Take a Look!
During this winter season the Gold-Team’s lost and found has accumulated a large amount of items. We have many hooded sweatshirts, jackets, hats, gloves and snow pants along with other odds and ends. Our goal is to get these items back to their owners so they can be used and to keep families from incurring the expenses of replacing items believe to be lost for good.
We have set all of these items out in our lobby for display. Teachers are encouraging students to look for any items that they have lost and even to check for things that they haven’t yet missed.
Parents, please stop by when you are at school and look to see if any of the items belongs to your child.
On Thursday, March 7th we will donate any unclaimed item to a local organization. We appreciate your assistance getting as many items as possible back to their rightful owners.
Many parents ask about ways to be involved in their children’s studies. Regularly checking your child’s homework is one of the best ways to do that. Just looking over and discussing your children’s homework with them can be rewarding and provide an almost daily opportunity for parents to participate in their children’s school life. By reviewing homework, parents get a clear picture of what is being taught in the classroom and their children’s academic progress. To communicate and strengthen our parents/teacher partnership, a committee of Stonehedge Gold teachers developed the following framework for our homework philosophy, purpose and practices.
Homework Philosophy:
Homework should be purposeful in order to reinforce the content taught. It must be short and lead to success without much struggle. Homework should encourage ownership and have aesthetic appeal. Tasks should be differentiated based upon the students’ needs.
Homework Purpose:
Homework offers parents, students, and teachers the opportunity to stay involved and to support the learning process outside of the school day.
Viewing homework as formative feedback changes our perspective on the grading of homework. Grading becomes not only unnecessary for feedback, but possibly even detrimental to the student’s continued motivation to learn. With this new perspective, incomplete homework is not punished with failing grades but is viewed as a symptom of a learning problem that requires investigation, diagnosis, and support (Vatterott, 142).
Focus should be on designing quality homework tasks, differentiating those tasks, deemphasizing grading, improving homework completion, and providing homework support programs.
Homework Practices:
Homework should reinforce classroom learning.
Feedback on homework is crucial. Student feedback is necessary and should promote learning. Instructive written comments are given to students rather than grades. Teachers typically will circle incorrect problems, write individual comments to students and/or use a check mark, check plus and check minus.
Rewards are not given for completion of homework.
Students in 3rd grade should have 30 minutes of homework nightly.
Students in 4th grade should have 40 minutes of homework nightly.
Students in 5th grade should have 50 minutes of homework nightly.
- Practice: Students must reach a level of self – sufficiency in performing learned skills.
- Reading: Students should be reading every night. This is included in the amount of time for homework.
- Fact Fluency: Students should be spending time practicing math facts to increase speed and accuracy.
- Studying: This type of homework requires students to review material in notes and assignments to place key information and concepts into long term memory.
Homework should be largely an independent practice. The parental role is to provide time and opportunity and to express the importance of practice. If a parent sees their child struggle with the homework or are unable to complete it independently, please include a quick note on the homework for the teacher.
Parents should be called if homework is not done to stress the importance and benefits of homework. Students who chronically don’t do homework will be sent to the principal. Mr. Suddaby will talk with the child and parents.
