Dear parents,

As I review and informally assess all your children's homework and in class work, to inform my lesson preparations and to take note of areas of literacy development which require further instruction and/or review. Today's class covered the following curriculum components:

1) Correct Expression of a Numerical Year

2) Short and Long Vowel Sounds (bossy 'e' rule)

3) Reading Flency Practice

4) Text Comprehension using Text Evidence - Lesson Questions

5) Review Text Features (Caption)

6) Show and Tell / Show and Share - Presentation Practice: eye contact with the audience; clear articulation/enunciation, appropriate volume; and visuals (props, realia) are visible and effectively incorporated into the presentation.

_____________________

The following are curriculum components which are in need of knowledge acquisition reinforcement however we were unable to cover in today's class due to time allowances. I ask that you please take note of the following while working with your child:

1) Each text feature is a 'name' of that text feature so it does need to be capitalized in your child's homework (e.g., Captions, Headings/Titles, Index, etc.). Thank you.

2) Text evidence is any information from the text which supports your child's understanding of a comprehension question from the lesson or from our class discussions. Usually related to comprehension clarity and the '5 Ws and H' of inquiry: What, Where, Why, When, Who, and How. Thank you.

_____________________

Homework for L12 tomorrow: 

I ask that your child independently completes the L12 Test to be submitted before tomorrow's class. This will allow me to authentically assess your child's English language knowledge, understanding, application, and communciation, so as to best inform my lesson preparations to address literacy needs for your child and for all the children in the classroom. Thank you.

There also is homework outlined as 'Task.3:L11 Homework-Download & Submit your Beyond Reading'. It is the 'Judy Baca' homework which all the children have already submitted. If you wish your child to do this homework again as well as the L12 Test, I leave that with you. If you choose not to have your child recomplete the 'Judy Baca' homework, that is perfectly fine. I have already compiled areas of literary need from your children's homework submission and in class informal evaluations, which I have or will incorporate into our lessons. If you choose to have your child complete this 'Judy Baca' homework, it would be a review and reinforcement of literacy knowledge your child currently has acquired, which is extra practice that I never discourage ('practice makes perfect' as they say).

______________________

Hopefully my note is clear and helpful (yes, still extensive - my apologies). Please inform Principal Amy if you have any further questions you would like me to address, to you or in class with your children, within my lessons. Thank you very much for your ongoing support and encouragement of your child's learning.

It is the long weekend so I hope you have lovely plans with your families. Of course, please continue to be healthy and safe. 

With my best regards. Mr. Grande.

Dear G3 Parents,

For homework, can you please ensure that your children independently complete the following:

1) Lesson 12 Weekly Test

Please submit this test prior to Monday's class.

Also, please remind your child to write their Question 21 answer, using the Hamburger Paragraph Writing strategy we learned in class. 

Thank you so very much.

p.s.: if you wish your children to complete more homework then I have assigned, please do so and submit. I will review all homework submitted. This past week's tasks are from lessons 8-11.

Important - please remember to only have your children complete extra homework that they have literary knowledge about and which they can successfully and accurately apply to their work.

If they do work that is unfamiliar to them, it will only confuse the concepts they are learning, creating learning gaps and poor knowledge acquisition and therefore negative scaffolding scenarios occur which impact future concept learning. To unlearn poor knowledge acquisition is very difficult to do.

Thank you for your understanding.

Have a wonderful weekend to you all.

Mr. Grande.

Dear Parents.

It has been a joy for me to teach your children these past two days. I thank you very much for raising such inquisitive, thoughtful, intelligent, and respectful children.

Homework for tomorrow's L10 class is:

Task 31: L10 Download & Submit your On-Level Reading.

Over the course of these next few weeks, I would like to keep you updated on my instructional best practices with your children.

I will be focused on all components of English language learning (Oral, Reading, Writing) relying on the following rubric indices:

1) Knowledge 

2) Understanding

3) Application

4) Communicaton

As well as formal and informal diagnostic, formative, and summative evaluations and assessments. This will assist in tailoring my instructional best practices for each of your children. 

The following Ontario Ministry of Education English language learning links will help inform  you on my instructional best practices, with more understanding and hopefully, more clarity: 

ttp://www.edugains.ca/resourcesELL/Assessment/STEP/STEPUserGuide_November2015.pdf

https://www.google.com/search?q=Ontario+Ministry+of+Education+-+Language+Learning+Booklets+-+Primary+Grades&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwijpvjkxfDqAhVCVjABHcArCIMQ2-cCegQIABAA&oq=Ontario+Ministry+of+Education+-+Language+Learning+Booklets+-+Primary+Grades&gs_lcp=CgNpbWcQA1Do4AhY6IMJYOKKCWgAcAB4AIABlgOIAdkRkgEKNS4xMC4xLjAuMZgBAKABAaoBC2d3cy13aXotaW1nwAEB&sclient=img&ei=NWogX-O3G8KswbkPwNegmAg&bih=625&biw=1349&hl=en-GB&hl=en-GB#imgrc=riqE6sBIy0EgyM

https://www.google.com/search?q=Ontario+Ministry+of+Education+-+Language+Learning+Booklets+-+Primary+Grades&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwijpvjkxfDqAhVCVjABHcArCIMQ2-cCegQIABAA&oq=Ontario+Ministry+of+Education+-+Language+Learning+Booklets+-+Primary+Grades&gs_lcp=CgNpbWcQA1Do4AhY6IMJYOKKCWgAcAB4AIABlgOIAdkRkgEKNS4xMC4xLjAuMZgBAKABAaoBC2d3cy13aXotaW1nwAEB&sclient=img&ei=NWogX-O3G8KswbkPwNegmAg&bih=625&biw=1349&hl=en-GB&hl=en-GB#imgrc=PvNqs-3vTNL0fM&imgdii=k-jMOidYWKUhLM

https://www.google.com/search?q=Ontario+Ministry+of+Education+-+Language+Learning+Booklets+-+Primary+Grades&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwijpvjkxfDqAhVCVjABHcArCIMQ2-cCegQIABAA&oq=Ontario+Ministry+of+Education+-+Language+Learning+Booklets+-+Primary+Grades&gs_lcp=CgNpbWcQA1Do4AhY6IMJYOKKCWgAcAB4AIABlgOIAdkRkgEKNS4xMC4xLjAuMZgBAKABAaoBC2d3cy13aXotaW1nwAEB&sclient=img&ei=NWogX-O3G8KswbkPwNegmAg&bih=625&biw=1349&hl=en-GB&hl=en-GB#imgrc=z6JXIOZdAnJ9rM

https://www.google.com/search?q=Ontario+Ministry+of+Education+-+Language+Learning+Booklets+-+Primary+Grades&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwijpvjkxfDqAhVCVjABHcArCIMQ2-cCegQIABAA&oq=Ontario+Ministry+of+Education+-+Language+Learning+Booklets+-+Primary+Grades&gs_lcp=CgNpbWcQA1Do4AhY6IMJYOKKCWgAcAB4AIABlgOIAdkRkgEKNS4xMC4xLjAuMZgBAKABAaoBC2d3cy13aXotaW1nwAEB&sclient=img&ei=NWogX-O3G8KswbkPwNegmAg&bih=625&biw=1349&hl=en-GB&hl=en-GB#imgrc=riqE6sBIy0EgyM&imgdii=L9lJkcgSZ1TIDM

http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/document/manyroots/manyroots.pdf

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to direct them to Principal Amy and she will pass them on to me. As all questions are important, relevant, and pertinent for your children's language learning process and progress, and provides understanding of our classroom learning environment, I will answer questions, anonymously, for privacy, in this format. This will keep all parents up to date and apprised of your children's full language learning experience.

Thank you. Please continue to keep healthy and safe during these challenging times.

With my very best regards to you all.

Sincerely, Mr. Grande.

Hello once again parent,

This next note will provide you with the breakdown of today's L10 lesson, to keep you informed:

To create the most effective online learning environment for your children, today's lesson focused on establishing classroom rules and expectations and to encourage an academically and socially successful learning environment with fluid, active, and motivated, teacher-student and student-student engagement. Today's lesson also focused on activating prior language knowledge to then best allow acquisition of scaffolded language knowledge as well as the introduction of new language knowledge. This instructional practice reteaches prior challenging lesson components and scaffolds into expanded or new lesson components. Today's lesson covered the following:

Grammar: Subject, Complete Subject, Compound Subject.

Vocabulary: Building Word Bank; Compound Words.

Comprehension: Sequence of Events [First, Next, Then, Last/Finally]; Text Evidence; Summarize Text.

Text Conventions: Title; Author; Illustrator; Table of Contents; Glossary; Index.

__________________

Please Note: I am a retired OCT ESL English Language Teacher and formally, my signature should be: Domenico Leucio Grande, OCT (Retired). I hope you can understand that I will simplify my signature to: Mr. Grande. Thank you for your understanding.

__________________

Have a wonderful evening to you all and I promise my notes will not always be this extensive!

Sincerely,

Mr. Grande.

Hello parents. 

I hope you are all doing well and that you are satisfied with the lessons your children are having with me so far. Your feedback is always appreciated so please add any of your thoughts to your children's homework when you submit it. Thank you.

For today's lesson we covered challenging literary components such as:

1) Paragraph Structure: topic sentence, detail sentences, and concluding sentence.

2) Paragraph Indenting.

3) Word Count Accuracy Exercise.

4) Text Features.

5) Draft Modeling/Rough Copy, expectations.

___________________

For HW tomorrow, please complete the Pre-Reading L11 - Task 1 and please focus on the reading portion of this homework. You can of course, complete the written portion if you have time, thank you. We will cover the written portion tomorrow.

Parents, you may find some lesson tasks duplicate other lesson tasks, to some extent. I would recommend that if you come across this in the lesson pre-class or post-class tasks, you can do both completely (for extra practice and mastering literacy development - if you have time) or only complete the portions of the tasks that your child has not completed already. Thank you. 

Please refer to attached documents below to help inform you of literary components covered in our classes and more details of my instructional practice:

Thank you all once again for your loving encouragement and support of your child's learning. This is truly a valuable gift to them, on the highest order, as they develop into successful, happy, hard working adults in so many areas of their lives (as you know, of course). It is a true pleasure to be your dear child's teacher, in this brief time that I have with them. Thank you. Have a wonderful evening to you all.

Sincerely, Mr. Grande.

Dear parents,

I truly hope you are all enjoying this beautiful long weekend, with your families. 

This is just a quick note regarding our preclass homework for our Tue.Aug.4/20 class.

If your child is unable to complete the preclass homework, due to your busy long weekend, that is understandable and not a problem.

If you are able to complete it, it is L13, Task 1. Thank you.

Please be safe, healthy, and happy, to you all.

My best regards to you all.

Mr. Grande.

Dear parents,

For today's lesson, the Unit 2, Week 2, Lesson 8 Weekly Test was administered. It remains unfinished so we will complete it at the beginning of tomorrow's lesson. 

For homework, to the best of their ability, can your children please complete the following Lesson 7, Task 2, activities:

1) Grammar p.61, p.67-68

2) 'My Wonder's Dictionary' - one or two word entries.

Thank you and as always, have a very good evening to you all.

Mr. Grande.

Dear Evan's parents,

Evan worked very hard today throughout today's lesson (Lesson 18, Task 2 - Apr 29 - Grammar). He was fully engaged and determined to learn the challenging curriculum that this lesson entailed. Really great work today Evan! I am very proud of you and your very positive approach to your English language learning. Awesome! We covered the following literacy concepts:

1) Singular/Plural Possessive Nouns

2) Apostrophes

3) Proofreading strategies

4) Text Features

5) Suffix and Prefix

6) Syllables

_____________________________

For HOMEWORK, can Evan please complete and submit the following:

1) Lesson 18, Task 1 - Apr 29 - Your On-Level Reading - pages 2-15 ONLY

- Read, Record, & Submit

Thank you.

_______________________________

Have a wonderful weekend to the whole family and I look forward to our next Friday's lesson.

Respectfully,

Mr. Grande

Dear Evan's parents,

It was very nice to meet Evan for the first time today. He is a joy to teach and he is clearly an intelligent, hard working student.

Every lesson, I will be focusing on the four components of language learning: speaking, listening, reading, and writing. I will be formally and informally, evaluating and assessing Evan's English language progress (diagnostically, formatively, and summatively), during his lessons AND with his homework.

It is very important for Evan to complete his homework each week and submit it to me for evaluation, more than 24 hours before each lesson.

Homework is very important for a once-a-week class: to reinforce the knowledge learned in class as well as to evaluate what a student knows (strengths) and does not know (next steps or Learning Gaps). Evan's homework is very important for my lesson planning to address Evan's Learning Gaps. Thank you.

For each lesson, Evan will need his notebook, a pencil, an eraser, and a ruler. His note-taking written work is to be neat and accurate in spelling, copying, and presentation.

_____________________________

For today's lesson, we worked on:

Lesson 1, Task 2 (R&W)

We covered the following Literary concepts:

1) Reading Strategies

2) Key Vocabulary

3) Predictions

4) Theme

5) Genre: Folktale

6) Antonyms and Synonyms 

_______________________________

For HOMEWORK, please have Evan complete and submit the following work (more than 24 hours before his next class):

Lesson 1, Task 1 (Spelling Practice):

Phonics Spelling Reproducibles-G3-6.pdf

Evan is only to do the following pages:     p.31-35

If Evan does not understand any activities with his homework, please just write: 'I don't understand this' or 'IDUT' and then I will work on this activity with him, in class. Thank you. 

_________________________________

Evan did very well today, in all four language components. He is an excellent conversationalist and he is also very respectful and polite.

Have a wonderful weekend to the whole family and I look forward to our next lesson together.

My very best regards are with you all.

Mr. Grande.

Dear Evan's parents,

Evan had a very strong lesson today (Jan.14th). He is a joy to teach.

For today's lesson, we worked on:

1) Reviewed Evan's Lesson 1, Task 1 (Grammar) homework.

2) Focused on Neatness and Organization of his Notebook and his Homework (e.g., spelling, margin, title and date, etc), for the best marks.

3) Reading Instructions carefully, for the best marks.

4) Story Telling: 'Immigrating to America' : a) Genre: Historical Fiction; b) Quotation marks and dialogue - character voice; and c) Text Features (e.g., photographs, etc).

______________________________

For homework please have Evan complete the following activity:

Lesson 2, Task 1, (On-Level Reading)

- Read, Record, and Submit

(If you need assistance with this assigned homework, please contact the Academy of New Echo Education).

_________________________________

Thank you very much and have a wonderful weekend. 

Very best regards,

Mr. Grande.

Dear Evan's parents,

Evan had a very good lesson today. He was tired but he worked hard throughout the lesson.

For today's lesson, we worked on Lesson 3, Task 1 (Your Turn Practice).

We covered the following Literacy concepts:

1) Key Vocabulary

2) Theme Graphic Organizer/Planner

3) Comprehension and Fluency

4) Antonyms

5) Long 'i' and long 'u' sounds

6) Plurals

_________________________________

For HOMEWORK, can Evan please INDEPENDENTLY complete, then submit:

Lesson 4, Jan 28, Week 1 Test

_________________________________

Thank you and have a wonderful weekend to the whole family.

Best regards,

Mr. Grande.

t

Dear Evan's parents,   

For today's lesson (Fri.Jan.28th), we worked on Lesson 5, Task 2 (R&W):

We covered the following literacy concepts:

1) Pre-reading Strategies

2) Key Vocabulary

3) Reading Strategies

4) Predictions

5) Theme

6) Genre - Historical Fiction

7) Similes

We also reviewed Evan's Lesson 4, Jan 28, Week 1 Test, with the focus on finding Text Evidence to support his answers (Question 21).

_________________________________

For HOMEWORK, can Evan please complete the following:

Lesson 5, Task 1 (Spelling Practice)

_____________________________________

Thank you and have a wonderful New Year holiday celebration next week, to the whole family!

My best wishes are with you all!

Mr. Grande.

raw ehtybvbvfyh.

What did we go ovr for the assessment?

#21 Both these stories are told through a sequence of events.  Use clear text evidence to show how Katu and the man change through the series of events in the story. 

1. What two stories is the questions asking you two use?
2. What is the problem asking you?

-A Lesson Learned and Ship of the Desert

-How the man and Katu changed

From the story A Lesson Learned and Ship of the Desert, Katu and the man changed.

Beginning sentence: The story name, what the question is asking for and no detail

Katu: Katu bragged in the beginning of the story but decided to “never brag again”

The man: At the end of the story, the man found someone to help him move his things. He also learned what creatures live in the desert.

Conclusion Statement: These are the changes of Katu and the man. / Katu and the man changed a lot in the story. /  These are the ways that Katu and the man changed. 

-Realistic Fiction: A story that has characters and events that are made up but can happen in real life. 

Homework for Monday:

1. Pre Homework for lesson

2. You need to write me a paragraph about how Katu and the man changed.  Using the information on top and your assessment. 

Dear Jamie's mother,

Jamie participated very well in class on Friday (Feb 11th). He tried his very best to answer the questions being asked of him and he honestly responded when asked if he understood new vocabulary, understood what I was saying, or understood what the activities were instructing him to do. This honesty will significantly accelerate his learning, and with Jaime's mother's strong, loving support and her immediate translation services, his learning will accelerate even more quickly. Great!

p.s.: I am so happy that Google Translate is accurate enough, confirmed by Jaime's mother, to assist Jaime with new vocabulary comprehension. Therefore, I don't have to rely so heavily on Jaime's mother's translation assistance and we (mother and I) both can provide comprehension support, in partnership. This is so ideal for Jaime's overall learning success.

We covered the following literacy concepts from Lesson 6, Task 2 (Beyond):

1) Variant Vowels

2) High Frequency Words

3) New Vocabulary

4) Reading Strategies and Comprehension

________________

For HOMEWORK, can Jamie please complete and submit the following:

Lesson 6, Task 1 (On-Level Reading) -

p.2-11 

Read, Record, and Submit Jamie reading this text, to the best of his ability.

Please note: if you have trouble recording and submitting using the ANEE system, vocaroo.com is another option for you.

________________

Thank you. Have a wonderful weekend to your whole dear family. Mom, Jamie is such a sweet child and a joy to teach. Thank you for providing him with a safe and loving learning environment for him to succeed in his studies, here in Canada, in lovely Halifax. As each day passes, I know he will feel more and more comfortable and happy here, because of you and your wonderful care for him. Wonderful!

Have a really great weekend and all the very best to you all.

Mr. Grande.