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Class Policy 2013

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522 views

Class Policy 2013

Uploaded by

api-226133628
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Mr.

Rathjens 7th Grade Core

2013-2014 School Year

Welcome to Room 123 & 7th Grade Core

Welcome! Im looking forward to a great school year! Please read this handout carefully so all of us - teacher, students, and parents - can work together most effectively to make this year a rich, fun, educational experience.
Parent/Teacher Communication
I ask parents to consider using e-mail as an initial means of contact should a question or concern arise. E-mail helps avoid wasted time leaving phone messages and playing phone tag. In most cases, I can respond to your e-mail within minutes or hours. We can always agree by e-mail to speak by telephone or meet directly if necessary. In any case, I will respond to parent/student e-mail or phone messages within 24 hours of receipt.

[email protected] (or use Schoolloops Loop Mail)


Schoolloop.com : Monitoring Student Work & Progress
Diablo Vista utilizes Schoolloop.com to help students, parents, and teachers communicate and monitor student progress more effectively. Among other things, Schoolloop offers calendars of student assignments as well as online tracking of student progress and grades. Please take some time to familiarize yourself with Schoolloop and its offerings! Because both parents and students can easily see progress reports on Schoolloop.com, I do not send home physical copies of progress reports. It is each students responsibility to monitor his/her progress report and notify me immediately of any possible errors. Students should never discard returned work until they have veried that the score is correctly shown on the Schoolloop grade-book. I urge and trust parents and students to frequently monitor progress reports so that problems or slipping grades are caught at the earliest possible time and do not have time to snowball into bigger grade problems!

Readers/Writers Notebook
We will be participating in a workshop process to study and improve our writing and reading this year. The Readers & Writers Notebook (RWN) is key to success in workshop; we will be using it almost every day this year! Therefore, it is crucial that students have this notebook with them every day. Students who forget a notebook will be expected to do that days work on binder paper and then tape that work into the notebook.

BEHAVIOR & DISCIPLINE


Rather than post a long list of dos and donts, Ive chosen to express my expectations in four brief statements:



Be respectful towards others. Be honest. Be responsible for yourself and to others. Be prepared for class and learning.

In general, I will give a verbal reminder to a student who is acting in an inappropriate manner. If the behavior persists in a reasonably short period of time, I will contact the students parent to ask for assistance in reviewing appropriate behavior and expectations. Should these measures prove ineffective, or should a more serious behavior take place, a direct referral to the assistant principal, Mr. Anderson, may take place. Please review the DVMS Handbook for school-wide behavioral expectations.

Homework
My denition and use of homework is changing as education and technology change. Homework may include reading, writing, vocabulary practice on the internet, participating in online discussions, watching/listening to presentations delivered via internet and taking notes, and other assignments. In addition to writing assigned homework on the board each day, I post that homework on our class website (rathjencore.weebly.com) and on Schoolloop as well. However, my unintentional failure to post an assignment online on any given date does not excuse students from completing the assignment on time. Homework assignments are due the next day unless otherwise noted. If a student is absent the day an assignment was due (whether homework, essay, notebook, or project), it must be turned in the day of the students return with ABSENT written in the heading or it will be considered late. It is each students responsibility to remember to turn in absent work upon his/her return. Students who are absent should follow the 3 Before Me rule before asking me directly what they missed. This means checking my daily summary on the class website as well as asking 2 different, trusted classmates. If, after checking those 3 sources, a student is still confused, then he/she should come and ask me directly, but not at the very start of class while Im taking attendance and trying to get class started! Students can see me before school or wait until there is an appropriate time once class has started. On occasion, I may assign projects or longer term assignments. With good time management (i.e., not waiting until the last minute), students should not need to pull the middle school equivalent of an all nighter. Students are welcome to ask for help in longer range planning if they need that.

Late & Absent Work


Because life sometimes throws us a curveball (the dog does, on rare occasion, eat the homework!), each student will be given four late passes for the year. A late pass allows an assignment to be turned in one (1) day late for full credit; the late pass must be attached to the assignment. If the assignment was an online assignment, the late pass should be put in the Late/Absent tray with the name of the assignment and due date on it. These late passes may only be used with regular homework assignments; they may not be used for essays or long-term assignments/ projects! Homework can be turned in late (without a late pass) for a score of up to 2.0 (out of 5) within 1 week of the due date (or until the end of the applicable unit in history). Less than 2.0 will be earned for late work that is not complete or not done well. I dont take work months late at the end of the grading period. Essays and longer term projects turned in late will lose 1 full grade for each day late.
Late projects or essays should be turned in directly to Mr. Rathjen, not the box! Late regular homework should be turned into the Late / Absent tray if it is traditional pen & paper work. Late online work (Collaborize Classroom, Weebly, Google, etc) should be completed online AND the student should immediately send me an e-mail with Late Work in the subject line. In the body of the e-mail, the student should list the assignment completed online as well as the original due date and whether a late pass is being turned in for the assignment. Work that was due during an absence should be turned in upon your return; it is your responsibility to remember to do that! I recommend that students copy their blog writing to an ongoing Word or Pages document before submitting online so that in case of technical problems, the writing isnt lost and can be printed out and turned in on paper on the due date. Students should check to see that their work indeed posted correctly. The computer wasnt working will not be accepted as an excuse. In the event of technical difculties, students can e-mail a copy of their work to a friend to print, place a le of the work in their Schoolloop folder and print from another location (including the library before school starts), or simply write by hand. Student who miss a scheduled quiz should make it up before/after school within 2 days of their return and before that quiz is graded and returned. It is the students responsibility to arrange with me to make up the quiz/ test within the 2 days. Tests/quizzes not made up in a timely manner and before the graded test/quiz is returned will receive a zero - NO EXCEPTIONS.

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