October 7, 2005

Dear Carmody Middle School 7th Grade Computer Class Parents and Their Children:

Again many important things to be aware of with regards to the 7th Grade Elective Computer Class.".

1. The fall Carmody Middle School Parent-Teacher Conferences will take place this coming Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, October 11 and 12, 2005 from 3:30 p.m. to 7 p.m.

• Dr. Data's conferences will all take place in the PC lab, room 110.
• Conferences will last a maximum of 5 minutes.
• Parents are encouraged to bring their child to the conference. As a reward for students being there, 1 floating "A" (20 bonus points) will be granted if both the student and at least one parent attend together!
• Parents/student are encouraged to not wait outside the room. But instead, enter the room and spend about 10 minutes or so in reviewing your child's word processing portfolio on their computer. And then observe your child in taking a type test on "All The Right Type" to observe first-hand how indepent their fingers are from their eye.
• Then conference with Dr. Data for 5 minutes.
• The final video typing project will be made available to those who want to review their child's typing project with a video. Note: you will have to fast forward the video to find your child since the video is not easily fast forwarded except by periods 1, 3, 4, 5 and 6.
• Dr. Data will provide entire 7 weeks of progress reports for all parents who attend the parent-teacher conferences to help students identify what assignments have still not been submitted, graded and/or unfinished. The object is eliminate all confusion and raise student's grades.
2. Here an inventory of all word processing assignments assigned so far: suggest students makeup all unfinished assignments as grades will be cumulative and will all count in the final semester grade.
   • Day #1: Knock Knock Jokes - Assignment #1 - B-3
   • Day #2: Principal Letter - Assignment #2 - B-4
   • Day #3: Using ClarisWorks and More Jokes- Assignment #3 - B-5 and B-6
   • Day #4: A Fractured Fairy Tale - Assignment #4 - B-7 and B-8
   • Day #5: Back and Forth to the Future and Crazy Alphabet - Assignment #5 - B-8
   • Day #6: Pete's Wardrobe - Assignment #6 - B-9
   • Day #7: Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich and My Spell Chequer - Assignment #7 - B-10
   • Day #8: Oops and Double Answers - Assignment #8 - B-33 and B-34
   • Day #9: Everybody, Somebody and Nobody and Limericks - Assignment #9 - B-25 and B-26
   • Day: #11: Morning Routine and Advanced Riddles -Assignment #10 - B-14
   • Day #12: News Survey and Human Brain - Assignment #11 - B-20 and B-21
   • Day #13: Mullworth T. Scribe's Restaurant Menu and Wacky Definitions - Assignment #12 - B-27

3. Significant Special Extra-Credit Assignments to help raise grades and CSAP literacy!!!!!!!
   See Dr. Data for the following assignments if instructions are not clearly understood. The CSAP extra-credit assignments are worth 75 extra-credit points per assignment and all others are worth 25 point per assignment. Any of them can be done at home or in class. Here are three CSAP web sites to introduce you to some of the kinds of supplemental CSAP activities used in my web-based instruction. The CSAP extra-credit assignments can be done over and over again. Just pick a different topic and start writing again and earning more extra-credit points!
   • http://www.kuzmich.com/carmody/csap.html
     
   • http://www.kuzmich.com/carmody/csap1.html
     
   • http://www.kuzmich.com/carmody/csap2.html

   Your Favorite Words, Crossword Puzzle, Practice Activity, Hello, My Name Is .........., Definitions, and others.
   

4. Carmody Middle School will have a brand-new grading scale for all classes and teachers begining this second grading period. Check out the grading curve in the table below. Students will definitely need to be conscientious in their assignments and tests as this grading scale is competitive.

   Carmody Middle School Grading Curve

   PERCENTAGE	GRADE
   99 or higher	A+
   91 to 98	A
   90	A-
   89	B+
   81 to 88	B
   80	B-
   79	C+
   71 to 78	C
   70	C-
   69	D+
   61 to 68	D
   60	D-
   0 to 59	F

    

5. Please e-mail Dr. Data at: jkuzmich@earthlink.net since he has much difficulty reading all his e-mail in two different accounts.
   
   
6. If you and/or your child needs to see the latest assignments, please go to: http://www.kuzmich.com/carmody/claris_syllabus.html and you can read and even print out the daily assignments as they are already listed by day. Note: Fridays usually do not have new assignments since we do typing tests and makeup workout. For example, day 12 was done on Thursday of this week and day 13 will be on this coming Monday, October 10th.
   
7. I need some V.I.P. assistance for helping our students complete the daily assignments at home whenever they don't finish them in class (which means homework). Namely, it is recommended that students saved their word processing documents in Rich Text File format which is the "O+" blood in the word processing industry. Thus, you child can read, print and save their assignments at home and/or a school and have complete readability. To save in Rich Text file format, simply go to "Save As" in your word processor at home or school and select the file format as .RTF or Rich Text File. Usually, there's an icon for file type, and one can select save different file formats bases the default file type of the word processor.
   
   Please give your child a 3.5" floppy diskette to use in my classes because I showed the classes how to save in Rich Text File format so they can take any or all of their work home on a daily basis to complete there or bring back to class to print out in school. I gave a ton of floppies out today to help make it easier to complete their work at home. Knowing that students can easily misplace floppies, I need your assistance to make sure that they take good care of their diskettes so they can earn credit for doing all the work! Note: the assignment generally require the following ingredients to earn full credit.
   
   
• Heading with their name, date and period on three single space lines at the top of the paper with right justification
• Then double space below with the enter key and put the title of the assignment in 24 to 36 point type size.
• Then double space again with the enter key and type the entire assignment as given on the assignment paper (top to bottom) with nothing left out!! The instructions are noted so hopefully, the student will follow the instructions verbatim.
• Select any easy to read type font. Avoid script looking fonts, old English or crazy Wing Ding type of fonts.
8. An alternative to using a floppy diskette for taking work home is to print out their work at the class period and then take it home and continue typing at home on a new file where they left off at school. Then, printout the home file and staple with the school printout and bingo, the assignment is now complete if they follow the instructions as specified above!!!!

9. All The Right Type orders were ordered Monday, October 3rd and should be here in two weeks or less. One student today tested out at 62 words per minute with zero errors for a score of 214 points.

10. Final copies the Korean Pen Pals were due today. Length is at two pages, double spaced typed. Suggest students bring in photos, baseball card, stamps, and any other light memorabilia this next week to include with the letter. Dr. Data will mail it probably by next Friday to Seoul, Korea. For every Korean pen pal letter your child receives from Korea, they will earn 40 bonus points. Therefore, the letters need to be well written and include some memorabilia. And best of all, students will earn a total of 400 test points for CSAP compliant Korean Pen Pal letters. 300 of these points will be on the second grading period. If your child didn't finish the Korean Pen Pal letter today, please have them submitted to Dr. Data before next Friday so they can all be mailed together. Otherwise, students will have to mail their own letter at their own expense at $1.00 an ounce.

Hope this information is helpful.

Till next time,

Dr. Data