Student Led Conferences

I can't believe how quickly the year has gone by! It is already time for student led conferences next week.  This is an opportunity for your child to reflect on how the year went and look at their work portfolios.  Please take a moment and sign up your child on the following document student conferences. Remember this is not a parent/teacher conference.  Please arrive early so you can look over portfolios prior to the conference.

Cool Science Fun

The perfect activity for 4,5,6 th grade families to do in lieu of homework. The non-profit Synopsys Foundation’s i3 Science Program is for any of your 4, 5 and 6 grade students who have shown a special interest in science. The objective: fuel that interest and step it up to the next level. Participants receive a certificate of achievement and a $ 15Amazon.com gift certificate upon completion. It’s easy. Parents submit a consent form and receive a link to register via email. Then, with parental supervision, the student performs or participates in science activities outside the classroom. Each activity is worth points. The points add up and the student earns the certificates.
Please take a moment to review the i3 website at  http://i3science.org/

Is it food?

Today we have begun our final project for the year, "Is it Food?" We will be looking at all aspects of our food, from nutritional labels to best agricultural practices.  Our first assignment will be to create a week-long food journal complete with 5 photos.  This will be used to determine whether we are eating a balanced, well nutritious diet. I am also sending home a permission slip for the movie Food, Inc. It is a PG movie but it does contain some graphic images of animals in feed lots.  Please sign and return the permission slip as soon as possible.  We are planning on watching the movie as soon as we get permission slips signed.
In addition to our food project, we are still in the midst of STAR testing.  We will continue to prepare for our math test next week.  We will finish up the language arts test this Thursday.  If your child feels nervous about the test, discuss with them their feelings. Having test anxiety is a sure way do not do as well! Sometimes simply talking with your child can help alleviate worry.   

STAR testing

It is that time of year again! Tomorrow, April 19th, we are going to be taking the California STAR test for science. The following Tuesday and Thursday we will be taking the English and Math portions of the test. During class council today, we discussed possible fears or nervousness that the children might be experiencing as a result of the upcoming test. We agreed that the test is only one way to measure learning. We talked about all of the different ways that we have learned and grown this year. Innovations Academy is working towards portfolio assessments where both child and teacher have input into the evaluation process. So many subjects and types of intelligence are not measured on the state test. Musical and artistic ability are just two examples that are not covered on the test. That being said, it is still important that we encourage our children to get plenty of food and rest the night before the test. IA at this time still working under the paradigm of being measured by the state testing.

Presentations this Friday

All parents are welcome to come to our class this Friday when we present our disaster projects to our school community. Starting at 11:00, classes will be stopping by to celebrate our hard work and learn about natural disasters that could potentially happen here. Along with informative student work on display, we will have our disaster preparedness kit too. If you don't already have one, now is your chance to win one in our raffle. The cost of a ticket will be $2.00 each or 3 tickets for $5.00. The value of our kit exceeds $50.00 so you could end up saving quite a bit of money and time it would otherwise take to assemble the kit. Some of the items included are; food and water, a first aid kit, a gas shut-off tool, and an emergency radio just to name a few.