Homework Expectations:

There are certain expectations that we have where homework is concerned. We feel that homework is an essential and vital part of your child's educational experience. We view grade five as the stepping stone for middle school, and we assign homework according to this standard.This page should help you understand your child's workload a bit better. Please help us by checking your child's backpack and assignment notebook regularly to make sure that the assignments are being written down, and the work is coming home. Your child should not spend more than an hour a night on his or her assignments. If you are noticing that your child is laboring for a longer period of time than that, please let us know. However, independent reading may fall outside of this "hour window". We are concerned with the lack of reading that is done in grade five, so each student has a reading block of about 20 minutes each night (see below) that is classified as assigned work.

Math - Mrs. O'Connell will be your child's math teacher this year. Unless we do not have math on a particular day (assembly, special projects, etc.), you can expect that your child will have a math assignment Mon. - Thurs. nights. This will usually be several problems based on that day's classwork. Your child will also be assigned a Problem of the Week, (POW), usually on Wednesday or Thursday, which will be due the following Wednesday or Thursday, Thurs. - We are also trying to enable our students to become more efficient with their math facts, so it would be a great help to us if you could go over the times tables with your children for a few minutes each day

Spelling - Spelling homework varies each week, but the core homework assignments will remain the same. Your child may be doing a "Fix-It", a "Stretch-It", a "Sort-It", and a sheet that needs parental help at some point during each spelling unit. Most of these assignments should be in your child's spelling journal, so you should be looking for that.

Reading - Your child will read for approximately 20-30 minutes each night, and work on that night's "RAH" (Reading At Home) sheet. You can find a copy of the RAH sheet on this website. Just click on the "RAH" link on the main page of the website.

Your child should have an independent reading book, which should be with him/her each day. We Have "IDR" (Independent Daily Reading or Silent Reading) each day, so we expect that your child will have an appropriately leveled book with him or her each day. We would appreciate your encouragement of reading at home, and we would like it if your child has a library card from the Hudson Public Library, too.

Grammar - We will be doing some work on grammatical structure, so from time to time your child will have some assignments on parts of speech, correct usage of homonyms such as their, they're, and there, and other grammatical conundrums.

Social Studies and Science - Because we are now a five-teacher team, your child will have several Science and Social Studies blocks each week. This is really a first in an elementary school curriculum schedule, and we are very excited to be implementing this. Mr. Mulcahy and Mrs. Williams will teach Social Studies, and Ms. Joki and Mr. Mulcahy will teach Science, and homework will be given out accordingly.

Well, we hope this page has given you some much needed information. Please contact us with any questions or concerns you may have.

Ms. Joki, Mr. Mulcahy, Mrs. O'Connell, Ms. Volpicelli, and Mrs. Williams