It is with great pleasure and excitement that we write to you to tell you a bit about what is in store for your child this year and share some important information. Mme Keber will be teaching Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays while Mme Pitt will be teaching on Wednesdays.
Content: Our class is a great group of 29 students. In English and French, we will continue to develop our writing, reading, and comprehension skills using methods such as the 6 traits of writing, Daily 5 and Reading Powers. In socials, we will expand our focus from Canada to the world, looking into governments, natural resources, residential schools, immigration... As for science, experiments (following the steps of the scientific method) , the human body, simple machines, mixtures and solutions, rocks and minerals are but a few items on our menu. In math, we will continue learning about numbers (whole, decimals, fractions, %) and the operations. Measurement, patterns and relations, probability are some of the other items on our agenda. Health and Career, Technologies and Arts are also components of our curriculum. Mme Mireau continues to be our dedicated music teacher. See http://curriculum.gov.bc.ca/curriculum for more details.
Physical Education: All students will participate in gym classes twice a week. Our periods are on Thursdays and Fridays. Please ensure that your child brings appropriate clothes for gym – shorts or track pants, t-shirt and running shoes – that should be stored in a breathable bag (mesh) and taken home regularly for washing.
Homework: Children are extremely busy these days and after a productive day at school, they deserve a break. In general, there will not be a lot of homework assigned. Homework will consist of work not completed in class, reading, studying for upcoming quizzes and tests or putting the final touches on a project. Your support in establishing good work habits is very important as those are skills that will serve them now and for the rest of their life. Same goes for showing interest in their school work and modelling a helpful and positive outlook on school and learning ingeneral.
Volunteering: We hope to be able to take the students on a variety of field trips and having presenters come to our class to speak on different topics. If you have a special skill or knowledge related to content (profession, hobbies such as dance, painting, pottery...) and would like to share your expertise with the students, we would love to have you share with us!
Reading: We would like your child to read a minimum of 20 minutes a day, 5 times a week (3 of those times in French). We are not picky as to whether your child is reading novels, graphic novels, comics or non-fiction as key elements to fostering good readers are that they are interested in the content and their selection is at the appropriate level. Please take a moment to show interest in their reading: have them give you a recap of the story, tell you what they liked or didn't like, what they learned from it.
Absences: As part of fostering independent learners and personal responsibility, students are to check their “while I was away” individual folder. This folder will contain all materials distributed during their absence. It is the responsibility of the student to check in with me upon their return for clarifications on missed work and assignments. For long absences, we prefer not to give much work ahead of time as the direction of activities is fluid and adjusted to meet the needs and interests of the class, thus may change along the way.
Agendas: Agendas are a great way for students to keep track of their work, extracurricular activities and other events. They are also a great mean of communication between parents and teachers. Your child will record daily information in his/her agenda. This information is to include the subject, the work to be done and its due date. Please check their agenda with them daily. If your child was unable to study or complete his/her homework for a reason such as illness or other extenuating circumstances, please let us know and we will work something out. Forgetting materials at school would not fall into those categories.
Class website: We have also set up a class website. Our website will be updated daily so please check regularly. It contains various pages such as homework and assignments (basically the agenda), dictées (french dictée under study), vocab (english vocab under study) and other useful links... Our website address is: http://mmemckeber.weebly.com Please take a moment to explore and familiarize yourself with it. You may want to consider bookmarking it.
Parent-teacher communication: Open communication and cooperation between parents and teachers is paramount to the success of your child. You want what is best for your child and you want him/her to succeed and so do we so lets work together to make it happen. If you have any questions or concerns about your child's progress, please email both of us at the same time. Our emails are [email protected] and [email protected]
Please complete and return the parent information form (last page) in the event that we would need to get in touch with you. If there are two families, please provide information for both so all can be kept in the loop! In the event of an email being sent to more than one parent, the email addresses will be blind copied so do not worry about anybody else seeing your address.
We would also like permission to take pictures of your child. Pictures may be used for various class projects and some may be posted on our website (but no social medias such as facebook, instagram...). If you have any objections, please indicate on the last page.
Birthdays: Out of respect for the feelings of the students, if your child is having a birthday and would like to invite friends from the class, please have him or her distribute the invitations outside of the classroom unless all are invited.
Food and water: It is strongly recommended that students bring their own water bottle. Please also remind your child that he/she is not to share any food in school.
Covid: Until further notice, students from grade 4 and up, as well as school staff, are to wear masks when in the school building. Please ensure that your child brings a mask to school and maybe has one or two spare one in their backpack, just in case...
Communicating student learning: Our class will be using google classroom to post assignments, related documents, and videos. We will also be using a platform called Seesaw to collect samples of your child's work so you can see as we go what we are doing in class. Further information will be provided in the next few days.
Sincerely,
Marie-Claude Keber and Sara Pitt
*** A copy of this letter was sent home on our first week. It included a last page to be returned in wich you would provide your most current contact information as well as indicate whether or not we have your permission to take pictures of your child. If this last page has been misplaced, please email and we will send a new one with yout child.