Please check your grades 9th Lit

Good evening,

I've just updated your child's grades with most of what they've turned in.  Yes, we've had 16 assignments in 9 days.  This give me an idea of how much effort they are putting into the class, as well as their knowledge and concept obtainment thus far.  So far the only assignments I haven't graded are the Question of the Day daily test skills practice (not busy work because we are practicing those test taking skills for the EOC), the Anthem Theme and Author's Purpose Organizer (only for 3rd), and the Road Constructed Response.  

However, for that CR, I did put in a 0 if your child has not yet turned it in.  If they did submit it, you should see "Not Yet Graded" next to the assignment.

I've spoken with the students about this already, but I want to reinforce it again.  Zeros kill student grades.  Zeros are the reason students fail English classes.

If they do all of their work, and try their best on that work, follow all of the directions and prompts, and turn in everything, then they get the practice and reinforcement needed to do well on the major grades.  On the essays, the projects, and the tests.

When they don't do their work, their grade goes down and they do not get the practice and reinforcement they need to do well on those major assignments that add up to 80% of their total grade.

Our first major assignment is our test on Wednesday.  On Tuesday, we'll be collecting, grading, and returning the students' Annotations for each chapter of Anthem.  The students who have completed this assignment, in detail, step by step, are more likely to earn that A on this test.  Students who haven't completed this assignment are more likely to fail.

Please work with your students over this long weekend to complete the Annotations.  If they have a zero for the Student Survey, the Parent/Guardian Survey, the Sign up for Electronic Accounts, or The Road Constructed Response, please have them complete these assignments over the weekend.  These are baseline assignments that we will use for the rest of the year.  

Students also will have USATestPrep.com assignments due every Wednesday and Vocabulary Unit Quizzes every other Friday.  These are on-going assignments designed to boost your students ability and performance, both in this class and on the test, but also in analyzing text and raising their vocabulary level.

I know every student in our class is capable of handling this workload--we do a lot of the work in class, but do require that they reinforce the concepts at home every night.  Please make sure that they are doing their homework and can tell you what we learned in class each day.  It really does help them maintain long-term retention of knowledge.

Thank you for your support.  I hope you have a great weekend.