ART INSTITUTE VIRTUAL TOURS https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCSno6CIIyU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGAgl_ou9og https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ep5hQD-ATE RIVER VALLEY ELEMENTARY
THREE OAKS CAMPUS
MRS. RINGLER'S FIFTH GRADE
March 30, 2018
Here is a link to Mrs. VPC's
Art Studio Assemblage Project:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1mjPAHB5YHVoMYZe4Mf1k9Ie-jIRJqlUr3Hz8jIU-N6A/edit#slide=id.p
HAVE A RELAXING SPRING BREAK...
can you believe we only have 9 weeks left?
Be thinking about who you might want "to be"
for the Wax Museum Project.
ART INSTITUTE VIRTUAL TOURS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCSno6CIIyU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGAgl_ou9og
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ep5hQD-ATE
Success, Nothing Less!
Mrs. Ringler's FIFTH GRADERS!
*****************************************
DON'T FORGET TO USE THE TABS AT THE TOP OF THE PAGE FOR MORE INFORMATION...Especially the "more" button.
You really need to check out the Homework and Assignments Tab. There are many hot-linked websites that reinforce and extend what we are studying in class located in my teaching plans.
Each week I will look over my notes and acknowledge the students who achieved certain milestones. I will list them on The Wall of Fame. I hope you see your child’s name often, and recognize that we all have setbacks and successes all the time. While I applaud all accomplishments, unfortunately I can’t list them all. Please celebrate with your child as she discusses what she has done at school!
Places are proper nouns and must start with a capital letter and be spelled correctly on our News Currents Map each week. Both science and social studies emphasize concepts and main ideas, but also I am checking to see if your child can quote accurately from text and transfer thinking from text to question.
One of our essential standards is Multiplication Fact Fluency. Please encourage your child to practice his Multiplication and Division Facts at home. It really is just rote memorization but will be so useful as your child gets progressively deeper into mathematics.
Points or Reading Levels have been set to increase depth of knowledge. Once your child reaches his/her point goal she may choose to read books out of the ZPD range but should always try to push themselves toward a deeper level of knowledge. Students should try to read different genres than they are comfortable with and should also explore non-fiction texts. It is imperative that your child reads at home. You need to enforce this. Reading has to be practiced in order to grow and develop. Students who do NOT make their AR GOAL will not have the privilege of last recess until they reach their 2nd Marking Period Goal. Obviously they need more time with a book in front of them, and I can give them the extra time here at school. Continue to encourage your child to persevere, listen, ask, use self-control, and always do his personal best. Thank you for sharing your child with me!
Please feel welcome in our classroom. Parent and Community Involvement is one of the goals we are working hard to establish. You are a valuable partner in your child's education. We can work together to guarantee the environment your child needs to be successful. Please stress to your child to always do his/her personal best and to persevere to demonstrate his/her depth of knowledge. It does matter!
We "AIM TO ACHIEVE",
"EDUCATE TO ELEVATE",
IN ORDER TO MAKE OUR ULTIMATE GOAL....
"SUCCESS, NOTHING LESS"!
INTERESTING READS:
Five Things Teachers Want Parents to Know
Kyle Redford. Sept. 17, 2013
Every year, when I drive to work on the first day of school, I cross paths with families on their way to new beginnings. Most are not heading to my classroom, but they could be. I see the emotion and expectation on their faces -- kids who are anxious about their new classes and parents, quietly hoping that that their child will be understood, nurtured and appreciated. It's humbling that they are trusting my colleagues and me to make that happen. Seeing them reminds me of the unspoken contract between teachers and our students' parents. I hope they know how seriously I take their trust -- and my job.
And, while we're at it, there are some other important things I want them to know.
1. This year is not going to be perfect, but that is OK. There are things you should not try to "fix." There is a solid chance that I am not the teacher that you were imagining for your child. Maybe you have reservations about my "job share," the large amount of reading and writing assigned in my class, or the small amount of homework (to make space for more reading). Maybe you are fine with me, but the class is loaded with "all the loud sporty boys" and your son is an introverted naturalist. Like any attentive parent, you are worried that he will have a horrible year.
It's hard to resist the impulse to "fix" problems for our children, but sometimes we need to. Challenges and problem-solving can help build resiliency, and there may be times when I push your child out of his comfort zone. Learning to deal with discomfort builds his coping skills. As your child continues his educational journey, not all of his teachers or classes will be perfect matches. No parent wants to raise a "hothouse flower." Therefore, it is critical that your child experience less than ideal situations -- mostly so he knows he can.
2. Sometimes teachers need you to help "fix" things. Sounds contradictory, I know, but there are times when parents need to get involved. Even the most experienced and well-intended teachers will not detect all the important issues. For many reasons, and in many ways, students cleverly hide their school struggles from their teachers. We need parents to be our "extra set of eyes and ears." If your daughter is melting down at home because of academic or social stresses, we rely on your reports so that we can figure out how to better support her. Maybe there is an upsetting and distracting social dynamic at play or secret bullying taking place at school. We need to strategize solutions with her and intervene if there is a bully.
Perhaps your child feels like she can't keep up with workload expectations. She is staying up late, not getting the chance to play or pursue outside interests. Sometimes there are undiagnosed learning issues at play, but if parents disguise the outside supports that are required to complete work at home, those issues might never get identified and addressed.
3. When your child makes mistakes (and he will), resist the urge to protect him from the consequences. Sometimes children make bad decisions: they do or say unkind things, they act impulsively, they shirk responsibilities, or they choose not to do their schoolwork or study for tests. When they do, they need to inhabit their choices, even when that might involve painful consequences like poor grades, disciplinary action or a loss of privileges. That is how children learn. Parents who blindly defend their child, based solely on their child's re-telling of the situation, run the risk of being misled. Even worse, they can inadvertently communicate to their child that being caught making a mistake is the problem -- rather than making the mistake itself. When children are allowed to own their failures, they usually become more competent and responsible as a result.
4. How you praise your child is very important. Carol Dweck initiated a growing body of research on the impact of different kinds of praise that confirms what teachers regularly observe: Tell your child she is "smart" and she will become risk-averse. Her main goal will be to maintain the "smart" label so she will become less interested in trying difficult things. But praise her for her effort and she will be more likely to embrace challenges and grapple with tough problems. Effort is within a child's control. Intelligence refers to something that seems fixed and innate and out of their control. Also, the more honest and specific the praise, the better. Praise that identifies what your child has done well offers a road map for continued success. Inflated compliments, aimed at building your child's self-esteem, often have the opposite effect, and they diminish your credibility.
5. If you have an issue with a teacher, tell the teacher. Most teachers can handle feedback, particularly if it is respectful and assumes good intentions. I hate to admit it, but I sometimes get things wrong. I want to know if I have unintentionally hurt your child's feelings, made an insensitive assumption or executed a flawed decision. Perhaps he reports that I don't like him. We need to talk. Ideally, if it is your child's issue, you should encourage him to speak directly with the teacher. But sometimes a complex issue requires an adult communicator. Every teacher has his or her preferred mode of communication, but if something is irritating or upsetting you, we want a chance to address the issue before you complain to other parents or our supervisors.
Teaching is obviously a messy, complicated business -- and one that most teachers take very seriously. You entrust us with your children for the school year and we are honored. But the relationship is not one-way. A generous, thoughtful and trusting collaboration between home and school is the best way to achieve the school year you are hoping for.
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Fifth grade is an exciting year. Students will learn much about the early history of the United States, Michigan History, Current World Events, Geography, Math, Language Arts, Science and Reading will also be part of our day. Art, music, physical education, and computers/technology will be important parts of our week during the year, too.
Are We Raising a Generation of Helpless Kids?
Mickey Goodman
Warning signs
When a college freshman received a C- on her first test, she literally had a meltdown in class. Sobbing, she texted her mother who called back, demanding to talk to the professor immediately (he, of course, declined). Another mother accompanied her child on a job interview, then wondered why he didn't get the job.
A major employer reported that during a job interview, a potential employee told him that she would have his job within 18 months. It didn't even cross her mind that he had worked 20 years to achieve his goal.
Sound crazy?
Sadly, the stories are all true, says Tim Elmore, founder and president of a non-profit, Growing Leaders, and author of the "Habitudes®" series of books, teacher guides, DVD kits and survey courses. "Gen Y (and iY) kids born between 1984 and 2002 have grown up in an age of instant gratification. iPhones, iPads, instant messaging and immediate access to data is at their fingertips," he says. "Their grades in school are often negotiated by parents rather than earned and they are praised for accomplishing little. They have hundreds of Facebook and Twitter 'friends,' but often few real connections."
To turn the tide, Growing Leaders is working with 5,000 public schools, universities, civic organizations, sports teams and corporations across the country and internationally to help turn young people -- particularly those 16 to 24 -- into leaders. "We want to give them the tools they lack before they've gone through three marriages and several failed business ventures," he says.
But why have parents shifted from teaching self-reliance to becoming hovering helicopter parents who want to protect their children at all costs?
"I think it began in the fall of 1982, when seven people died after taking extra-strength Tylenol laced with poison after it left the factory," he says. Halloween was just around the corner, and parents began checking every item in the loot bags. Homemade brownies and cookies (usually the most coveted items) hit the garbage; unwrapped candy followed close behind.
That led to an obsession with their children's safety in every aspect of their lives. Instead of letting them go outside to play, parents filled their kid's spare time with organized activities, did their homework for them, resolved their conflicts at school with both friends and teachers, and handed out trophies for just showing up.
"These well-intentioned messages of 'you're special' have come back to haunt us," Elmore says. "We are consumed with protecting them instead of preparing them for the future. We haven't let them fall, fail and fear. The problem is that if they don't take risks early on like climbing the monkey bars and possibly falling off, they are fearful of every new endeavor at age 29."
Psychologists and psychiatrists are seeing more and more young people having a quarter-life crisis and more cases of clinical depression. The reason? Young people tell them it's because they haven't yet made their first million or found the perfect mate.
Teachers, coaches and executives complain that Gen Y kids have short attention spans and rely on external, instead of internal motivation. The goal of Growing Leaders is to reverse the trend and help young people become more creative and self-motivated so they can rely on themselves and don't need external motivation.
Family psychologist John Rosemond agrees. In a February 2 article in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, he points out that new research finds that rewards often backfire, producing the opposite effect of that intended. When an aggressive child is rewarded for not being aggressive for a short period of time, he is likely to repeat the bad behavior to keep the rewards coming.
Where did we go wrong?
• We've told our kids to dream big - and now any small act seems insignificant. In the great scheme of things, kids can't instantly change the world. They have to take small, first steps - which seem like no progress at all to them. Nothing short of instant fame is good enough. "It's time we tell them that doing great things starts with accomplishing small goals," he says.
• We've told our kids that they are special - for no reason, even though they didn't display excellent character or skill, and now they demand special treatment. The problem is that kids assumed they didn't have to do anything special in order to be special.
• We gave our kids every comfort - and now they can't delay gratification. And we heard the message loud and clear. We, too, pace in front of the microwave, become angry when things don't go our way at work, rage at traffic. "Now it's time to relay the importance of waiting for the things we want, deferring to the wishes of others and surrendering personal desires in the pursuit of something bigger than 'me,'" Elmore says.
• We made our kid's happiness a central goal - and now it's difficult for them to generate happiness -- the by-product of living a meaningful life. "It's time we tell them that our goal is to enable them to discover their gifts, passions and purposes in life so they can help others. Happiness comes as a result."
The uncomfortable solutions:
"We need to let our kids fail at 12 - which is far better than at 42," he says. "We need to tell them the truth (with grace) that the notion of 'you can do anything you want' is not necessarily true."
Kids need to align their dreams with their gifts. Every girl with a lovely voice won't sing at the Met; every Little League baseball star won't play for the major leagues.
• Allow them to get into trouble and accept the consequences. It's okay to make a "C-." Next time, they'll try harder to make an "A".
• Balance autonomy with responsibility. If your son borrows the car, he also has to re-fill the tank.
• Collaborate with the teacher, but don't do the work for your child. If he fails a test, let him take the consequences.
"We need to become velvet bricks," Elmore says, "soft on the outside and hard on the inside and allow children to fail while they are young in order to succeed."
What I would like to tell my son's new fifth grade teacher:
Allison Tate Writer, mother of four
What I Would Like to Tell My Son's New Fifth Grade Teacher
Posted: 08/30/2012
Hi, I'm Allison. This is my son, my oldest child. He's in your class this year.
At the risk of sounding like "That Mom," I want to tell you there was a time -- a time not that long ago -- when I used to tear up at the thought of dropping my baby off at preschool for the first time. Back then, he was a somewhat pudgy toddler, not this gangly, long-limbed creature I present to you today. I used to push him in the swing at the playground, giving myself panic attacks thinking about a day when I would have to leave him at a school. I didn't think I could entrust the health and safety of my firstborn child to anyone, ever. Visions of Dustin Hoffman in Kramer vs. Kramer jogging his bleeding son to the emergency room after he fell from the jungle gym played on "repeat" in my hormone-addled brain.
Then I had another baby, and suddenly preschool didn't seem so ominous. It seemed, instead, like a magical place that might ensure my sanity. I did cry a little that first day of preschool drop-off, but I haven't cried since. This boy of mine loves school. He thrives in a classroom. I can't feel sad about his first days anymore.
But just so you know, you have big shoes to fill. I loved my fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Jean Dalton. I love her even more in retrospect, knowing she was the last teacher who was able to coddle me a little and let me be a child and not an emerging adult. Sixth grade -- middle school and lockers and puberty and everything that comes with it -- was a bit of a harsh wake-up call afterward, it's true. But thank goodness I had that one last year to be a child and to be treated like one. I am hoping my son gets the same opportunity, because adulthood is so very much longer than childhood, with much less time for pleasure reading and arts and crafts. And make no mistake, he is still a child. He still makes up games with his brothers on rainy afternoons, still kisses the rolls on his infant sister's neck, still changes the channel when Monster House is on TV because it scares him just a little, even though he won't admit it. I want him to be able to savor this last year of elementary school. Thank you for preparing him for middle school, but thank you just as much for recognizing that he still has some baby teeth to lose.
You'll have a part of my heart this year in your classroom, so be gentle with him. He loves school and still has the swagger and sheltered confidence of a child who hasn't yet encountered algebraic functions or Shakespeare's puns. He still thinks he owns the world and that he is invincible. While I know this can't last forever, I am holding on with both hands to the dwindling days left when he doesn't worry about how his hair looks or how a grade might taint his GPA.
Please encourage him, please challenge him, and please appreciate that he is actually a really good kid. He's wicked smart, too, but don't tell him so. Ask him to work for his learning and to put effort into his assignments. It will mean so much more to him and for him in the long run. Push him. See what he can do.
Be patient with me when I email you with my concerns. Some will be valid, most will be silly, but just know I am trying hard not to be a helicopter parent or invade your space. It's so hard these days to know what a "good" parent looks like -- I'm told not to hover, but I should still be involved and engaged and advocate for my child. I'm not even sure if I am supposed to check his homework or not; some teachers want me to, others don't. I'm excited to help in the classroom, but I don't want you to think I'm trying to be all up in your business.
I trust my kid will be just fine, and I'm excited to see what you will do with him. I'm just trying to be a good parent, whatever that does actually mean, and I'm not crazy. I promise. Probably. I hope. When all is said and done, I just want my kid to be happy and to have a good year, and I know you want the same. I'm here to support you both.
What I actually said to my son's new fifth grade teacher at Meet the Teacher last week:
Hi, I'm Allison. This is my son, my oldest child. He's in your class this year.
So, where is his desk?
Neuroscience may seem like an advanced subject of study, perhaps best reserved for college or even graduate school. Two researchers from Temple University in Philadelphia propose that it be taught earlier, however—much earlier. As in first grade.
In a study published in this month’s issue of the journal Early Education and Development, psychologists Peter Marshall and Christina Comalli began by surveying children aged four to 13 to discover what they already knew about the brain. Previous research had found that elementary school pupils typically have a limited understanding of the brain and how it functions, believing it to be something like “a container for storing memories and facts.”
Marshall and Comalli’s questionnaire turned up the same uncertain grasp of the topic, which the researchers attributed to several factors. First, while parents and teachers talk often with young children about parts of the body and how they work, they rarely mention this most important organ. (A 2005 study by another group of scientists found that young children hear very few instances of the word brain in everyday conversation.) Secondly, children can’t observe their own brains, and so are left to guess about what’s going on inside their heads—not unlike the state of ignorance in which adults dwelled for many centuries before the founding of neuroscience as a scientific discipline. And finally, most students aren’t formally taught much about the brain until at least middle school. Marshall and Comalli believe such instruction can and should begin much sooner.
A 20-minute lesson about the brain was enough to improve knowledge of brain functioning.
To that end, they designed a 20-minute lesson about the brain and delivered it to a group of first-grade students. Even this brief intervention, the psychologists report, “was enough to improve their knowledge of brain functioning as assessed three weeks later”; a control group of first graders, taught for 20 minutes about honeybees, showed no such improvement. Marshall and Comalli’s neuroscience lesson was especially focused on teaching children about the role of the brain in sensory activities—that the brain is not just “for thinking,” as many kids assume, but also for seeing, hearing, smelling, and feeling.
But the success of their effort opens another possibility. In a well-known body of research, Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck has demonstrated that teaching students about how their brains work—in particular, that the brain is plastic and can develop new capacities with effort and practice—makes a big difference in how constructively kids deal with mistakes and setbacks, and how motivated they are to persist until they achieve mastery.
Dweck’s landmark studies were carried out with fifth-graders, and her program Brainology, a computerized tutorial on brain function, is designed for students in fifth through ninth grades. But why wait to introduce these crucial concepts? Dweck’s own research has found that children’s attitudes and behaviors regarding achievement and failure are already in place by preschool. Parents’ and educators’ messages about the malleability of the brain and the importance of effort must begin even earlier: talk of “head, shoulders, knees and toes” and “this little piggy went to market” should also make room for mentions of growing brains.
What’s the key to effective learning? One intriguing body of research suggests a rather riddle-like answer: It’s not just what you know. It’s what you know about what you know.
To put it in more straightforward terms, anytime a student learns, he or she has to bring in two kinds of prior knowledge: knowledge about the subject at hand (say, mathematics or history) and knowledge about how learning works. Parents and educators are pretty good at imparting the first kind of knowledge. We’re comfortable talking about concrete information: names, dates, numbers, facts. But the guidance we offer on the act of learning itself—the “metacognitive” aspects of learning—is more hit-or-miss, and it shows.
In our schools, “the emphasis is on what students need to learn, whereas little emphasis—if any—is placed on training students how they should go about learning the content and what skills will promote efficient studying to support robust learning,” writes John Dunlosky, professor of psychology at Kent State University in Ohio, in an article just published in American Educator. However, he continues, “teaching students how to learn is as important as teaching them content, because acquiring both the right learning strategies and background knowledge is important—if not essential—for promoting lifelong learning.”
“Teaching students how to learn is as important as teaching them content.”Research has found that students vary widely in what they know about how to learn, according to a team of educational researchers from Australia writing last year in the journalInstructional Science. Most striking, low-achieving students show “substantial deficits” in their awareness of the cognitive and metacognitive strategies that lead to effective learning—suggesting that these students’ struggles may be due in part to a gap in their knowledge about how learning works.
Teaching students good learning strategies would ensure that they know how to acquire new knowledge, which leads to improved learning outcomes, writes lead author Helen Askell-Williams of Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia. And studies bear this out. Askell-Williams cites as one example a recent finding by PISA, the Programme for International Student Assessment, which administers academic proficiency tests to students around the globe, and place American students in the mediocre middle. “Students who use appropriate strategies to understand and remember what they read, such as underlining important parts of the texts or discussing what they read with other people, perform at least 73 points higher in the PISA assessment—that is, one full proficiency level or nearly two full school years—than students who use these strategies the least,” the PISA report reads.
[RELATED: What Students Should Know About Their Own Brains]
In their own study, Askell-Williams and her coauthors took as their subjects 1,388 Australian high school students. They first administered an assessment to find out how much the students knew about cognitive and metacognitive learning strategies—and found that their familiarity with these tactics was “less than optimal.”
Students can assess their own awareness by asking themselves which of the following learning strategies they regularly use (the response to each item is ideally “yes”):
• I draw pictures or diagrams to help me understand this subject.
• I make up questions that I try to answer about this subject.
• When I am learning something new in this subject, I think back to what I already know about it.
• I discuss what I am doing in this subject with others.
• I practice things over and over until I know them well in this subject.
• I think about my thinking, to check if I understand the ideas in this subject.
• When I don’t understand something in this subject I go back over it again.
• I make a note of things that I don’t understand very well in this subject, so that I can follow them up.
• When I have finished an activity in this subject I look back to see how well I did.
• I organize my time to manage my learning in this subject.
• I make plans for how to do the activities in this subject.
Askell-Williams and her colleagues found that those students who used fewer of these strategies reported more difficulty coping with their schoolwork. For the second part of their study, they designed a series of proactive questions for teachers to drop into the lesson on a “just-in-time” basis—at the moments when students could use the prompting most. These questions, too, can be adopted by any parent or educator to make sure that children know not just what is to be learned, but how.
• What is the topic for today’s lesson?
• What will be important ideas in today’s lesson?
• What do you already know about this topic?
• What can you relate this to?
• What will you do to remember the key ideas?
• Is there anything about this topic you don’t understand, or are not clear about?
Reading is so essential in everyday life that a parents biggest wish is for their child to learn to read so that they can succeed in life. As a teacher, that is my job. But as a parent, you can help your child to begin that journey well before they ever reach the door of their classroom. How you ask? I promise that it is not earth shattering by any means.
Read to your child. Let me explain why this one is something that parents get told at every turn. Your child idolizes you. You are in control, in charge, and omnipotent in your house. They respect you and want to be just like you. Therefore they soak in every word that is said to them. When you read to your child, they are beginning to learn the overall concepts of print. How to hold a book, turn the pages, up vs. down, and front vs. back. The more you read to your child the more fluent they will read when they learn. They hear you read character voices and begin to comprehend the story. As a teacher, we definitely know who has been read to and who has not.
Ask your child questions. At the end of the day, we as parents are tired. But it’s worth those extra minutes to ask your child about the story you just read. This is a basic, but huge concept. Your child will spend their days listening to stories being read to them and they will be asked questions to gauge their understanding. Did you like it? What was your favorite part? Those questions quickly turn into comprehension questions. Who were the characters? The setting? What was the conflict in the story? Give them a jump on their comprehension.
Get caught! Reading that is. Back to the ‘imitation is the best kind of flattery.’ Your child wants to be like you. So do what you want them to do! If you begin reading, your child will know that it’s fun and exciting. You can even spend your last 20 minutes before bed as a family reading time. If your child spends 20 minutes reading, or being read to, each school day, they will have read over 3,600 minutes which is somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,800,000 words a year!
Make it fun for them. Reading, when made out to be work, isn’t going to catch your child’s interest. But when it’s made to be fun, they will enjoy it and become a more intelligent and well-rounded child. Their knowledge of places and ideas will grow, as will their vocabulary.
Teach them the basics. This is not labor intensive. The more they know, the more they’ll grow.
As a parent, your child’s education is important to you. Here’s the last, and most important piece of advice I can give, pat yourself on the back. I mean it! A parent who cares and wants the best for their child is one whose child will succeed.
Here is a handy map you can click to find fun and interesting things to do. http://www.homeschoolbuyersco-op.org/field-trips/
We "AIM TO ACHIEVE",
"EDUCATE TO ELEVATE",
IN ORDER TO MAKE OUR ULTIMATE GOAL....
"SUCCESS, NOTHING LESS"!
INTERESTING READS:
Five Things Teachers Want Parents to Know
Kyle Redford. Sept. 17, 2013
Every year, when I drive to work on the first day of school, I cross paths with families on their way to new beginnings. Most are not heading to my classroom, but they could be. I see the emotion and expectation on their faces -- kids who are anxious about their new classes and parents, quietly hoping that that their child will be understood, nurtured and appreciated. It's humbling that they are trusting my colleagues and me to make that happen. Seeing them reminds me of the unspoken contract between teachers and our students' parents. I hope they know how seriously I take their trust -- and my job.
And, while we're at it, there are some other important things I want them to know.
1. This year is not going to be perfect, but that is OK. There are things you should not try to "fix." There is a solid chance that I am not the teacher that you were imagining for your child. Maybe you have reservations about my "job share," the large amount of reading and writing assigned in my class, or the small amount of homework (to make space for more reading). Maybe you are fine with me, but the class is loaded with "all the loud sporty boys" and your son is an introverted naturalist. Like any attentive parent, you are worried that he will have a horrible year.
It's hard to resist the impulse to "fix" problems for our children, but sometimes we need to. Challenges and problem-solving can help build resiliency, and there may be times when I push your child out of his comfort zone. Learning to deal with discomfort builds his coping skills. As your child continues his educational journey, not all of his teachers or classes will be perfect matches. No parent wants to raise a "hothouse flower." Therefore, it is critical that your child experience less than ideal situations -- mostly so he knows he can.
2. Sometimes teachers need you to help "fix" things. Sounds contradictory, I know, but there are times when parents need to get involved. Even the most experienced and well-intended teachers will not detect all the important issues. For many reasons, and in many ways, students cleverly hide their school struggles from their teachers. We need parents to be our "extra set of eyes and ears." If your daughter is melting down at home because of academic or social stresses, we rely on your reports so that we can figure out how to better support her. Maybe there is an upsetting and distracting social dynamic at play or secret bullying taking place at school. We need to strategize solutions with her and intervene if there is a bully.
Perhaps your child feels like she can't keep up with workload expectations. She is staying up late, not getting the chance to play or pursue outside interests. Sometimes there are undiagnosed learning issues at play, but if parents disguise the outside supports that are required to complete work at home, those issues might never get identified and addressed.
3. When your child makes mistakes (and he will), resist the urge to protect him from the consequences. Sometimes children make bad decisions: they do or say unkind things, they act impulsively, they shirk responsibilities, or they choose not to do their schoolwork or study for tests. When they do, they need to inhabit their choices, even when that might involve painful consequences like poor grades, disciplinary action or a loss of privileges. That is how children learn. Parents who blindly defend their child, based solely on their child's re-telling of the situation, run the risk of being misled. Even worse, they can inadvertently communicate to their child that being caught making a mistake is the problem -- rather than making the mistake itself. When children are allowed to own their failures, they usually become more competent and responsible as a result.
4. How you praise your child is very important. Carol Dweck initiated a growing body of research on the impact of different kinds of praise that confirms what teachers regularly observe: Tell your child she is "smart" and she will become risk-averse. Her main goal will be to maintain the "smart" label so she will become less interested in trying difficult things. But praise her for her effort and she will be more likely to embrace challenges and grapple with tough problems. Effort is within a child's control. Intelligence refers to something that seems fixed and innate and out of their control. Also, the more honest and specific the praise, the better. Praise that identifies what your child has done well offers a road map for continued success. Inflated compliments, aimed at building your child's self-esteem, often have the opposite effect, and they diminish your credibility.
5. If you have an issue with a teacher, tell the teacher. Most teachers can handle feedback, particularly if it is respectful and assumes good intentions. I hate to admit it, but I sometimes get things wrong. I want to know if I have unintentionally hurt your child's feelings, made an insensitive assumption or executed a flawed decision. Perhaps he reports that I don't like him. We need to talk. Ideally, if it is your child's issue, you should encourage him to speak directly with the teacher. But sometimes a complex issue requires an adult communicator. Every teacher has his or her preferred mode of communication, but if something is irritating or upsetting you, we want a chance to address the issue before you complain to other parents or our supervisors.
Teaching is obviously a messy, complicated business -- and one that most teachers take very seriously. You entrust us with your children for the school year and we are honored. But the relationship is not one-way. A generous, thoughtful and trusting collaboration between home and school is the best way to achieve the school year you are hoping for.
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Fifth grade is an exciting year. Students will learn much about the early history of the United States, Michigan History, Current World Events, Geography, Math, Language Arts, Science and Reading will also be part of our day. Art, music, physical education, and computers/technology will be important parts of our week during the year, too.
Are We Raising a Generation of Helpless Kids?
Mickey Goodman
Warning signs
When a college freshman received a C- on her first test, she literally had a meltdown in class. Sobbing, she texted her mother who called back, demanding to talk to the professor immediately (he, of course, declined). Another mother accompanied her child on a job interview, then wondered why he didn't get the job.
A major employer reported that during a job interview, a potential employee told him that she would have his job within 18 months. It didn't even cross her mind that he had worked 20 years to achieve his goal.
Sound crazy?
Sadly, the stories are all true, says Tim Elmore, founder and president of a non-profit, Growing Leaders, and author of the "Habitudes®" series of books, teacher guides, DVD kits and survey courses. "Gen Y (and iY) kids born between 1984 and 2002 have grown up in an age of instant gratification. iPhones, iPads, instant messaging and immediate access to data is at their fingertips," he says. "Their grades in school are often negotiated by parents rather than earned and they are praised for accomplishing little. They have hundreds of Facebook and Twitter 'friends,' but often few real connections."
To turn the tide, Growing Leaders is working with 5,000 public schools, universities, civic organizations, sports teams and corporations across the country and internationally to help turn young people -- particularly those 16 to 24 -- into leaders. "We want to give them the tools they lack before they've gone through three marriages and several failed business ventures," he says.
But why have parents shifted from teaching self-reliance to becoming hovering helicopter parents who want to protect their children at all costs?
"I think it began in the fall of 1982, when seven people died after taking extra-strength Tylenol laced with poison after it left the factory," he says. Halloween was just around the corner, and parents began checking every item in the loot bags. Homemade brownies and cookies (usually the most coveted items) hit the garbage; unwrapped candy followed close behind.
That led to an obsession with their children's safety in every aspect of their lives. Instead of letting them go outside to play, parents filled their kid's spare time with organized activities, did their homework for them, resolved their conflicts at school with both friends and teachers, and handed out trophies for just showing up.
"These well-intentioned messages of 'you're special' have come back to haunt us," Elmore says. "We are consumed with protecting them instead of preparing them for the future. We haven't let them fall, fail and fear. The problem is that if they don't take risks early on like climbing the monkey bars and possibly falling off, they are fearful of every new endeavor at age 29."
Psychologists and psychiatrists are seeing more and more young people having a quarter-life crisis and more cases of clinical depression. The reason? Young people tell them it's because they haven't yet made their first million or found the perfect mate.
Teachers, coaches and executives complain that Gen Y kids have short attention spans and rely on external, instead of internal motivation. The goal of Growing Leaders is to reverse the trend and help young people become more creative and self-motivated so they can rely on themselves and don't need external motivation.
Family psychologist John Rosemond agrees. In a February 2 article in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, he points out that new research finds that rewards often backfire, producing the opposite effect of that intended. When an aggressive child is rewarded for not being aggressive for a short period of time, he is likely to repeat the bad behavior to keep the rewards coming.
Where did we go wrong?
• We've told our kids to dream big - and now any small act seems insignificant. In the great scheme of things, kids can't instantly change the world. They have to take small, first steps - which seem like no progress at all to them. Nothing short of instant fame is good enough. "It's time we tell them that doing great things starts with accomplishing small goals," he says.
• We've told our kids that they are special - for no reason, even though they didn't display excellent character or skill, and now they demand special treatment. The problem is that kids assumed they didn't have to do anything special in order to be special.
• We gave our kids every comfort - and now they can't delay gratification. And we heard the message loud and clear. We, too, pace in front of the microwave, become angry when things don't go our way at work, rage at traffic. "Now it's time to relay the importance of waiting for the things we want, deferring to the wishes of others and surrendering personal desires in the pursuit of something bigger than 'me,'" Elmore says.
• We made our kid's happiness a central goal - and now it's difficult for them to generate happiness -- the by-product of living a meaningful life. "It's time we tell them that our goal is to enable them to discover their gifts, passions and purposes in life so they can help others. Happiness comes as a result."
The uncomfortable solutions:
"We need to let our kids fail at 12 - which is far better than at 42," he says. "We need to tell them the truth (with grace) that the notion of 'you can do anything you want' is not necessarily true."
Kids need to align their dreams with their gifts. Every girl with a lovely voice won't sing at the Met; every Little League baseball star won't play for the major leagues.
• Allow them to get into trouble and accept the consequences. It's okay to make a "C-." Next time, they'll try harder to make an "A".
• Balance autonomy with responsibility. If your son borrows the car, he also has to re-fill the tank.
• Collaborate with the teacher, but don't do the work for your child. If he fails a test, let him take the consequences.
"We need to become velvet bricks," Elmore says, "soft on the outside and hard on the inside and allow children to fail while they are young in order to succeed."
What I would like to tell my son's new fifth grade teacher:
Allison Tate Writer, mother of four
What I Would Like to Tell My Son's New Fifth Grade Teacher
Posted: 08/30/2012
Hi, I'm Allison. This is my son, my oldest child. He's in your class this year.
At the risk of sounding like "That Mom," I want to tell you there was a time -- a time not that long ago -- when I used to tear up at the thought of dropping my baby off at preschool for the first time. Back then, he was a somewhat pudgy toddler, not this gangly, long-limbed creature I present to you today. I used to push him in the swing at the playground, giving myself panic attacks thinking about a day when I would have to leave him at a school. I didn't think I could entrust the health and safety of my firstborn child to anyone, ever. Visions of Dustin Hoffman in Kramer vs. Kramer jogging his bleeding son to the emergency room after he fell from the jungle gym played on "repeat" in my hormone-addled brain.
Then I had another baby, and suddenly preschool didn't seem so ominous. It seemed, instead, like a magical place that might ensure my sanity. I did cry a little that first day of preschool drop-off, but I haven't cried since. This boy of mine loves school. He thrives in a classroom. I can't feel sad about his first days anymore.
But just so you know, you have big shoes to fill. I loved my fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Jean Dalton. I love her even more in retrospect, knowing she was the last teacher who was able to coddle me a little and let me be a child and not an emerging adult. Sixth grade -- middle school and lockers and puberty and everything that comes with it -- was a bit of a harsh wake-up call afterward, it's true. But thank goodness I had that one last year to be a child and to be treated like one. I am hoping my son gets the same opportunity, because adulthood is so very much longer than childhood, with much less time for pleasure reading and arts and crafts. And make no mistake, he is still a child. He still makes up games with his brothers on rainy afternoons, still kisses the rolls on his infant sister's neck, still changes the channel when Monster House is on TV because it scares him just a little, even though he won't admit it. I want him to be able to savor this last year of elementary school. Thank you for preparing him for middle school, but thank you just as much for recognizing that he still has some baby teeth to lose.
You'll have a part of my heart this year in your classroom, so be gentle with him. He loves school and still has the swagger and sheltered confidence of a child who hasn't yet encountered algebraic functions or Shakespeare's puns. He still thinks he owns the world and that he is invincible. While I know this can't last forever, I am holding on with both hands to the dwindling days left when he doesn't worry about how his hair looks or how a grade might taint his GPA.
Please encourage him, please challenge him, and please appreciate that he is actually a really good kid. He's wicked smart, too, but don't tell him so. Ask him to work for his learning and to put effort into his assignments. It will mean so much more to him and for him in the long run. Push him. See what he can do.
Be patient with me when I email you with my concerns. Some will be valid, most will be silly, but just know I am trying hard not to be a helicopter parent or invade your space. It's so hard these days to know what a "good" parent looks like -- I'm told not to hover, but I should still be involved and engaged and advocate for my child. I'm not even sure if I am supposed to check his homework or not; some teachers want me to, others don't. I'm excited to help in the classroom, but I don't want you to think I'm trying to be all up in your business.
I trust my kid will be just fine, and I'm excited to see what you will do with him. I'm just trying to be a good parent, whatever that does actually mean, and I'm not crazy. I promise. Probably. I hope. When all is said and done, I just want my kid to be happy and to have a good year, and I know you want the same. I'm here to support you both.
What I actually said to my son's new fifth grade teacher at Meet the Teacher last week:
Hi, I'm Allison. This is my son, my oldest child. He's in your class this year.
So, where is his desk?
Neuroscience may seem like an advanced subject of study, perhaps best reserved for college or even graduate school. Two researchers from Temple University in Philadelphia propose that it be taught earlier, however—much earlier. As in first grade.
In a study published in this month’s issue of the journal Early Education and Development, psychologists Peter Marshall and Christina Comalli began by surveying children aged four to 13 to discover what they already knew about the brain. Previous research had found that elementary school pupils typically have a limited understanding of the brain and how it functions, believing it to be something like “a container for storing memories and facts.”
Marshall and Comalli’s questionnaire turned up the same uncertain grasp of the topic, which the researchers attributed to several factors. First, while parents and teachers talk often with young children about parts of the body and how they work, they rarely mention this most important organ. (A 2005 study by another group of scientists found that young children hear very few instances of the word brain in everyday conversation.) Secondly, children can’t observe their own brains, and so are left to guess about what’s going on inside their heads—not unlike the state of ignorance in which adults dwelled for many centuries before the founding of neuroscience as a scientific discipline. And finally, most students aren’t formally taught much about the brain until at least middle school. Marshall and Comalli believe such instruction can and should begin much sooner.
A 20-minute lesson about the brain was enough to improve knowledge of brain functioning.
To that end, they designed a 20-minute lesson about the brain and delivered it to a group of first-grade students. Even this brief intervention, the psychologists report, “was enough to improve their knowledge of brain functioning as assessed three weeks later”; a control group of first graders, taught for 20 minutes about honeybees, showed no such improvement. Marshall and Comalli’s neuroscience lesson was especially focused on teaching children about the role of the brain in sensory activities—that the brain is not just “for thinking,” as many kids assume, but also for seeing, hearing, smelling, and feeling.
But the success of their effort opens another possibility. In a well-known body of research, Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck has demonstrated that teaching students about how their brains work—in particular, that the brain is plastic and can develop new capacities with effort and practice—makes a big difference in how constructively kids deal with mistakes and setbacks, and how motivated they are to persist until they achieve mastery.
Dweck’s landmark studies were carried out with fifth-graders, and her program Brainology, a computerized tutorial on brain function, is designed for students in fifth through ninth grades. But why wait to introduce these crucial concepts? Dweck’s own research has found that children’s attitudes and behaviors regarding achievement and failure are already in place by preschool. Parents’ and educators’ messages about the malleability of the brain and the importance of effort must begin even earlier: talk of “head, shoulders, knees and toes” and “this little piggy went to market” should also make room for mentions of growing brains.
What’s the key to effective learning? One intriguing body of research suggests a rather riddle-like answer: It’s not just what you know. It’s what you know about what you know.
To put it in more straightforward terms, anytime a student learns, he or she has to bring in two kinds of prior knowledge: knowledge about the subject at hand (say, mathematics or history) and knowledge about how learning works. Parents and educators are pretty good at imparting the first kind of knowledge. We’re comfortable talking about concrete information: names, dates, numbers, facts. But the guidance we offer on the act of learning itself—the “metacognitive” aspects of learning—is more hit-or-miss, and it shows.
In our schools, “the emphasis is on what students need to learn, whereas little emphasis—if any—is placed on training students how they should go about learning the content and what skills will promote efficient studying to support robust learning,” writes John Dunlosky, professor of psychology at Kent State University in Ohio, in an article just published in American Educator. However, he continues, “teaching students how to learn is as important as teaching them content, because acquiring both the right learning strategies and background knowledge is important—if not essential—for promoting lifelong learning.”
“Teaching students how to learn is as important as teaching them content.”Research has found that students vary widely in what they know about how to learn, according to a team of educational researchers from Australia writing last year in the journalInstructional Science. Most striking, low-achieving students show “substantial deficits” in their awareness of the cognitive and metacognitive strategies that lead to effective learning—suggesting that these students’ struggles may be due in part to a gap in their knowledge about how learning works.
Teaching students good learning strategies would ensure that they know how to acquire new knowledge, which leads to improved learning outcomes, writes lead author Helen Askell-Williams of Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia. And studies bear this out. Askell-Williams cites as one example a recent finding by PISA, the Programme for International Student Assessment, which administers academic proficiency tests to students around the globe, and place American students in the mediocre middle. “Students who use appropriate strategies to understand and remember what they read, such as underlining important parts of the texts or discussing what they read with other people, perform at least 73 points higher in the PISA assessment—that is, one full proficiency level or nearly two full school years—than students who use these strategies the least,” the PISA report reads.
[RELATED: What Students Should Know About Their Own Brains]
In their own study, Askell-Williams and her coauthors took as their subjects 1,388 Australian high school students. They first administered an assessment to find out how much the students knew about cognitive and metacognitive learning strategies—and found that their familiarity with these tactics was “less than optimal.”
Students can assess their own awareness by asking themselves which of the following learning strategies they regularly use (the response to each item is ideally “yes”):
• I draw pictures or diagrams to help me understand this subject.
• I make up questions that I try to answer about this subject.
• When I am learning something new in this subject, I think back to what I already know about it.
• I discuss what I am doing in this subject with others.
• I practice things over and over until I know them well in this subject.
• I think about my thinking, to check if I understand the ideas in this subject.
• When I don’t understand something in this subject I go back over it again.
• I make a note of things that I don’t understand very well in this subject, so that I can follow them up.
• When I have finished an activity in this subject I look back to see how well I did.
• I organize my time to manage my learning in this subject.
• I make plans for how to do the activities in this subject.
Askell-Williams and her colleagues found that those students who used fewer of these strategies reported more difficulty coping with their schoolwork. For the second part of their study, they designed a series of proactive questions for teachers to drop into the lesson on a “just-in-time” basis—at the moments when students could use the prompting most. These questions, too, can be adopted by any parent or educator to make sure that children know not just what is to be learned, but how.
• What is the topic for today’s lesson?
• What will be important ideas in today’s lesson?
• What do you already know about this topic?
• What can you relate this to?
• What will you do to remember the key ideas?
• Is there anything about this topic you don’t understand, or are not clear about?
Reading is so essential in everyday life that a parents biggest wish is for their child to learn to read so that they can succeed in life. As a teacher, that is my job. But as a parent, you can help your child to begin that journey well before they ever reach the door of their classroom. How you ask? I promise that it is not earth shattering by any means.
Read to your child. Let me explain why this one is something that parents get told at every turn. Your child idolizes you. You are in control, in charge, and omnipotent in your house. They respect you and want to be just like you. Therefore they soak in every word that is said to them. When you read to your child, they are beginning to learn the overall concepts of print. How to hold a book, turn the pages, up vs. down, and front vs. back. The more you read to your child the more fluent they will read when they learn. They hear you read character voices and begin to comprehend the story. As a teacher, we definitely know who has been read to and who has not.
Ask your child questions. At the end of the day, we as parents are tired. But it’s worth those extra minutes to ask your child about the story you just read. This is a basic, but huge concept. Your child will spend their days listening to stories being read to them and they will be asked questions to gauge their understanding. Did you like it? What was your favorite part? Those questions quickly turn into comprehension questions. Who were the characters? The setting? What was the conflict in the story? Give them a jump on their comprehension.
Get caught! Reading that is. Back to the ‘imitation is the best kind of flattery.’ Your child wants to be like you. So do what you want them to do! If you begin reading, your child will know that it’s fun and exciting. You can even spend your last 20 minutes before bed as a family reading time. If your child spends 20 minutes reading, or being read to, each school day, they will have read over 3,600 minutes which is somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,800,000 words a year!
Make it fun for them. Reading, when made out to be work, isn’t going to catch your child’s interest. But when it’s made to be fun, they will enjoy it and become a more intelligent and well-rounded child. Their knowledge of places and ideas will grow, as will their vocabulary.
Teach them the basics. This is not labor intensive. The more they know, the more they’ll grow.
As a parent, your child’s education is important to you. Here’s the last, and most important piece of advice I can give, pat yourself on the back. I mean it! A parent who cares and wants the best for their child is one whose child will succeed.
Here is a handy map you can click to find fun and interesting things to do. http://www.homeschoolbuyersco-op.org/field-trips/