Summer!

Dear Parents,

Thank you for the lovely gifts for teacher appreciation week. From the beautiful baskets to the delicious treats to the gift cards for fun places, I truly felt your appreciation. It seemed like every time I turned around there was another student holding a gift and saying, “Here you go Miss Wycklendt!” I have enjoyed getting to know my students this year, and guiding their academic progress, but I am touched by this extra display of gratitude.

Since we had our math test last week the only test for my classes this week is a science test on Wednesday. I wrote a review sheet with the kinds of questions students will need to be able to answer for the test. In addition to the questions on that sheet, they will need to be able to draw the path of blood through the heart using arrows. They will need to identify where the path starts (that is, where blood from the body returns to the heart) where blood leaves the heart to go to the lungs, the path blood takes through the heart after it comes back through the lungs, and where it leaves the heart to return to the rest of the body. They will also need to be able to label the blood vessels and chambers of the heart. This may sound complex, but we have spent the last two weeks reviewing it, including drawing a heart freehand and labeling it. They should have their heart drawings in their notebook to help them study.

This will be my final blog post before summer, and there are a few things you should keep in mind for summer:

1.       If your student is leaving on any day before Thursday, please let us know. We need them to take all their final tests and also to clean out their lockers and desks.

2.       Your students’ RM accounts will still work until August 1. If you wish them to spend a little time reviewing math this summer, they can log in at any time and continue working.

3.       When your students finish the last lesson of the RM curriculum (Dividing a Decimal by a Decimal) the system will automatically send them back to redo lessons which they passed but on which they did fully understand all of the concepts presented. If your students says, “Mom, Dad, I DID finish the last lesson, but then it sent me back!” that’s probably why.  The review is beneficial but it is not part of the required curriculum. If you want to confirm that they finished, you can also contact me.

4.       Please, before your students leave on Thursday please make sure they return any books they may have borrowed either for class or for fun from our student libraries. Since all students had borrowed copies of “King Arthur” that book in particular would be one to look for. If a book is not returned or was returned in a damaged condition, the front office will be charging families for the books. In order to avoid those please return any books! If you have any questions about whether a book was returned, please feel free to contact any of the teachers.

5.       For next year please be sure to label all your students uniform clothes with their name, but especially their jackets and sweaters. Almost everyone has the same few jacket and sweater styles in the same few sizes, and without labels it is impossible to tell them apart. All a student has to do to lose their unlabeled jacket or sweater is to put it near another student’s unlabeled jacket or to leave  it in a public area like on a picnic table or lunch table, or in a specials classroom. Without a label, there’s no way to know whose it is when it inevitably gets left behind or picked up by the wrong child. I cannot tell you how many jackets and sweaters I have had to put in lost and found even when I was 100% sure they belonged to one of my students because no one claimed the jackets or sweaters and they had no labels. I know these uniform items are not cheap, so please, label them!

6.       Last but not least, have a great summer!

These are all the notes I have for you this year. If you do need anything, please contact me through my Jupiter Ed account before this Friday, May 26.

Sincerely,

Rebecca Wycklendt