January 3, 2012

Dear Third Grade Families,

I am pleased to have this opportunity to be able to introduce myself as the new third grade teacher at St. Francis of Assisi. My name is Angela Carsioni, and I will be with your children for the remainder of the academic year.

I am truly excited about being able to start the year off with your children and to be a part of their education. I also look forward to working with you as we help your child reach his or her full potential. Being that third grade is an extremely important year, I want to assure you that I will do my best to help your child succeed in the days and months ahead.

In order to help the children succeed, I believe that a good parent-teacher relationship is crucial. Therefore, I want you to feel free to contact me if you ever have any questions, comments or concerns. You can reach me by email at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or simply send a note to school with your child. I will be doing my best to keep you updated on what we have been doing in class, and to inform you of upcoming plans and events through a monthly newsletter that will be sent home with your child. If I need to get in contact with you for individual concerns, I will contact you either by phone, email, or by sending a note home.

As parents/guardians, nobody knows your child better than you do! With that said, I would appreciate it if you could take the time to write a short letter addressed to me in a sealed envelope, in which you let me know about your child. Please include details such as medications required, allergies, academic strengths/weaknesses, hobbies, personality traits, likes/dislikes and any other pertinent information that would help me as their teacher. Please have your child bring the letter to class no later than January 6.

Once again, I look forward to working with you and your child in the upcoming months and am excited to begin another wonderful school year!

Sincerely,

Miss Angela Carsioni

Here are few updates on some of the things I changed in the class:

-      Students will have a community pencil case kit at their tables that will be shared among the students at each of their tables. There is no need for them to bring individual pencil cases. I did that mainly because it eliminates clutter and promotes a sense of community and sharing.

-      I would like to have one folder that goes home each day as a communication log between Home and School.  In this folder there will be any notes they are given out during class. When students enter school they will hand in their folders, and I will check them for notes from parents and any homework assignments.

-      Tests- I will send tests home to be signed and brought back to school to keep for my records.

-      I implemented a few reward systems in my class to give students incentive. One of the reward systems includes a green, yellow, and red card. Each day everyone starts with a green card. Everyone will get one verbal warning before any need to change their card to yellow.  If the card ever gets to red, I will send I note home with that child so we can work on what we should do next. If everyone stays on green each day, they will earn a point towards a class reward. We also have a money/counting system which aims to reward students for their positive behavior in class. When they earn certain intervals of money (25, 50, 75, and 100) they can cash in for various privileges. Students will also win rewards for fully completing homework.