Monthly Archives: March 2017

Student Led Conferences are April 6

Leave a reply
Student Led Conferences are coming up on Tuesday, April 6!  On this day, students will have an opportunity to share their learning and growth with their parents.
Important information:
  • There will be no regular classes on that day.
  • Each child will have a passport. As they visit the different classes/stations, they will check off or stamp this passport. In the homeroom class, you’ll hear about their progress in literacy, unit, mathematics, and on their learning path goals. You’ll also visit single subject classes (PE, music and German. Art will be shared in the classroom).
  • This is a student-led conference, rather than a traditional parent/teacher conference. Your child will lead the conference and teachers will not be involved in giving feedback.
  • Follow this link to open our class’s sign-up sheet.  Sign up for a slot either in block 1 (8:30-10:00 AM), block 2 (10:30 AM-12:00 PM), or block 3 (1:00-2:30 PM). On the conference day, your child will begin in either our classroom or in the single subject classrooms. The students and I will work out their starting points together.
  • Please attend during the block for which you sign up. We want to keep the number of families in at one time to a manageable number.

Here are the links to sign up (same as those embedded above):

Student Led Conference Sign-Up

Thank you!

Leave a reply

Thank you to everyone that came to the 5th grade coffee this morning. It was a great turnout and a wonderful time to socialize with not only our class but other parents throughout our grade level. We discussed graduation t-shirts and after graduation celebration, as well as the students Exhibition Unit.

We hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!

Katy and Mandy

Assessment Update

Leave a reply

Dear 5R Families,

We’ve had a lot of assessments completed recently! On Friday your child will be bringing home three assessments:

  1. The completed rubric for their most recent Genius Hour inquiry, which includes self-assessment by students, as well as teacher assessment on the same document.
  2. Decimals assessment. As our decimals unit in Math is winding up, students will bring this assessment, along with their reflection document and a checklist of understandings.
  3. Research-based opinion essays and a checklist of writing progress. These essays, which were shared along with the student-completed checklists during our writing celebration several weeks ago. They will be accompanied by a publication package that includes the final essay and documents that your child feels help tell the story of this writing experience.

All of these are to be shared with you, in conversation with your child, and returned to school by the end of next week, Thursday, March 9. Please sign the assessment documents and, if you require more time to share, please let me know.

As with previous assessments, they are bringing these home so that you may have a better understanding of their thinking and progress.

These assessments should be understood as being a snapshot of student understanding on a particular day at a particular time, in a particular way of demonstrating thinking. This particular way of assessing understanding may present an incomplete picture of student progress. It is for this reason that many forward-thinking institutions have moved away from written assessments as the sole way of testing and grading. ZIS is no exception and these assessments represent only one of several ways data on a student’s thinking is collected.

These assessments are being sent home primarily to enrich your conversations with your child about their thinking and learning. Please take the time to look at them with your child, alongside their reflection. Then, sign them (somewhere obvious) and return them promptly to school. I would appreciate them returned by next Thursday, March 9. If you require more time, please let me know.

Many thanks for your ongoing support of your child’s home away from home!

Warm regards,

Jamie