Grades and PT Conferences

Hi All,

Just a heads up - parent teacher conference schedules are going home tomorrow. If the time does not work for you, please give the office a call to re-schedule. To add more excitement to my day, next Thursday the 18th, I'm headed to Victoria for a 2 day Math conference on the 19-20th. This means that I need to catch the ferry early and will not be holding any interviews past 4pm. Since I'm not sure what time we'll be back from WE day, I am hoping to hold all conferences before the 18th. 

In other news, I've started to "grade" some of the entries in our Writer's notebooks. I spoke to the children last week about how they'll be graded and what the grades mean (more to come on this). I will be (or have) included a stapled in copy of the matrix of the Language Arts Writing outcomes in their book with a grade at the bottom. Since it's only first term, the grade 4's will be using a matrix that is based on the end of the grade 3 year and the Grade 3's will have the same but using the end of year grade 2 matrix. This will last until early 2013 when we will switch over to next matrix. Reason being - the tool was designed to evaluate students in the Spring and it would therefore be unfair to expect them to already meet expectations that may not yet be developmentally appropriate.

Just a quick reminder:
- Field trip next Tuesday - please send the form back if you have not already done so!
- Early dismissal next Thursday the 18th (As of now, Mr. D will be taking my class while I'm at WE day)
- Pro-D day on Friday, the 19th

Thanks!