $5000, which we will use to buy books to supplement our school library’s collection, but we need your help!
What to do?
- Go to www.refresheverything.com/westottawabooks
- Sign in. (If you keep the bottom two boxes unchecked, you will not be spammed.)
- Vote for WO!
Please vote for West Ottawa today! You can vote for us again tomorrow and everyday for the rest of September.
Thank you so much for your support!
14 September 2010
Student Council
Students interested in running as classroom representatives for the Waukazoo Student Council should plan on giving classroom speeches on September 27, 2010. The class will vote to elect two representatives on September 28.
Each person running will need to prepare a 2-5 minute speech on why he/she would make the best student council representative for our class. We are asking that for classroom elections, students refrain from distributing campaign materials or from making campaign posters.
Student Council Information: The Waukazoo Student Council meets once per month before school at 8 a.m. Parents of elected representatives will be responsible for transporting their son or daughter to school for student council meetings.
09 September 2010
Math Fact Assessment
Today, students are bringing home their first "speedway" assessment pages. For homework tonight they are filling in or fixing their addition 5-minute assessment. How do we do these assessments in our classroom?
The upper Montessori students do a daily, quick math fact assessment. 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.
What do these assessments tell you at home? What math facts students have mastered and where they struggle. If your son or daughter did great on this week's addition five-minute test, that is great! Next week we'll be doing a subtraction five-minute assessment. Watch for these to come home to see how students are doing on their facts. Look for speedways that are 100% correct. When a speedway test comes home with errors, this is a fact family to study and practice at home.
The upper Montessori students do a daily, quick math fact assessment. 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.
What do these assessments tell you at home? What math facts students have mastered and where they struggle. If your son or daughter did great on this week's addition five-minute test, that is great! Next week we'll be doing a subtraction five-minute assessment. Watch for these to come home to see how students are doing on their facts. Look for speedways that are 100% correct. When a speedway test comes home with errors, this is a fact family to study and practice at home.
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