Some concerns 9 weeks into the school year

Dear Paisano Parents,                                                                                     10/21/11

Even though we are nine weeks into the school year,  several issues and concerns continue to arise on a daily basis and I wanted to ask for your attention to these concerns and also for your help and support.  MMS parents are so very awesome with support and I am thanking you ahead of time for that.

Now, more than ever, organization is of utmost importance.  An adolescent’s brain cannot always be organized naturally so they do sometimes need help with that from adults. Students know that I also offer organization help in tutorials.  One helpful suggestion is to have a plastic pocket divider with a giant “A” on one side and a “B” on the other side.  Writing the courses for each day on the outside of the folder pocket is probably a good idea too.

1. AGENDAS:  Students are expected to use these for posting dates of homework, reminders, long-term projects, and general activities they may have.  Some students use these and some do not.  Grades of a student usually go hand in hand with their usage of an AGENDA.  If you ask your 7^th grader for their Agenda and it is empty, then more than likely, something is up.  You can easily verify this by signing on to typepad websites of teachers.  This is the first order of communication from school to home.
2. ABSENCES: It is understandable that absences from school will occur.  But, with block scheduling, when a student misses a block schedule class day, they are in fact missing several days, in reality.  Then, not seeing the teacher of that particular day until another day after they may return to school can worsen the situation. 

So, missing the least amount of school days as possible, is a student’s best way to stay caught up and in the know.  Students know that there is a MISSED WORK BOX in my room where they need to check for work missed while absent.  Anything distributed to students in their absence, will be placed in the missed work box for them to retrieve during passing period or after school.  The Missed Work Box has been explained to students several times and is placed in the room for easy access.

1. REVIEWING DAILY LESSONS: Students have been reminded to look over the day’s work in Science each night, even for 5 to 10 minutes, just as a review of the material covered in class.  This is of utmost importance now that the classes are every other day.  It really aids in decreasing the curve of forgetting that we talked about in Advisory which I posted on typepad about a month ago.  The curve of forgetting gets larger when the times between studying and reviewing are far apart.  Much of what the students will need as far as content, notes, and follow up work will be given to them as a class handout this year.  7^th grade Science textbooks are assigned and given to students for their home use but besides main vocabulary words and some reference pages, they are outdated and in great need of replacement.  The copyright date is 2002.
2. CLASS TIME: In relation to minutes, students are in class 46 minutes on Mondays, and 90 minutes, twice a week on Tues/Thurs and Wed/Fri.  That totals 226 minutes a week, or roughly three and a half hours.  Again, this is why if any of the three meeting days a week are missed, there’s more than likely quite a bit to catch up on.
3. LATE work or ABSENT work:  My dry erase board is used quite extensively for students to check when they need to be reminded of late work to be turned in or work missed that was due while they were absent.  Students sometimes come to me with work that they forgot to turn in weeks after it was due, simply because they did not pay attention to the reminders given to them on typepad, the dry erase board, in their agenda, and verbal reminders from me. 
4. Typepad website and Parent Connection:  These are two separate sites that can be very helpful to parents and students to monitor progress and assignments.  It is strongly suggested that students check both Typepad and Parent Connection, especially if they are absent. This is a great way for students to take responsibility for their own academic progress.

 In some contacts with parents, it seems that some parents are under the impression that Parent Connection is the only site for them to find out what’s going on with their student at MMS.  So, just FYI, TYPEPAD is an AWESOME center for information, for all of your student’s teachers and for Murchison’s activities and announcements as well.

 

Last but not least, WAY TO GO to all of you Paisano Students who are just rockin’ and rollin’ right along with your academics on a daily basis!  Just keep on doing what has been successful.  WAY TO GO!