Week of May 7

 This just in!!! Emalee and Jacob G. won Honorable Mention in the Judicial Council of California's 1st Amendment Cartoon Contest!!! There were over 1,000 entries! And our class won 2 of the 5 Honorable Mentions!!!!!!!
During Black History Month, Berner and Brindles classes submitted cartoons based on the 1st amendment right to petition (or protest) our government to The Judicial Council of California 1st Amendment Cartoon Contest. Students drew cartoons in one panel of ways  people displayed the passive resistance we learned about during Black History Month. There were 1010 entries nationwide and, not one, but two, Neuse Charter 5th graders won an Honorable Mention! Way to go Jacob G and Emalee ! Congratulations and well done!!!Check out their work, I posted them on one of the pages! Check them out!

Here's the link to the winning images:
http://www.courtsed.org/firstamendmentcontest2012/Page2.html


I hope everyone is having an awesome weekend. It finally cooled off a bit. I really enjoyed the evening rain on my front porch on Saturday.

I have been posting grades this weekend for the progress reports that go home on Wednesday. Fortunately, for some of you, this is just the progress report and there will be time to improve grades. Week before last, I sent  notes or wrote in agendas stating that child's homework grades, and I asked for parents to sign them. Some returned them, some didn't. I also went over in class, who was missing assignments, what they were and when they could make them up. Only one student took me up on it. There are MANY missing assignments. When students go to 6th grade, it is not likely their teachers will post all missing assignments, give makeup time or work, even take late assignments, write in all students agendas or remind, daily, that students are missing work or homework. At this point in the year, students really should begin taking responsibility for missing work. In life, there are deadlines and when they pass, they are passed. There are consequences for missing them. I am very concerned about the lack of maturity in some students. I want to send all 5th graders to 6th grade ready to be successful. There are at least 16 students who failed to makeup work this rotation, and all were reminded they had work to do. There are 31 students who earned less than 60% on homework. I offered extra credit for homework last week, 6-7 students took me up on it. Please discuss with your student the importance of being academically responsible.

We will continue to work on review and the Native American project this week. We begin writing the essay for the book report in class tomorrow, please make sure student's have their book with them.