June 13, 2014

Portfolios

Students brought home their portfolios either yesterday or today. Be sure to ask your son or daughter to sit down and share with you.  The third trimester portfolio includes:

• Personal plan evaluations with great reflections by students followed by teacher feedback
• Math, Literature, Science, Social Studies Nexus reports
• Word Study, World Language and Related Arts Jupiter Grades Reports
• Theater Reflections and Swiftville Reflections
• On-Demand Writing and Science Inquiry Tasks
• Argument Writing, Final Draft
• Independent Projects, Final Draft

We are fully committed to on-line portfolios using our Chromebooks next year, so those lovely binders can stay at home after you've read everything!

Core Placement Process

We have begin meeting with 4th grade teachers to learn about our new Swifties.  We also asked current students to write a letter to us today indicating their preference for core placement, including core teachers they would like to work with (top two), peers they would enjoy having in core with them, and whether or not they would like to be a mentor.  We use all of their feedback very carefully while balancing cores for the next school year, working hard to balance grade, gender, as well as academic and social needs.

If you have specific input about core placement that you would like us to consider in this process, please e-mail your son or daughter's core teacher before Monday so we can take it into consideration.  As mentioned, it is a great balancing act in which we try to meet everyone's needs!

Last Week of School

Graduation, portfolios, 8th Grade award ceremony, Sandbar Picnic, scavenger hunt, cleaning, core placement letters.  These are a few headings to summarize the week.  Photos from Sandbar are posted on our photo site (link on the side bar, password is flyforever).  Again, if you have any photos from NYC please send them my way.  Ask you son or daughter to send me any scavenger hunt photos from today, too.  They did an awesome job!

Lip Dub and Graduation

I hesitate to share this, but here goes.  This year's WCS faculty "lip dub" is available on the school website here.  You will definitely notice the Swift House presence in this movie.  Enjoy.   You can also find a link to the 8th Grade Graduation Ceremony if interested.

Summer Reading

We expect all students to read at least three books over this summer, or simply to read each day.  For each book they read, or every hour they read if focused on more dense non-fiction texts, they should send their previous core teacher an e-mail with the book title or list of what they have read.  For every title or description they send us, we will enter their name into a drawing for prizes the first week of school.

Thank You!

We want to send out a huge thank you as the year ends.  Thank you for your help, communicating with us to support these kids.  Thank you for the chocolate this week.  Thank you for the one million food donations you have sent in.  Thank you for your fantastic kids!  We feel fortunate to work with great families and kids!

PS Swifties did an excellent job of helping clean up this place in our last hours here.  See the photo of our color coded book self for evidence.

Have a great summer, everyone.  We'll be in touch in July with a summer mailing with core groups and other organizational information.