News from Miller's Mon-STARS

Here are some things that you should know about--

After School Clubs

If your student is going to participate in a school-sponsored activity (choir, writing club, scrabble club, etc) after school hours, there is a permission slip that you must fill out. When there is an initial informational meeting, a note from home is fine, but after that the permission slip provided by the district must be filled out.  Sponsors are giving them out at the informational meetings.  If your student misses that initial meeting, let me know and I can get a permission for them to send home.  This is a safety initiative started by the district to make sure that we know where our students are.

Drop Off Safety

Please make sure you drop your child off at the front or back of the school.  Students must go in the main doors (front or back) and go through the building to get to the portables.  Please do not drop your child off near the portables.  

As they go through the building to get to class, they can take the opportunity to use the restroom or fill up their water bottle.

Spelling Tests

We had our first practice test with the opportunity to opt out of taking the regular test this Friday.  Several purple papers went home last Friday and several came back today.  If your child forgets to bring the paper back on Monday, please send it on Tuesday.  If the test does not come back with the purple paper, your child must take the regular test on Friday.  I do not enter grades for the practice test until after the regular test has been taken and graded.  (If this happened this week, please send in the test.)

Also note that most of our words for spelling tests are common nouns.  They do not need to be capitalized.  After the regular Spelling Test 2 is given, capital letters in words that do not need capital letters will be counted wrong.  I have stressed this to the students, and most of them are catching on.  Please make sure they practice using correct capitalization.  On the dictation sentences, I have already started counting misused capital letters as incorrect.

District Common Assessments (DCAs)

Last year, the district implemented District Common Assessments.  These are short assessments at the end of each unit for each subject.  Depending on the number of questions the district has on a DCA, the third grade team may or may not add questions so that a grade may be taken.  The district does not allow us to send home DCAs.  If the third grade team adds questions to a DCA, those questions can be sent home.  If there is ever a time you would like to view your child's DCAs, you are welcome to come to the classroom to do so.

Interim Progress Reports

In the middle of each grading period, your child will receive an Interim Progress Report.  This report will show how he/she is doing so far in the grading period.  These will go home this Thursday.  The grades on these reports should coincide with what you see in Home Access.  There are some missing assignments for some students, but that is OK.  These missing assignments do not count for or against their grade.  As soon as the work is turned in and graded, the grade will be entered into the grade book.  I took some grades on work done late last week.  Some students didn't have time to get it finished.  They will do it and the grade will be entered later.  I do not usually count off points for assignments being late.  If I need to do that, I will let you and the students know in advance.