Mrs. Moxham’s 4-5 th Grade Class Welcome families!

Welcome to Room 32! IIf you have any questions during my presentation, please interrupt me to ask. TThis slideshow will be accessible all year on my website!

All About Me MMy background Me in fifth grade II grew up in Livonia and went to Livonia schools K-12. II attended Eastern Michigan for my undergrad and Oakland University for my Masters Degree. MMy experience TThis will be my 9 th year in Center classrooms for students with ASD.

My Family  My husband  Shawn  My Son, Jack  Our pets  Dog: Gus  Cats: Oscar and Zoey Shawn and Me GusOscarZoey Riley

My Goals for your child  To give students the academic and social skills they need to progress on goals and objectives.  To provide a supportive and fun classroom environment.  To help the student make new friends and discover new interests.  Help the student to become more independent and responsible in their daily life.

Math  Math content will be individually determined by goals and objectives with key components from the 4-6 th grade Core Curriculum.  Math is a 45 minute block every afternoon. The kids rotate centers working on a variety of skills.  Homework will be provided every Tuesday and Thursday.

Reading Workshop  Students will engage in daily independent reading.  Students will have 1-1 or small group reading to focus on IEP goals and objectives from reading assessments every nine weeks to assess skills in the areas of comprehension, vocabulary, pnonics and fluency.  Students will read leveled books for 2 weeks and focus on decoding and comprehension activities for that book.

Reading Workshop (cont.)  Students will also participate in whole group thematic unit literacy instruction.  Genre units of study for fourth/fifth grade will include: Personal Narrative (Sept/Oct) Thematic Holiday (Nov/Dec) Tall Tales (Jan/Feb) Fables (Mar/Apr.) Fantasy(May/June) Poetry study will be weekly. We will focus on one type of poetry each month.

Writing Workshop  We will be following the grade level sequence for units of study but all individual skills and expectations will be unique to the student.  Our units of study and finished products will include: Personal Narrative (Sept./Oct) Biography (Nov/Dec) Persuasive Essay (Jan) How-To (Feb) Non-Fiction Text Features (Mar/Apr.)

Spelling/Word Study We will be practicing spelling lists Unique to the student’s needs and goals. Some students will focus on spelling Following patterns such as: Pre/Suffixes Homophones Word Endings Other students will focus on Dolch words and other vocabulary familiar to them from stories or personal information. Spelling City:

Current Events  We learn about current events by following the News-2-You curriculum weekly.  We do a weekly cooking project associated with our theme.  We do 1 day a week of map study, locating our place in the news on a map and “visiting” in in Google Earth.  We participate in a weekly powerpoint, wh-questions and main idea/details activities for the theme.

Social Studies 4 th -5 th grade focuses on basic government and Michigan History.

Science We have 4 modules of Science.  We use Science A-Z and other supplementary materials. One is taught for each cardmarking including an elective unit on Human Growth for fifth and sixth grade only.

Special Classes Our special classes are as follows: Music: Mrs. Benson Gym: Mrs. Colucci Art: Mrs. Lakatos Library: Mrs. Morrison Computer Lab: 1x a week

Homework  Reading logs will be assigned weekly with the goal of reading 3 days a week for at least 30 minutes and completing the log by recording the title of the book, the genre, the type of book, and a sentence about what they read (see modifications).  Math homework for my core group will be assigned two days a week (Tues/Thurs.)  Weekend work will be to complete a writing journal with a paragraph/sentence about what they did over the weekend. (see modifications).  This year our class will be using spelling city! Please set the goal to log on and practice target words 2x a week during the school week.

Social Skills/Buddies  This year our class will be buddied up with Mr. Grezak’s Family 2 Class.  We will be participating in buddy activities 2 x weekly where the buddies come into the classroom to do activities with an assigned peer.  The kids all participate in autism awareness training, as well as, opportunities to learn about the kids.  I pull the entire group of peers every other month to follow up on how things are going with their peer, ideas they have for activities and to trouble shoot.  I also run a social skills group once weekly in the classroom providing the kids targets, role-play and practice of targets to carry over with their peers during buddy time. This becomes our social skill star target.

Classroom Community and Behavior Expectations Our classroom is a community. In our community, we have rules to help us get along with each other. Our class rules are:  Be respectful  Be responsible  Be safe Each student is expected to follow the Classroom Expectations to earn “classroom cash” they will keep track of in their desks to trade in each Friday. We will have additional more detailed systems for individual students as needed.

Community Based Instruction (CBI) We will be participating in 6 scheduled trips to Lifetown this year!

Let’s Have a Great Year!