Dear 7th & 8th grade Parents,

I hope you are having a wonderful summer! However, the time for school is rapidly approaching. This year, 7th & 8th graders will be using an online spelling program, called Weekly Words. Each student gets a password and logs on at home and at school. The program allows students to practice their spelling words, quiz themselves on them and take a test (every friday.) Weekly Words lets parents and kids monitor their spelling progress. Parents can see how their student is doing by signing up on the website at www.weeklywords.com. If you are interested, I can also tell the program to send you (the parent) a sort of spelling progress report for each spelling test that your student takes. If you would like to sign up for the spelling progress report, please let me know via email.

If you are interested, your student may test the program before school starts. It would help your child get a jump start on the year and would familiarize himself or herself with the program before he or she had to use it in school. Any progress that your student makes will count for next year (if he or she practices and take the first test, it will count towards his or her grade next year and he or she could do silent reading while the rest of the class takes the test for the first list. Your student will have a "test" on each list of words in the online spelling book. If the program confuses him or her at first and he or she does poorly on the first test, I will arrange it so that he or she may re-take it with everyone else later on.) Your student does not have to take the first test if he or she doesn't want to; he or she can just log in and see what it is like or do one of the practice exercises, so he or she gets the hang of it. You can also register early, as a parent. The program is new, so it might take a while to register in September when 100+ parents are trying to register as well, but if you register now, it will sign you up very quickly.

Your student may only log on Monday-Friday from 8am to 2pm, unless you register as a parent on the weekly words site - then your student can practice his or her words whenever he or she wants. For your student to log on, go to www.weeklywords.com. Then, go to the login section of the page (on the right hand side of the page). For his or her user name or email, type in my email address: mscognato@yahoo.com.

A student's password is used both for access and identification. Each student has a different password. To obtain your student's password, email me at mscognato@yahoo.com and ask for the password. Students should not to give out their password to anyone. When you run the program, make sure you turn on the sound on your computer. Later on, if you have time, please send me an email letting me know what you think of the program.

The service is free for Windsor Jr. High students, teachers and parents. It is a cool new program and they are letting me and a few other teachers test it out for free. I think it will be a fun new way to do our spelling this next year!

Enjoy the rest of your summer :)
Lauren Cognato