Welcome back!

Welcome back to a new school year!  We have an exciting year ahead of us in Grade 5/6, and I am looking forward to getting to know all of you better and working on some of the exciting projects we have ahead of us.  The beginning of the school year is always a big time of change and renewal, and a time to create and maintain good learning habits that will set everyone up for their senior years at HPS.

The first day of school is always very busy, and we covered a lot of expectations and handed out a lot of sheets.  First, we reviewed our classroom and school expectations, none of which should come as any real surprise to the students.  We settled into our new desks and talked a little about the year to come. Just a reminder that all students will need outdoor running shoes that have closed toes and can be laced up, as we will be starting soccer and cross country right away.  For our soccer unit and intramurals, cleats are certainly allowed, but not at all required.  I have a small selection of cleats here at the school as well, that can be borrowed by students.  There were also a large number of sheets handed out.  The Emergency Contact Form needs to be filled out for every student, and must be returned to the school this week.  A classroom newsletter went home, as well as a permission form to sign the students up for Google accounts for use in the classroom.  We also received our school planners, which are partly funded by the school council.  The remainder of the fee is $5, which can be sent into the schol this week.  Homework is reviewed daily, is always posted on the side board in the classroom, and will be written in agendas at the end of every day.

Over the last couple of years, this classroom has been working on expanding our learning on to the computers and to the internet, using a variety of different tools like Prezi, Glogster and Google docs.  We are also working on more of an online presence with our blog, wiki and twitter feeds.  Basically, the wiki (you can see the link to your right at the top of the blog) has more permanent information like what is expected in a certain style of writing, or samples of work we have done here in class, or mark sheets that you can rely on when completing your work.  The blog (where you are right now), will have periodic posts  updating students and parents about events in the classroom, or new units we are starting, or advice about places to go for extra help, and so on.  You can poke around at some of last year's posts to get an idea of what to expect.  Finally, we have the twitter feed on your right, which is more likely to echo items that were on the homework board.  I am hoping that this will all work together to keep parents more in the loop about what is happening in class and around the school.  It should also allow students to be more independent with their learning this year.  It also follows the board and school goals of becoming increasingly paperless and reducing our school's environmental impact.

Finally, not all students have regular access to the computer, or their internet is slow, or other problems arise.  If that is the case, I can absolutely give these students paper copies of what is posted on the blog and wiki, as long as they don't wait until 3:15 to tell me they need it!

This is going to be a busy week, with a lot of information and sheets of paper to get organized and processed.  I am looking forward to getting to now all of the students and their families even better in the weeks and months ahead.

Let's have a great year!