Dear Parent(s), “Reading is the Key!” That is our official theme for Pine City Schools. The following is an explanation of my expectations for your child and how the grading process works. The reading grade is a combination of grades from your child’s daily work, lesson tests, and Scholastic Reading Counts. There are six themes in 4th grade, and our first theme is called Reaching Out. The Scholastic Reading Counts program continually checks comprehension. When your child has read a book, he/she will take a computer quiz on that story. Each book is worth points depending on the difficulty of the story. To pass the quiz and receive the points, seven out of the ten questions must be answered correctly. The goal for this quarter is to reach 20 points. The English grade is made up of your child’s grades in daily work, the lesson tests, and writing projects. Each quarter will have a different project. I will send home the rough draft each time with a list of the characteristics of that form of writing. I ask that you help them with their proof reading. We will also do revising and proof reading here in class. The spelling grade is mainly made up of the spelling tests. Each week you will see the spelling words on a list your child brings home. On Wednesday we take a pretest. If your child passes the test, he/she is done with the basic word test and can concentrate on the challenge words. If the test is not passed on Wednesday, it is taken again on Friday. In order to earn an A in spelling, your child must pass all the basic word tests and do well on the challenge tests. Each week there is daily work including a practice assignment and pretest corrections. To prepare you child for success, along with the school reading curriculum, I will also be using Time for Kids (a news magazine), many vocabulary boosters, test prep activities, trade books, reading to kindergarteners and a writing project with 1st graders. If you ever have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me. Mrs. Olson 629-4254 email -[email protected]