Playing Catch-Up

It's a busy year. This is a big class with a lot of different needs, and I'm doing my best to meet them all.

Occasionally a parent comes in who is near panic that their child is failing fifth grade. First, no one is failing. Kids don't fail in this room. The closest thing to failure is getting a 'C.' A 'C' involves me standing behind the student pushing them to get the work done. I don't let kids just sit and fail. It's simply not an option here.

There has been some parents worried about homework, but this shouldn't be a worry either. The homework journal is the way the your student and I communicate in the beginning of the year. The journal lets me know who the child is. If your child isn't writing in their journal, the downside is that I don't know much about your child. It also means that your child is not doing the amount of writing that I would like them to. Why am I sending home writing? Because at this time of the year we spend most of our time in intense grammar lessons. The nightly writing is when the children are supposed to be using the information from our grammar lessons. Those kids who are writing are showing growth. Those students who are not writing are not showing growth in their writing.

Another Note on the Homework Journal: The homework journal is not private correspondence between the student and I. There are no secrets in the journal. If you look in the journal you should growth in writing over the last six weeks. If your student isn't writing, you won't see the growth. The homework journals will be an artifact for conferences. Please take a look at the journal before conferences come in November.

I hope all is well for you. Take care out there.

Adam Berkey