The emergency contact information form sent home in September lets us know who to call if your child is sick or injured at school, usually a parent or guardian. In the near future you will be asked to fill out another form, an Early Dismissal form, which lets us know where your child will be going in the event of an unscheduled closure due to a snowstorm, power outage, loss of heat or loss of water in the building. Please discuss these plans with your children as they tend to worry about who will greet the bus or unlock the door for them.

I hold extra help class once a week at 7:45 a.m. (dates to be determined for the 2011-2012 year). I strongly encourage anyone making lower than 70% on an assessment (in any subject) to come for help, then they can be retested for a better grade. Students are strongly encouraged to come before a test to ask questions that they would like clarified.

Math facts should be studied nightly on www.mrnussbaum.com. Students should tell the program to set up for 10 questions of addition, subtraction, multiplication or division. They MUST put in a user name and they MUST type the answer in the answer box above the worksheet (otherwise the program will say the child answered incorrectly). In Grade 4, the main focus is multiplication. In Grade 5, the main focus is multiplication and division, however, quick recall of addition and subtraction facts is vital to both of these processes. If your child dos not have quick recall of addition and subtraction facts, please let me know and I will provide you with activities to help your child build a repertoire of strategies to find the answer quickly; without using fingers and toes :)

My school email is northrup@staff.ednet.ns.ca  Please note that I usually only check it once each day; I encourage you to write to me to notify me of any concerns you have regarding your child's progress or other issues your child brings to your attention. Please do not write to inform me of absences or early departures as I may not get them in a timely manner. Continue to use safe arrival or notes in the agenda for these purposes. I am also open to receiving your child's weekly writing (as an attachment) via email.

Homework: Your child will have nightly homework. as well as weekly homework . Nightly homework includes a) reading, b) completing 10 questions from the website below and c) any unfinished work from that day. You may, if you wish, create your own math questions for your child.

Weekly homework involves your child writing at least two double spaced pages per week in Grade 5 and 1 1/2 pages in Grade 4, as well as completing grammar pages. Grammar pages will be handed out and started in class on Mondays; completed pages will be due on Thursdays They will do Weekly Writing in the Writing scribbler which will also be kept in their homework agenda. NOTE** You may chose to allow them to do this on your computer, in their own file, and you may email the current week's writing to me (as an attachment) on the scheduled day. If you chose this method, please temporarily disable the spell check feature. They may write on whatever they like. They may create a short story one week , write a diary entry the next. and do a little research write-up on something that interests them the next. The important thing is that they are writing. Please, do NOT edit your child's work (unless it is totally confusing)! I will be checking for all of the usual things like spelling, capitals, and punctuation, as well as assessing how they are growing with respect to paragraphing, adding details and description, and inclusion of a beginning, middle and ending. The reader must see and feel what the writer is describing. I will be setting up a schedule for collecting the childrens' Writing books once the year gets rolling but it will definitely be between Monday and Thursday.

Language Arts: Reading and Recording

At the Grade 4/5 level, recording about what you have read does not involve retelling the story. Rather, recording is all about making connections and inferences. A list of writing prompts will be glued into your child's Read and Record scribbler. 

Brown bag book report - as students read their novels they are to think of 10 objects they could put in the brown paper bag (provided by me). These objects will be linked to the story in that the object will represent a character or a major event in the story. Students are expected to write a paragraph or two for each object explaining its importance to the novel. This writing is to be done on loose leaf and tucked into the bag. The students name should be on the paper and the bag. Also on the outside of the bag the students will put the name of the novel and author and they must draw a picture of their favorite part of the story on the other side of the bag. This project was assigned February 1 and is due on March 1.