Welcome to grade 5. I hope you all had a warm and pleasant summer vacation wherever you happen to have ended up. I took a short trip back to Calgary to visit with my mother and sister. We all had a great time.
Almost every Sunday you will receive a class letter outlining important information for your student. Please review it carefully each week. I do try to be as concise as possible but sometimes this ends up being very difficult. Due to this summary letter each week, I rarely contact parents during the week. You will always find my letters emailed out as ‘daw.com – subject matter’ to allow you to know it is not spam. All letters will simply have the link to our class blog which is http://dawcom-newsletters.blogspot.com/. You might want to save this link in your favorites in case you need it.
I am looking forward to meeting up with each of you on Monday where I will ask you to fill out some forms, volunteer for the year and get pictures of your students. I will also review a few important aspects of my class that will help it run smoothly over the year.
If you have students that are affected by the cold it would be a good idea to send a sweater they can leave at school. With ceiling mounted air-conditioners that blow down there are times they can be chilled. I do keep the air-con controlled but with 24 of us in the room it must stay on for comfort.
This week we will begin the first unit in math on Number Theory. Attached to this email is a PDF file which is the Family Letter for this unit. You should look it over to understand what is being taught and assessed in this unit. It will also help you when your student asks for help. You will get a family letter at the start of each of the 12 units in math.
We will also be starting our reading program this week. This is a twofold program – one part at home and one part at school. I am asking that students read for 30 minutes a night for at least 6 nights a week since one of the goals of the school is to make students lifelong readers. Students will get a form each week that needs to be completed each time they read at home. It should be fairly straight forward. Once a week, Thursday’s, I ask parents to initial the form as a check to keep students responsible about their reading at home. I will do the same with the sheet here at school.
Regards,
Harold Daw
