Insomnia Cured Here via Compfight
Since moving to the middle school a few years ago, I’ve struggled with how to help families know what is happening. Students have lots of different teachers at DMS, and there doesn’t seem to be a format that gives enough detail to help parents feel connected. Yet, I know good communication is crucial to a good relationship. So…here are a few tools that we’ll use over the course of the year to stay connected.
Weekly newsletter. Early in the year, you’ll receive a paper copy of the fifth-grade team newsletter. Later, we’ll transition this paper copy to an electronic copy, which will arrive via the Remind app. If you’d still like a hard copy, please let me know and I’ll make sure that you get one.
5-Peterson Blog. That’s where you are now. I will use this space to give updates about the goings-on in the courses that I teach this year, which are Reading, Writing, and Science. I’ve subscribed you to get updates automatically; I hope that was okay. You can unsubscribe at any time. I’ll try to write once a week with some details about what we are doing in class. An advantage of this method is that I can upload photos and video and there is a comment section, if you feel so moved.
Calendar. I maintain a calendar of the main events of the school year. You can add it to your electronic calendar, if that is useful. There’s a link to the calendar on the navigation bar to the left of this post on the website, or you can click here.
Assignment Sheet, Symbaloo, and Fifth-grade Team website. Our fifth-grade team maintains a website that archives all the old newsletters and has some helpful links to “how-to” videos for parents (and kids). You can also find the Assignment Page there. Teachers are pretty good about updating that page to help you know what is due during the week. Finally, there’s a Symbaloo page with helpful links that different teachers use regularly. We hope this page helps!
Google Classroom and PowerSchool. I’ll write more about these tools in upcoming weeks.
Bonus! Here are some photos of one of our early team building activities, which was an engineering project with the goal to see who could build a structure that would hold a marshmallow the highest above the surface.
