Work Until You're PROUD!

Students will always hear me saying that they should work until they are proud! Once we receive a grade, it doesn't mean that the work is final, unless the student is proud of that grade. We have been working really hard on a variety of ELA skills: synonyms, antonyms, central idea, figurative language, vocabulary and more! We've also been busy challenging ourselves to try new narrative techniques when writing personal narratives. We are off to a great start, but sometimes fixing a small thing can make a big difference. For example, if students forget to capitalize or use punctuation, it knocks two points off of their score, but making that simple fix and turning it back in can make a difference of a whole letter grade. If your writer forgot to include an introduction or a conclusion in their writing, it can make a huge difference to go back and fix that, too!

Here's a little reminder about how grades work in our classroom (also on the syllabus from the beginning of the year/open house):

NO GRADE IS FINAL - until one week prior to report cards coming out. Until then, students can make up any work that is missing, or improve upon any assignment they have been given. How cool is that?! In class, students are receiving written feedback on their narratives and rubrics. If it is a writing that has been placed online in Google Classroom, they are seeing highlighted focus areas to correct and written feedback comments as well. Improving work based off of the feedback given can happen at home, in the classroom if they have extra time, in the library in the mornings at 7am, or even after school with me by appointment. Then, simply turn in the assignment for review/grading.

When you finish something and think, 'this is good enough', stop and ask yourself if you are proud of it. If not, maybe you weren't finished after all.

If a student would like to improve a test/quiz grade, they can meet with me at lunch or after school for a brief re-teaching of the content and then try again for an improved score.

I am so encouraged and excited that several students are already utilizing this "work until you're proud" system! The extra time they are putting in is paying off, and they are usually quick fixes that won't take long!

Please remember that we are keeping our written narratives in our writer's notebook throughout the unit because we will need them from time to time. However, if you want to see anything that your child is writing, please ask them to open their Google Drive, or Google Classroom - as everything is in those two locations. Graded rubrics are always on paper, and hopefully they bring them home for you to see!!

Conferences are around the corner! You can see your child's writer's notebook then. I look forward to seeing you all!