The response journal is sent home once each term for parents to look over and discuss with their children. It is accompanied by a letter like the one that follows for parents to sign and return indicating they have looked over the journal. If you look on the "Keeping track of Reading Grades" sheet you will see the Monday the Parent Journal Check is due and know that the journal will be coming home the weekend preceeding it
Thank you for sending me such a wonderful group of students. I have really been enjoying them! I hope that you have seen the NEW "Keeping Track of Reading Grades" sheet on which you will find your child's assignments and due dates for the entire term. Students will receive one each nine weeks. I would like to remind you that you may be updated on what we are doing in class by calling 955-6942 (teacher number 5202) or through the Net (http.//www.sbac.edu/~jonesbr). I also encourage you to check your child's FALCON PLANNER on a regular basis. Hopefully this will help explain the report card grade.
Your child has brought his/her Reading Response Journal home this weekend so that you may have a chance to see what s/he has done so far this grading term. I hope that you will look through the journal and discuss it with your child. THE JOURNAL MUST BE RETURNED ON MONDAY, JANUARY 30. At any other time, journals can be taken home when the parent sends a note requesting it and taking responsibility that it be returned the next school day.
Journal letters are graded about every three weeks. At each interval students are to have written one new letter to any classmate (with a response from the classmate) and a response to the teacher's letter. Letters should go beyond summarizing the books read and should show higher level thinking like predicting outcomes; analyzing writing techniques; comparing the book to other books, personal experiences, movies, etc.; analyzing characters or setting; describing reactions to the book; telling why the book was chosen; etc. In the front pocket you should find handouts giving suggestions for journal writing. There will be more as the year goes on. They should also have recorded on their journal response log the letters they have responded to in a classmate's journal.
When the journal is graded, if all the letters and answers are there, the grade is a 70. If this minimum requirement is not met, the grade is below 70. Also, deductions are made if the title is not included and underlined, entries are not dated, etc. A letter is chosen at random to be read and graded. The grade above 70 is based on the degree to which the student has shown more reflective thinking in the entry.
Please sign below that you have looked over and discussed the journal with your child. Please write any comments or questions you have. For extra credit, your child may write a journal entry to you this weekend about the book s/he is currently reading and have you answer his/her letter, responding to his/her thoughts about books as well as telling about your own reading.
STUDENT'S NAME _______________________________________________ period_____
PARENT'S SIGNATURE:_________________________________________________________
As a form of self-assessment, students will complete a graphic representation of the various genre they have read during the first half of the year. Like the pre-write cluster/web done last term, it should not only be informative, but also attractive. Students will fill out the " crusts of the slices" with the various genre they have read so far in sixth grade. On the "slices" they will write the titles. Some slices may be blank, depending on the variety of reading done so far. That is the point of the exercise. After completing the graphic, each student will write a goal to improve his/her exposure to various types of writing for the second half of the year.
In preparation for the F-CAT test which will be given Feb. 27 & 28 and March 6 & 7, students will work in groups doing practice exercises. They will work together, helping each other on any parts which are difficult for any student in the group. After the practices, all students will be given a practice test. The grade will be a combination of the practice exercises and an average of scores of all students in the group on the practice test. This mimics the actual F-CAT scoring in that results affect both individual students and the group of students as a whole. REMINDER: Please see that your children eat and sleep well the week of testing =).
Students should keep a list of words that they come across in their reading which are new to them. By the end of the term each student should have at least twenty words with definitions. These words will be added to the twenty learned in the first term and the twenty learned in the second. That means that all students should have a total of 60 words and definitions by the end of this term. Vocabulary should be done in four-column notes. The first column is the word, the second column is the word in a sentence (students are encouraged to just copy the sentence right from the book), the third column is the dictionary definition that fits the sentence, and the last column is a keyword/phrase or picture to help in remembering.
During goal conferences the teacher will quiz each student by asking him/her to define five of the words. If a student does not find new words in reading then s/he needs to find books on a more suitable level. If a student is not finding enough words, then s/he needs to read more.
Throughout the term students will be given various assignments to do in class. Usually students will finish them at school and should only need to work at home on them if absent or not using the class time wisely. Many of them will involve comprehension practices using the F-CAT format or reading through Write Source 2000 in preparation for assignments they will be doing.