October 25

Gillespie Gazette...October 25, 2010

Blog Address: www.gillespiegazette.blogspot.com
Email Address: anna.gillespie@jordan.k12.ut.us
School: 446-3200
Cell: 623-7625
Home: 801-375-0024

Dear Parents,

Thank you to all the parents that have made donations to Mrs. May so that we can have a super, duper party on Friday, October 29. The Halloween Parade will begin at 9:00 and the party will be after the parade. Thanks to Mrs. May and any other parent that is helping her.

Please notice the attached paper that explains how you can go in and pre-schedule your Parent/Teacher Conference. Parent/ Teacher Conferences are scheduled for November 10 and 11. November 10th runs from 4:00 to 7:30 and November 11th hours go from 2:00 to 6:30. You will have until midnight on November 3 to schedule what times will be best for you and your child. After November 3, I will assign a time for you and your child to come. The attached note explains the process. Please know that your child will be setting goals for the upcoming term and so come prepared to discuss these goals. The child needs to attend this conference.

I have had only one parent turn in the Reflection Student Entry Form. And I have only seen one student that has shown me evidence that they are working on a Relection's Project. Please know that these projects are due on October 29. If you write a quick note in the planner that your child is working on this goal and assignment, I will not worry. Please sign a note in the Orange Planner to indicate that this is happening, otherwise, I will assign them an essay on the "Together We Can" theme and turn it in to the PTA. There are many fun and easy projects that your child can do, so please take a minute tonight and discuss this with them.

Parent letter #8 and spelling list is attached. This is due on Thursday, October 28.

Please notice the Progress Report that is attached to this Gillespie Gazette. Please know that this is not a Report Card, but instead a Progress Report "warning'. End of First Term is on October 29, so your child has this week to complete any missing assignments, fix any mistakes on assignments to improve scores. All work must be turned in by October 29 (Friday) The students have a 'Fix It" File that I put any work that can be corrected in their file. They have been encouraged to look at this often during the school day and fix the mistakes. Most of the students have been following this procedure. Some have not. If you are dis-satisfied with your child's first term scores, please encourage them to look in their "Fix It' File and get to work fixing. They can fix any score, except a test score. If they are willing to do the work, they can all receive high scores of 4 and 3 in all subjects. If you see a score of 50 next to an assignment, this means that it is either in the "Fix It" file or in their desk. Your student might want to give up some recess time to accomplish these fixes. They can also bring one home a night and get help from you to complete them. I don't encourage them to take all the assignments home at once, because there is time during the school day that they can use to do this work. If you notice a '1' next to an assignment, this indicates that your child did not do the assignment at all. Please know that they can fix this situation by October 29 by working hard and do the assignments that the other students have been doing all during first term. Just to let you know that our Skyward program does not allow us to plug in a zero for a missing assignment, we have to give it a low value of 1 point to have the parents know that the child was given this assignment but has chosen to not complete.

I will ask you to make sure the "Independant reading minutes are initialed in the Orange Planner. To receive a top score of 100% in reading minutes, your child should have read a total of 820 minutes by October 29. If your child has been reading twenty minutes a night, this will be the minutes totaled. Please remind your child to bring their planner to school every day this week, but particularly on Thursday and Friday the 29th...as I will be calling for them to check the parent signatures. Thank you, this is a very important part of their reading and language grade.

I loved having Lindsay being our student of the week. She showed a lot of leadership skills, and truly was my 'right hand girl" Thanks for the great poster.

We had a fun Red Ribbon Week and discussed "Saying No to Drugs" all week.

We also had a wonderful learning experience when the Natural Arts Museum came and taught the students about being a scientist and following the science process and learning about fossils. Our students were very well behaved and learned a lot.

Spelling List for this week:
1. weather
2. whether
3. missed
4. mist
5. friends,
6. excited
7. after
8. doctor
9. note
10. not
11. three
12. hose
13. straight
14. twine
15. twin
16. dropped
17. which
18. witch
19. loose
20. work

Congratulations to Bailee and Ashton for winning money in the Money Machine because they were so successful in selling Happening Books for the fund raiser. Thanks for everyone that participated in the fund raiser.