It is with pleasure that we welcome your child to our fourth grade classes. We can all look forward to a very exciting and rewarding school year. We are eager to meet you, and are looking forward to working with you. Since you may have questions concerning the upcoming school year, we have prepared this letter that we hope will be of assistance. Your child will have twoteachers this year. He/she has been assigned to Mrs. Horton or Mrs. Mileur’s homeroom. Mrs. Horton teaches Reading,Writing, Spelling and English while Mrs. Mileur teaches Math, Science, and Social Studies. We work closely together to coordinate a well-balanced curriculum for your child.

FOOD SERVICE: Children may purchase their lunch tickets in the cafeteria before 8 a.m. If you wish to have your child bring lunch money daily, they can just pay the cashier as they go through the lunch line.
Breakfast: $1.25 Lunch: $1.75 Lunch Time: TBA

CONFERENCES: You will have one conference per semester in addition to the six weeks report card. We will file many of your child’s papers and send them home on Friday for you to examine. You will be asked to sign and return the folder each time so that we can be sure you are informed about your child’s daily progress. Please return the papers, they are kept on file for 6-weeks. Should you wish a conference before we notify you, please use the space provided in the folder for comments and we will be happy to schedule one. We believe that parent-teacher conferences are extremely important because through our communication we can better ascertain methods of helping your child. If we call for a conference at an inconvenient time for you, just send a note and we will be happy to reschedule at a more convenient time.

Conference: TBA

HOMEWORK: Your child is expected to read in their AR book for 100 minutes per week. They need to record this in their Behavior Folder. A more detailed discription of routine homeowrk assignments will be sent home soon. If your child dawdles in school and fails to complete his/her daily assignments, then he/she will need to complete those assignments at home, plus any homework he may have. If your child seems to be having an excessive amount of homework, then we need to talk together and work out a plan that encourages them to complete their work in the class time provided. If they use their time wisely, they should require only 30-40 minutes of work at home. At Pine Tree, we believe that any homework assignment is for the purpose of reinforcing a skill, making up incomplete work, or occasionally during a special research project. It is never given indiscriminately and without cause. We appreciate your help by setting aside a specific time and place for your child to WEEKLY FOLDER : Each Friday, we will send the previous week’s papers home. The graded papers are recorded grades or practice work. We encourage you to take a few minutes and sit down with your child to go over the papers he/she brings home and sign the parent signature column. The graded papers are to be returned by your child on Monday morning in their folder. Please have your child correct any papers with grades below 70. They will receive a 70 in place of the failing grade. If you have any questions, please send a note or write your question in the parent comment box.

P.E.: Your child will have P.E. on (?) days. Should your child need to NOT participate in class, you or a doctor must send a note.

ABSENCES: Absences are strongly discouraged for reasons other than personal illness, death in the family, or certain extenuating circumstances. When a child misses school, he misses instruction, and this is impossible to make up. Please make every effort to see that your child attends regularly. If your child must be absent, please send a note with your child when he/she returns explaining the absence.

MAKE-UP WORK: If your child has been ill, they will have three days to make up the work that they missed. If you wish to obtain their make-up work before they return to school, please call the office and let them know in advance. It is very difficult to gather materials while giving instruction to the class. We would greatly appreciate this effort.

DETENTION: Detention can be assigned by the teacher when an assignment has become 3 days late, for missing homework, and for misbehavior in the classroom. A phone call from the teacher can not be expected before a detention notice is sent home.

BIRTHDAY INVITATIONS: Please do not allow your child to distribute party invitations at school unless the entire class is invited. This is very painful for those children who are not invited.