***Parents!!!! Please Read!*****

If your child has a score of less than 90 in the "Standards Met" category of their progress report, then that indicates a serious problem.  That score is an indication of the percent of the standards covered that your child has been able to show an understanding of based on a simple benchmark assessment.  Ideally, this score should always be 100.  However, due to factors such as absences, careless errors, and just an off day here and there; 90 may not mean a lack of effort.  Please monitor this score carefully.  If at any time it goes below 90, your child is getting seriously behind and is in danger of losing content to the extent that they may fail the CRCT.  Please see to it that your child studies regularly for social studies.  We move quickly, but only cover one standard at a time.  This ensures that I can get an accurate indication of exactly which students understand what material.  If a student falls too far behind, it will require extensive remediation and unnecessary extra work on their, mine, and your part to get them caught back up.  The best thing for everyone is that your child keep up with the majority of the class.  Thank you for your support.

If your child is absent, the most valuable thing that you can do to help them keep up is to discuss the standard that we are working on that day. All Georgia Performance Standards are available at the Georgia Department of Education Website, but the specific one for that day will be listed here. If you aren't sure of the answer, the internet is a valuable resource for researching and finding out. As long as your child can perform the standard, they will be ready to rejoin the class and move on when they return. Thank you for all you do.

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Homework:

Of the four categories that the seventh grade standards are divided into, I teach geography first. The reason for this is based on my belief that a student is much more likely to understand and retain concepts (historical, governmental, and economic) about a place if they have a mental image of where this place is relative to themselves and other places. It can't be understated that mental "bulletin boards" are invaluable tools for retention. A student is much more likely to be interested in, listen to, and comprehend facts about "Nigeria" if they can readily picture Nigeria in their mind on their own mental map. In addition, other geographic concepts, like climate and terrain descriptions, enhance this mental image and further facilitate understanding. Interactions between places can be better understood if the student knows how far apart they are and what type of terrain or water lies between them. To teach location and place first makes sense to me and, based on my research, it fosters interest and understanding, thus inviting further study.