Early Out the Rest of the Week

School will be released 2 hours early the rest of the week.  It sounds like all of the kids got to where they needed to be on Monday after school.  Remember to have a plan in place.  It is also helpful to have a daily plan in place before the kids leave for school.  Having that plan in place with the kids before school is a much better alternative than daily calls to the office for what the child should do after school. 

There is homework in math tonight.  Most of our math so far has been review and the kids are doing a great job. 

Spelling words should being coming home today.  I have a list of 500 words 4th graders should be able to spell by the end of the year.  Most of them are easy words and I would be willing to bet that most kids already know how to spell a majority of them.  We are going to start the year's spelling with some of these words. 

The spelling routine can be somewhat confusing at first.  At the beginning of the week each student is asked to spell 20 words on their pretest.  I then check those 20 words and let them know how many they will be tested over at the end of the week. 

If the student misses.....

0 words - then they are only going to be asked to spell the challenge words on Friday.  If they get the challenge words correct their score for the week would be 25/25.  They will not be asked to spell the first 20 again.  This is their incentive to try hard the first time. 

If the student misses.....

1-5 words - then they will be tested over 1-20 on Friday. They may attempt the challenge words and they will be checked but they will not count toward their score.  Their best possible score would be 20/20. 

If the student misses.....

6 or more words - then they will be test over 1-10 on Friday. They may attempt the rest of the words and they will be checked but they will not count toward their score.  Their best possible score would be 10/10.