Follow-up Questions/Answers from Parent Teacher Interviews

It was a pleasure meeting all of you for the parent-teacher interviews. I was very impressed by your commitment to your children’s learning and many of you had insightful questions. I’m going to share some of the questions and resources that came up in the interviews, as other students/parents may also benefit from the question/resource:

Q: What will the students be learning this year?

At the curriculum afternoon, the Long Range Plans were distributed, and can be downloaded here. Please note these are broad plans and will be changed to suit the needs of the students. For a more detailed look into what we are learning each week, check this blog for weekly updates.

Information on the specific expectations that will be covered can be found in the Ontario curriculum documents.

Q: What does the difference between Level 3 and Level 4 Writing and other subjects?
The Ontario government provides teachers with characteristics of each achievement level in documents known as exemplars. The exemplar also continues examples of the different levels of writing, so that teachers can compare student work to determine the actual level.

Here is the Writing exemplar for Grades 1-8: http://schoolweb.tdsb.on.ca/Portals/briarcrest/docs/writing18ex.pdf

Before each assignment, I also give the students Success Criteria, and we go over them in class. In order to achieve a Level 3, students must have met all the success criteria. Students who go above and beyond, exceeding expectations, will receive a Level 4.

Here are some examples of Success Criteria we have used in our class:
Writing – Personal Narratives
Writing – Essays
Science – Mid-unit Assessment (Exercise Routine & Oral Presentation)
Visual Art – One-Point Perspective City Scape or Gallery (often times, they are displayed as Anchor Charts in the classroom):

Q: What resources can help my child develop his/her problem solving skills in Math?
The University of Waterloo has a Problem of the Week program, for Grades 3/4 and 5/6. You can subscribe to the weekly email to receive the problems. The following week, you will receive a new problem as well as the solution to the previous problem. 

Q: I want to help my child in Science and Social Studies, but there is no textbook, what can I do?
For our Science and Social Studies programs, I try to mainly use hands-on activities and experiments to help students grasp concepts and ideas, and develop skills, so that their learning is not just memorizing facts. This also allows me to suit the different learning modality of the students (e.g., some learn visual, others kinetically, musically, or aurally). I do give students hand-outs as part of the activities and experiments, and students are welcomed to take them home to show parents. Please remind your student to bring their folders back to school every day, as they will need them in class.

In class, we use a variety of non-fiction texts to support our learning, and I have bins of books in the classroom related to the topic we’re studying (e.g., currently we have bins of books about the First Nations and the Body Systems). If you would like to help your child at home in the areas of Science or Social Studies, you can help your child borrow non-fiction books from the local library or find websites/articles related to the topic we are studying. By doing extra reading, students will be able to make better connections to their new learning in class, and have a larger schema (prior knowledge) to draw from. Alternately, students can also access the TDSB virtual library to the resources there.

As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me.  You can write a note in your child's planner or give me a call at 416-396-2460.