PARENT ROLEDevelop self-reliance
• Check student agenda against my website regularly for assignments and due dates
• Hold student accountable for completion (trust but verify)• Match completed work to assignment (“show me”)• Check Power School for scores regularly (M=missing; L=late pass))
• Advise student to “use your resources” to problem solve
• Allow student to work through disequilibrium
• Encourage perseverance; avoid removing obstacles
• Model self-advocacy (role play initiating teacher or peer contact )
• Let student do his own work
PARENT ROLE
Develop organizational skills
• Hold student accountable for maintaining binder or folder system for each class• Check all papers are placed under tab or in folder (no loose papers)• Keep all student-created models
• Enlist student to monitor required supplies and ask for help to replenish when needed
• Work with student to break down long-term assignments or test preparation into manageable “chunks”
• Guide student to use agenda to prioritize work and map out daily work/study schedule, including breaks
• Help student maintain home study space
COMMON CORE-BASED INSTRUCTION
Skill Overview:
• Think: support answers, ideas, opinions, claims with evidence - “prove it”
• Express: effectively communicate thinking orally and in writing
• Collaborate: work with others to broaden thinking
• Innovate: apply thinking to a new challenge
Developed Through:
• Reading – navigate and use informational text, understand elements of fiction through novels, build comprehension of complex text
• Vocabulary – acquire academic language, elevate expressive language, hone word-attack strategies
• Writing – build on basic paragraph structure to construct narrative, informational, and argumentative essays using correct grammar and punctuation conventions
Focuses on developing critical thinking skills -- how students get to the answer
HOMEWORK AND GRADES
• Posted daily on my classroom whiteboard and website. Students are instructed to copy assignments in agendas each day.
• Late work not accepted without a late pass. Each student provided with 3 to use first trimester with teacher approval.
• Attendance is critical to student success. Make-up work cannot replace direct instruction, modeling, practice, and feedback provided in class.
• Students have two days for each day absent to make up missed work. Students are responsible for arranging make up tests and turning in make-up work following an absence.
• Assessments (quizzes, tests, paragraphs, essays, comprehension questions, culminating projects) carry significantly higher point values than practice (classwork, homework). Report cards are performance-based.
HELPFUL PARENT RESOURCES
• SOAR Study Skills by Susan Kruger Woodcock (www.StudySkills.com)
• Parenting With Love and Logic and Teaching With Love and Logic (
www.loveandlogic.com)
• Step Up to Writing Student Folder (in student backpack)
•Sutter Middle School Style Guide (and on website)
•Student-created samples or models
•English Composition Notebook (in student backpack)