Quotes for February:
Hello King Students, If you signed up for the after school program your schedule for second semester, which starts next week, has been sent home in the mail. We have also been handing out copies to students. If you don't have yours yet please find your grade level VP or counselor during break or lunch to get your copy. Thanks. Congratulations on a successful fundraising campaign to help the people of Haiti. You surpassed my goal easily. Also special thanks to student council for their leadership on this campaign. I'm impressed with your dedication to community service this year. Congratulations also go to all of you for a fantastic first semester. I will speak in more detail about this at the honors assembly in early February. Don't forget that there is no school Monday for Semester Break. Finally,a word about grades. Our new journalism class put out a terrific newspaper (go King Cobras!) with two powerful articles about grades. This article helps us as the adult staff know three very important things. First, many students are still learning how the grades work. Second, many students do not like the new grades. Third, we were correct to leave the A-F system. Grades are designed to provide meaningful and accurate feedback to you and your parents about your learning and development as a student. The A-F has been what we call a hybrid grade since at least the 1970's. This means that the grade has been a mix of your performance or academic level and your work habits. Most parents and students, however, continued to believe that the A-F reflected only academic progress. Most parents and students have also believed that teachers were very consistent in their A-F grading in middle school and high school. Both of these have not been true for quite a long time. The key to our system is to split the hybrid grade and give separate marks for your academic progress and your work habits. We also felt strongly that if we were going to split we wanted a new symbol so it was clear that we were changing. While we are still working out details, for example not everyone uses the sample grade scale percentages listed in the article, teachers are much closer in their grading systems now than before we changed. Making work habits as important as performance is a controversial change, but as any working adult can tell you work habits are as important or more important than working level. When you grow up you do not want to have colleagues with a work habits score of "1". Now, in middle school, is the time to get feedback on and develop your work habits. If you work hard you will continue to learn, grow as a person, and always be a valued member of the team. All of that being said we are excited to continue to work on our grading system so that students and parents clearly understand what each mark means- and why both standards based performance and habits of work are important. We are thankful to the newspaper staff for keeping this front and center an sharing honestly how students are feeling. Mr. Lustig HAITI RELIEF FUNDRAISER: First Day was $593.00 Great Effort. For Day 2, contributions are $1124.40. Please keep the donations coming to meet the Principal's challenge goal of $1800 and the student Council’s “Call to Action” of $3600. Congrats to our 8th grade girls basketball team for an outstanding performance in their victory over Albany Middle School on Wednesday. The MLK Cobras defeated Albany by a score of 35 to 30! Go Cobras! Congrats to our 6th grade, 7th grade, and 8th grade boys basketball teams for their outstanding performances against Albany Middle School. Our Cobras opened their season with impressive victories in front of a packed crowd at our home gym. Here are the final Scores: 6th grade = King 25 Albany 12. 7th grade = King 51 Albany 35 8th grade "A" = King 47 Albany 25 6th grade boys basketball day date opponent location time Mon 2-01-10 Martinez King 4:00 7th grade boys basketball Mon 2-01-10 Martinez King 5:00 8th grade boys basketball Mon 2-01-10 Martinez King 6:00 |
|
|
|
King Daily Bulletin >
Tuesday, Feb 2, 2010posted Feb 2, 2010 1:31 PM by King Webmaster |