Dr. Johnson's Reading Blog

One of the things that differentiates 4th grade from 5th grade will be sending home tests the students take. While I'm not a fan of test giving (or test taking), students need to develop an awareness that as they enter middle school, tests will be used to evaluate and grade them on a regular basis. When I grade tests, there are a number of things I do: 1) I go over the test answers and provide as much feedback with students as possible. I also go over test answers in case I made a mistake and incorrectly marked an answer wrong or correct. I make mistakes too and am well aware of this! 2) Students add up their points to see if they match the number of points I gave. If not I adjust. 3) I have students calculate their own percentages of how much they got correct. Then they compare the percentage with the South Carolina grading scale. 4) I asked students to reflect on why they did or did not do well. The typical response was "I could have participated more" ...

I wanted to remind everyone that tomorrow night is Opening Picnic from 6:30 to about 8:00. The first hour of Opening Picnic is all about the picnic and reacquainting with friends. 5th grade is responsible for bringing paper products such as plates and napkins. After the picnic, you are welcomed to stop by the classroom and have your child give you a brief tour. Not much has changed but your child may be excited about sharing something with you. I will also be in class talking with everyone. I have a brief slideshow that points out some of the differences between 4th grade and 5th grade that I will be emphasizing. If you are unable to make it, I will post the slide show for you to see. Also, don't forget that next Thursday, September 24th is a half day / early release. See everyone tomorrow!

I hope everyone had a restful Labor Day weekend. As a note, I have updated the class calendar. You can access the calendar on the right side of the blog. I have added some new dates including dates for our 5th grade trip to Camp Kanuga. I have also added our Twitter feed on the right side of the blog. We use Twitter to keep in contact with the citizen science community, the maker  community, and we post things we make during explorations. There is also a link to follow us on Twitter if you are interested. Each week we slowly get back into the thick of things. We have begun our latest DBQ on the Reconstruction Period. You will be seeing these DBQs at home since I will be asking students to work on some of it at home for homework. At the same time, in social studies, we finished collecting information on the Reconstruction Period and are focusing on synthesizing this information. In math, we are taking a slower, yet more direct view of problem solving and this seems to be working...