Three Weeks Until Break?? Wow, Time Has Flown! November 28th

Hello Everyone!

Fourteen more days until holiday break! Wow, the time has truly flown!

• Tonight, please look for bottle caps for our projects. I look forward to our many art and building mini projects that will fill our classroom tree!
• Please finish your structures research. Your Power Point presentation is due end of day Friday. Power Points should be done in class only.
• We will continue French Dialogues tomorrow. 
• Thank you for your work on chemistry science stations related to solutions, density, and states of matter today!
• The unit is ending before the break, so our quiz will be at the end of next week.
• Ms. D has been busy preparing marks for first-term report cards, which will be given out Dec. 14th.

As we come up to report cards, there are some things we should remember:

It is important all marked work has been shown to Mom and Dad, so there are no surprises when the report card comes! Thank you to parents for signing the work and going over it at home. Make sure all work returns to your portfolio binder.

Remember marked work is summative. I don’t give out marks on every piece of work, because the marks come from end-of-unit work, when the student is showing what they know after the learning is over. The remainder of our work is formative, meaning it is about checking in with the student during the units. These daily assignments are also important, but they are marked with checks, as they are more about completion and receiving feedback than getting everything “right.” 

Report card marks come from more than one place. The marks in each subject are the result of marked work, completion and submission of daily assignments, the student’s participation in learning activities that don’t have a “markable” worksheet to go with them, as well as use of the learner profile (being a good communicator, risk-taker, principled, etc.). When thinking about marks, please go back to the Overall Participation Rubric 2016. 

Try to focus less on marks and more on growth! Some students get very nervous about marks. It is one of the reasons I try to have less, daily emphasis on them. We also have some perfectionists in our group who, even though they do well, focus only on the one question they missed, rather than celebrating what they do know. Please try to have conversations around reports that involve reading the comments as opposed to looking at the letter marks, because I think that is more helpful. Look for ways to grow, such as making sure work is organized, adding more detail to assignments, reading criteria, and ensuring everything gets turned in. Instead of saying, “I’m no good at that,” try to say, “I have room to grow in that area, and here is how I will try to grow.”

Letter Marks: Remember in grade three, you didn’t have letter marks, you had words. It can help to translate this way: exceeding expectations (A level), fully meeting (B level), meeting (C+ level) and not yet meeting (C/C-). Ask yourself, if you looked at your grade three report cards, would you have had straight A’s if you did this translation? A “C+” is still meeting expectations, and it is not a bad mark. When you see your marks, you may want to make goals to do better, and that is okay, but it is not okay to beat yourself up, because getting an “A” or a “B” is not meant to always be easy. Remember also that these marks are only for grade four and five — they are practice marks for the future!

We will talk about this in class again, and I hope these notes help for having some conversations at home, too. I will be talking to each student one-on-one about what will be coming on reports, so they feel more comfortable when the actual document goes home, too.

Have a great evening!

Ms. D