Welcome to our team! We are excited about teaching your sixth grade students this year in math, science, English, and reading. Being on a team can help your child both academically and socially by creating a smaller "school within a school" for them. As teachers, we meet regularly to coordinate themes and vocabulary and plan interdisciplinary activities. Don’t be surprised if your child talks about using the writing traits to evaluate his or her science paragraph or learning about a famous mathematician in reading. We believe that this cross-curricular exposure enhances learning in all subject areas and helps provide a context for learning for each student. We also use our meetings to compare students’ progress in all classes on the team. This helps us monitor each student more carefully and guide them through the often dramatic transition from elementary school to middle school.

Conduct

If students choose to violate the team rule, we will all follow a similar plan of progressive discipline. Every effort will be made to help the student solve the problem through a conference with the teacher. However, further disruptions will lead to parent contacts and referrals to the counselor and dean. Isolation as well as at-home and after-school detentions may also be utilized as steps in the discipline plan where appropriate. arn.

Events

We feel that it is important to include celebrations as a regular part of the team experience and want as many students to participate as possible. We have our first after-school event planned for 2:20-3:20 on Wednesday, September 30, 2009. Everyone is invited for an afternoon of fun games and team bonding!

All subsequent after-school events will be held to celebrate those students who have exhibited exemplary behavior for the quarter. If a student has had to sign the behavior book in any team class or has been referred to the dean by ANY teacher, s/he will not be invited to attend that quarter’s event.

Academic achievements will also be celebrated. Our focus this year will be on students having no missing assignments. Students can earn prizes at the midpoint and end of each quarter for this accomplishment. For the first quarter, any student that has no missing assignments in all team classes will be invited to a teacher-provided pizza party lunch!

We are also already thinking of plans for our Earth Day Field Trip and Sixth Grade Awards & Fun Day in May! Students will have to meet more stringent academic and behavior guidelines to participate, so it is important that you start working with your child now to set goals for achievement. You will receive more specific information on the participation guidelines for those events later in the year.

We are most readily available by email and are happy to communicate with you about any concerns or questions you might have about our team or our individual classes. In addition, we conduct parent conferences as a team in order to best serve the student and give you a complete picture of your child’s progress and conduct. We look forward to working with you this year!

Mrs. Childers, reading Mrs. Fischer, science

Mrs. Collingwood, English Mrs. Paki, math

Student Name __________________________________

We have read and understand the guidelines for classroom conduct and participation in Islander team events:

Student Name: __________________________________________________

Student Signature: _______________________________________________

Parent/Guardian Name: ____________________________________________

Parent/Guardian Signature: _________________________________________