As you know, Progress Reports are coming home tomorrow. Today, I have sent home a confirmation of your interview time (it's a small green slip of paper). I did my best to accommodate everyone's preferences. If you are unable to come at the assigned time, please email me to let me know, and we'll make other arrangements to meet.
Please be prompt for your interview. I will do my very best to stay right on time. If we discover that we need a longer conversation, I'll be very happy to arrange another meeting with you in the near future.
Tomorrow I will explain the different sections of the progress report to the children so that they can begin to understand what it is all about. Side 1 focuses on learning skills - things that we have to do in order to be good learners, such as listening, working together, staying focused and taking responsibility for actions and materials. Side 2 focuses on what we are learning, how we're progressing with our reading, writing, math, and other subjects.
At this point in the year, I think it's really important to focus on the learning skills section. It is very difficult to progress in the subject areas without having established good learning skills. Therefore, I put a great deal of effort into being very specific and honest about what I observe in terms of learning skills. We will have an opportunity later this week to write down something that we are proud that we are doing really well, and what our one main goal will be going forward. My hope is that all children will read their progress report with their parents and decide what area they want to work on. I have given my opinion of next steps in learning skills, language and math, so those are things to consider as part of this discussion. If you would like suggestions for how you can help with those things at home, please bring this up in our interview.
I will also explain what the letter grades mean. E is for Excellent, which really means that you're doing a great job all the time. G is for Good, which means you're meeting expectations and doing well most or all of the time, but there are small ways in which you could improve even more. S is for Satisfactory, which means that sometimes you're doing just fine, but other times you need to be reminded, so keep working on it. N means that you need a lot of support with that skill, so make this your goal going forward.
Finally, there are a few etiquette rules around report cards that will be true for every report this year, and in future grades as well. Here is what I will explain to the children:
1. Do not open your report card envelope until you are with a parent or guardian.
2. Your report card is private. Do not share your marks with friends, this doesn't make either person feel good.
3. Keep your report, but please return the envelope (signed) so that we can reuse it for the next report.
See you all soon!
Words of the Week
Here’s where you get to use your true English ‘u’ sound. It’s much rounder than plain ‘u’ in French. When you see ‘ou’ in French, think “dude” or “food” in English.
Some ideas for mixing it up this week:
1. “ou” means “or”. Ask your child lots of questions involving a choice using “ou” this week. E.g., “Est-ce que tu veux du lait ou du jus?” (Would you like milk or juice?)
2. It is very common to have silent letters on the ends of French words, and this is something your child has already started to notice at school. Ask your expert to hunt for the silent letters in this, and previous, word lists. (It’s the p on “loup” and the s on “sous”.)
3. Last week we had the word “sur” (=on top of) and this week we have “sous” (=under). There’s a cute little song to the tune of London Bridge that begins with these two words. Ask your singer if he/she can sing it for you.
Grade 2s have already looked at the sound "ille" and some of their words that week also featured the 'ou' sound (e.g., grenouille). It's as simple as saying both sounds back-to-back.
Grade 1: ou, sous, loup, rouge, bonjour
Bonus words: jour, pour
Grade 2: loup, souris, jouer, bonjour, citrouille