How can I help my child at home be more successful for school? Core and Curriculum How can I help my child at home be more successful for school?

Want to Stop Fighting Homework Battles? 1)-Set a consistent time and place to work Monday- Thursday 2)-Don’t compete with “favorites” 3)-Get your child off to a solid start by spending the first 5-10 minutes with him/her and then back away and let them work by themselves 4)-Even if your child comes home and says, “I don’t have any homework tonight…” maintain the set time and place Monday-Thursday (write/type a letter to grandma, read a book/magazine, study spelling, work a puzzle, play an educational game) 5)- Follow up with reading to or with your child and questions

What Research Says about Helping Our Children at Home: In a class of 20 students, few if any teachers can find even 5 minutes of time in a day to devote to reading individually with each student. You are your child’s first teacher Out-of-school reading habits of students has shown that even 15 minutes a day of independent reading can expose students to more than a million words of text in a year. Size of vocabulary predicts successful reading ability-an average 6 year old should know 5,000 words , an average 14 year old should know 25,000 words, and an average adult should know 60,000 words. Today, a 6 year old on average knows 1,000 words, a 14 year old on average knows 10,000 words and an adult on average knows 25,000 words.

What Kinds of Books Should We Be Reading at Home? Elementary-50/50 50% Non-Fiction (stories about real people, fact books, trees, automobiles, insects, cooking) 50% Fiction (make-believe, fairy-tales, adventure, magic, not true) Suggestion- alternate every other night or every other book if reading chapter books Middle- 60/40 60% Non-Fiction 40% Fiction High School- 70/30 70% Non-Fiction 30% Fiction

What Kinds of Reading Questions Should We Ask Our Kids? Let’s look at the handouts. We want our kids to think beyond the surface and begin to form ideas about what they are reading based on what the story or information is telling them. Have your child point to specific sentences in the book that “prove” their responses or ideas.

How Should I Read? Read to your child by modeling with books that are a little above his/her ability to ready by himself/herself Read with your child (take turns reading pages or paragraphs) Let your child read by himself/herself if it is a book he/she can read without help and still understand it Use your question handouts and make your child put his/her finger on sentences that answer the questions or give clues about where the answers come from

At the End of the Year… “Benchmarks” Grade Book Levels Words Per Minute (wpm) K D - 1st J-K 47 2nd M-N 90 3rd P-Q 100 4th S-T 115 5th U 130 6th Z 120 Let’s pause here and take a look at what these “levels” look like in a real book that is used to check your child’s ability…

Math Help at Home Emphasis now is WHY and not just HOW Multiple ways to solve problems Problem solving with real-world math Pay bills Estimate the cost of the groceries in your cart Determine how much food to buy or make for a party Double a recipe or cut a recipe in half Figure the cost of lunch at a restaurant Calculate the cost of school lunch for the week or month Determine how long your child will need to save his allowance in order to buy a particular item Determine the number of miles driven in X hours Figure the cost of X number of minutes of cell phone use if you pay X cents/minutes Determine how many gallons of gas you can buy with X dollars Determine how many chocolate chips are needed if X number of cookies each has 3 chocolate chips

How Does the Classroom Look Today. What Can I Connect to How Does the Classroom Look Today? What Can I Connect to? What Do I Need to Understand Has Changed? Enjoy some videos of our students and teachers interacting in today’s 21st Century Classroom. How does it look different or the same from the classroom you attended as a student in school? Record your thoughts as you watch and then let’s talk about it. Seeing what is the same or different will help us help our child at home!