Team Hyper Space: Welcome to the Innovation Academy @ Riverside Fifth Grade

Welcome to the Innovation Academy @ Riverside 2016

New school year, new building, new space, new teacher/facilitators and new learners/classmates are a lot of new things to get used to for the students and for the facilitators! We are all super excited to start this school year off right. We have worked a lot over the summer to make sure that we started the year off creating a culture of collaboration and learning. We were so glad to see so many of you at our Ice Cream Social/ Open House. Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns. We are only an email or phone call away.

This first few days we have been working with the learners on getting to know each other and leaning about how Riverside works and about each other. We have done some fun activities to get to know each other and to learn about our school. We worked together as a team to come up with our class "Norms". We decided we could work hard at living the following class "Norms"

* Show respect to ourselves and others

*Treat others how you want to be treated/Be polite

*Be responsible

*Be truthful and trustworthy

*Be positive and have a growth mindset

We kicked off our first PBL project of the year dealing with the Olympics. We are planning on using this project to really get to know each other as well as learn about the different countries involved in the Olympics. We are excited to see what this group of learners comes up with as their finished projects.

Achieve 3000 is a very big part of our reading program here at RIS. Students will be taking a test next week to determine their Lexile range for this program. They also will be practicing doing an article next week during Humanities. Soon, students will begin doing two articles each week at a 75% average. This program is set up at each individual students reading level and students should have no problem meeting this weekly goal. We have found that students who rush through are the ones that struggle. We encourage you to ask your child about Achieve and encourage them to take their time on their two articles so that they do not have to do extra work to get their 75% average.

Each month students are given a reading calendar and they are to record when they read. Students are expected to read for 30 mins at least 20 days out of the month to get their points on this required activity. This month's reading calendar is due no later than September 9th. Late calendars are not accepted. Thank you for encouraging your students to do their best.

August 11th we are having a RIS Meet the Teacher presentations beginning at 6:30. Doors will open at 6:15 and students can get a free book and parents can sign up for door prizes. Presentations in classrooms will begin promptly at 6:30. We will be meeting by team to learn about the following: What are the expectations of RIS students each virtual day? What is Achieve 3000 and how can parents/students monitor progress and expectations? How can parents/students use Power School/Echo to monitor academic progress? A paper is coming home in Monday folders about this as well.

Scholastic book orders will be coming home monthly. Look for these in the Monday Folders. All checks will need to be written to Scholastic.

August 12 is RIS picture day and order forms will be in Monday folders!

Have a great week and please contact us with any questions or concerns!