PS242

Welcome back, I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday break and has had a great start to the New Year! May 2019 brings you great health and much happiness.
As we embark on a new year, we are looking forward to many exciting events at YDMA. At this point in our academic year, all students in grades K-5 will be assessed again through the use of the Fountas & Pinnell benchmark system. Teachers use the student data collected from this assessment to provide additional needed academic support and interventions for students. Please contact your child’s teacher if you would like to know how well your child is performing on this assessment and in other subject areas. Remember that you can stay linked to your child's academic progress through Class Dojo. The Class Dojo provides you the opportunity to view your child’s daily social and academic progress, attendance and upcoming events. This is a valuable resource for communication and should be monitored frequently.
Please make sure that your child is reading at home on a daily basis. Reading is a highly complex task; it is sometimes looked at as a set of skills. We need the phonetic and sight word skills in order to be able to read fluently. Those specific skills are parts to achieve the whole. Reading increases our vocabulary and allows us to have experiences that we may not have in our own lives. Reading helps us to learn how to act in certain situations and causes us to look at our own behaviors in situations. Probably most importantly, reading makes us excited about a topic and incites us to read more to learn more.
Lastly, don't forget to check your child's folder for any important documents that require your signature or information about upcoming events. We have parent workshops scheduled every month and would love to see more parents attend.