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September 3rd, 2008.

Dear Fifth Grade parents,

Welcome back to our school and to your new class. I hope everyone had a rewarding and interesting summer. I had a fascinating summer myself - feel free to follow links found on this site to my blog, if you feel like it. You may find it amusing, or at least interesting, and there's over two hundred photos of perhaps questionable artistic merit, for those of you who find my prose style too pedantic. Consider the blog as a window into your new teacher!

Now it’s time for us all to face the challenges and rewards of a new school year.

I am excited, idealistic, and confident that this will be a very special year for all of us. Of course, there will be a transition period for the class at the start of the year as we all get to know one another better. I am doing everything I can to make this as smooth as possible for us all. I am concentrating for the opening weeks on what I think of as a ‘getting to know you’ mini-project. The classroom atmosphere I am aiming for during this period is relaxed and secure. We will be starting our major curriculum areas soon, with a focus on creativity and variety as we begin our first topic, “Space, the solar system, stars, and gravity.”

I have very high expectations for my fifth grade classes. In my classes there is a focus on teamwork throughout the year. There is also an equal focus on independent learning. The deeper background skills that I aim for are the ones that lead to students who are self-motivated, skilled in all aspects of information search, retrieval, critical analysis, reformulation, and production, and who are skilled team members, in any context.

The educational philosophy at the heart of my teaching style is Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences approach. The basic idea is that people are smart in lots of ways; not only in logical and linguistic ways (reading, writing, math/science), but also in musical, spatial (art and, architecture, as well as building and making things), and physical (sports, dance, acting, public speaking) ways, too! Gardner describes an underlying interpersonal intelligence that is revealed in our abilities to coexist with other people and, alongside that, an intra-personal intelligence that governs our ‘self understanding’, and the personal strengths that make it possible for us to achieve our goals in life.

The program I have developed attempts to provide multi-level opportunities for children to explore, discover, assess, develop, and improve their skills in each of Gardner’s main intelligence areas. This is all work done within the context of the fifth grade curriculum, determined by the Medford Public Schools, and the Massachusetts Frameworks.

I attempt to run a completely integrated curriculum, as far as possible. I use the Social Studies and Science Curriculum requirements as the framework for the integration through a series of ‘Projects’. I try to fuse the core topics into a single year long “story” that attempts a grand and idealistic goal – to give a basic grounding in all the key issues of contemporary science and American history!

Each topic is used to address the many language curriculum goals as part of the social studies or science research and presentation. A typical project includes multiple opportunities for reading, writing, and research training. In addition, there are multiple opportunities for building and design work, artwork, music creation and performance. There are creative opportunities for dance and drama. Topics are exploratory in nature, and are centered in genuine questions. Observations and experiments, as well as research and collaboration are at the heart of most of the projects. Students work in multiple team and solo formats. Most projects conclude in either group or solo presentations to various size audiences – from each other, to all the parents; from ‘buddy’ classes, to the whole school – and beyond!

Typically, I am unable to integrate the required Everyday math program into my topics. Therefore, I try to get as far as possible with the math program, as a separate aspect away from the main topic. This is the only way for me to guarantee deep enough coverage to provide sufficiently detailed math training in preparation for the sixth grade.

Here is the overall plan for the year. Please note this plan is subject to radical and major changes especially regarding dates!

September: - A perfect world? - a project to build community.

October: - Space, the solar system, stars, and gravity.

- Two or three day multimedia project with Fourth grade at the end of October.

November: - Trends in history – a topic based on “Guns germs and steel” by Jared

Diamond, which provides a background to American and World history.

- The ‘Explorers.’

December: - Rocks and fossils.

- Two week long multimedia project culminating in our first ‘Show’ of the year.

January: - Simple machines and the ‘Invention Challenges’.

February: -. Light and Sound, - the recording project – our class CD!

- Language MCAS tests - two or three tests - kiss goodbye to a week!

March: - Colonies and the American Revolution.

April - Populations and ecosystems – an exploration of living things.

May - MCAS - Third week of May – MCAS tests in Social Studies, Science, .

and Math - two tests for each subject. Total: six tests. -

June - “The End of the Year Show “ – Two week Multimedia culminating event.

There is a homework requirement of twenty minutes reading every evening.

Typically, if a project requires specific reading then the twenty minutes is subsumed into the general homework time.

Medford expects Fifth grade students to be spending one hour per day on homework. That means a rough weekly expectation of five to seven hours work per week. Please work with your child to ensure that they are within range of these expectations - not too many weeks above eight hours, that’s what I say!

Principle issues for parental involvement regarding homework are:

planning
organization
time management
completing work on time, handing it in
maintaining high standards.

Sixth grade homework can feel intense to students. It is vital that your child has a comfortable, efficient, and self-reliant way to deal with those demands by the time they get to grade six.

I have a separate note for you about the homework with more information.

I believe the font of learning is joy. When a person enjoys their work and their life then learning is natural and automatic. My first job is to help generate and sustain passion and enthusiasm in the class. Enthusiasm is the fuel. Hard work is the vehicle. You will be seeing plenty of each from the children and me this year!

The Fifth grade is a special year for children. It is a time of transition for many of them. My ambition for the children is that they each will be fully prepared intellectually, personally, emotionally, socially, artistically, musically, and physically for the demands of the Sixth grade and, beyond, into the rest of their lives.

The teacher is one part of the three part system that is the learning environment of your child. Most of my time is spent getting to understand and extend your child’s world. It is very difficult for me to get to understand the parent’s world in the brief and often hurried meetings at the beginning or end of a school day. With that in mind, I’d like to ask you to help me by writing to me about your child. It would be helpful for me to read your ideas about:

Your child’s strengths, weaknesses, enthusiasms, etc - anything you could offer would be valuable to me as I begin the process of learning about each child.
Your goals and aims for your child’s learning this year.
If you have the time to get involved in the class by sharing your skills, enthusiasms or resources please let me know about that, too.

In closing, and having written all of this, I would especially also ask for your patience this year as we all enter into the demands of the new year at the Brooks School. I can’t honestly know how many of my plans and great schemes for the year will survive the transition period!

All I can really say with certainty is, that I hope that this class is going to be one of the really great ones.

I hope you enjoy the year as much as I hope I am going to!

Sincerely yours,

Michael Allen