The Happneings in My Classroom

Over the weekend, as I was going through my students homework and entering it into the computer, I found it comical as to how many of my children have my "reading skills". Each week one part of their homework is to write a paragraph 5-8 sentences on a specific topic. There are many examples and helpful hints to get them going. And usually, with their homework, I would go over what the topic is and what I needed to see from them to get a 4, 3, 2, or 1 (lovely new grading system- no more A, B, C, D, F) One week I even copied some of their old homeworks for us to look at and grade so that they would know what I was looking for. But this week I was not there on Monday when homework went home, so no one went over it with them....but you would think that their parents might, right?!?
Well, their topic this week was to write a learning goal for Winter trimester, something they wanted to do better in or work on. I got a few (3ish) kids that wrote on the right topic, other kids (4ish) who wrote about Winter!, another kid who wrote about Trick-o-Treating, and almost half the class that didn't get it turned in at all! Good job using those "reading skills" kids!