A Few Reminders and a New Strategy

I wanted to take this opportunity to refresh everyone on how to get to the online version of our textbook. The steps are as follows:

-  Open your internet browser and type in connected.mcgraw-hill.com
-  The user name will be the letters kisds followed by your child's ID # (for example, kisds123456)
-  The password will be the first three letters for your child's last name followed by the ID #. For example, if your child's last name is Smith the password would be SMI123456.
-  Once the site is open, your child should have access to the grade level math, science and social studies textbooks.

I am also shifting strategies a bit in the hopes of helping my students be more successful. We will be working out of some study guides meant to accompany our textbook. The guides provide a somewhat abbreviated version of each chapter and is easier to read. Those giant textbooks can be a bit overwhelming so I'm hoping using these guides will help make the students more likely to read the information.

For the most part, the study guides will stay in the room and not go home. There may be some exceptions on the night before tests and the like but I have learned that, for most of my students, very little studying is taking place at home. If the work/studying/review does not happen here in class, it just isn't happening. That being what it is, I am trying to simplify and make sure the students are exposed to as much of the information as possible in class. This will leave less to do at home. Anything that needs to be done at home can be done using the online textbook.