Homework

It is my personal belief that homework is extra practice. As a school, SCE does not assign much homework, and some teachers do not assign any homework at all. If any homework is assigned, it should not take longer than 1 hour at the intermediate level, per school board policy IHB.

I do NOT assign nightly homework.

Reading:

One of the best things your student can do each day is read. I do not require reading logs because I understand we all get busy as adults caring for kids.

As adults, we quite a bit of nonfiction. Share what you like to read with your student. It could be a recipe in a cookbook or online, reading the details of the coupons in the flyer in the mail. You can read to them. Believe it or not, they still really enjoy being read to and sharing that time. I read to my daughter some evenings to help her wind down before bed. 🙂 When listening to texts above their reading level as you read, they are able to access higher level thinking skills without the stress of trying to figure out the words. Hearing fluent readers is important.

They can (and should, by this age) read chapter books. They can read picture books. They can read magazines or online articles about how to earn skins in their favorite video game. Sometimes we reread the same book and look for something new or surprising. Ask your student to summarize what they have read or describe a character to you. Your student has access digital books on Overdrive in connection with the Greenville County Library System using their Chromebooks and going through Student Backpack.

ELA (English and Language Arts) - Writing, Spelling, Grammar

We do our writing in class. Ask your student what they're working on or what ideas they have. Writing is all about getting ideas from their head and on to their paper. One really neat idea I heard about from a student was that they write a note to their parent in a journal and the parent answers back. They don't worry about grammar and spelling, but focus on getting ideas flowing and elaboration. If your student tells you a story, encourage them to write it down for you.

Spelling only counts for 10% of the ELA grade. Spelling in the 21st century is more about recognizing the word than it is spelling it perfectly when called out. This does not mean spelling is not important, rather it does not hold the same level of importance it once did. We will focus on completing a phonics skill as opposed to having a list for students to memorize. The goal is for them to transfer their learning. Please don't stress too much about students that struggle with spelling. I was not the best speller as a child, but have gotten much better over time. 😊

Mathematics

My goal is never to have a frustrated student or adult. I know the math taught today with the new strategies is not the same way we learned in our day. There are several areas of math that you can help. (And you don't have to hear, "That's not the way Mrs. Sanders did it.")

Number sense and base ten is the foundation of math. Understanding that 10 dollars is ten times as much 1 dollar is difficult for many students. Help them with place value. They should be able to work with numbers all the way up to the hundred millions place.

For addition and subtraction we use the standard algorithm. That's the way we learned to add and subtract. They should be able to work with numbers all the way up to the hundred thousands. You might give them examples using the bills. (Example- This month the electric bill was $312. Last month it was $400. How much more was the electric bill this month?)

Math is everywhere! Our students need to see the math we use daily. Getting gas, paying for groceries, deciding if you got back enough change in line at the drive-thru, looking at the calendar, figuring out how much time until bedtime using an analog clock. All these skills can be shared with your student! 😊

Science/Social Studies

We rotate between science and social studies each week. Don't worry if the students struggle with the content load in these subjects as they will cover these again in more detail in middle and high school. Science is focused on more due to SC PASS Testing in May.

How Can My Student Have Extra Practice?

Mathematics

In class, we have a few websites we use. If you allow your student to use websites at home, the best ones for home use would be Prodigy, SplashLearn, and 99Math.
Please do not use DreamBox or XtraMath at home. XtraMath only allows so much time spent each day and DreamBox is required in class.

Flashcards for fact fluency are an excellent at home help as well. You can make your own or pick up some from Dollar Tree or Dollar General. The majority of our students need as much practice as possible to learn their facts. As we go deeper in math, students are slowed down just trying to figure out something as simple as 3 x 4. Our problems are multi-step and we multiply much bigger numbers.

If you prefer to work on what they're doing in class and prefer paper pencil with examples, the math textbook has homework pages we do not assign that could be used. Your student should also have notes in their math notebook so they can follow they steps in a strategy we have used in class. This year, we are tested on strategies on the state test. The students must know these strategies for multiplication and division. While the strategies are different than the way we learned in school, they are not going against good mathematical sense.

Math Book Volume Lesson pages _____