1. Membean Login and Information Mrs. Freitas 2015

2. Dear Parents, Sometime during the week of Feb. 9-12, I'll be introducing your kids to a very cool vocabulary program called Membean. I am piloting this program with my 7 th grade students, and I thought the 6 th grade would benefit from it as well. Membean has been adopted at Southwest this year, and so far at CHA, our 7 th graders really enjoy the program (especially when compared to workbook-based programs). I also am looking forward to piloting this vocabulary program because it is more personalized and offers more review for each word, as well as would free up more class time for students to write and do grammar instead of the vocab book. Membean has offered me a free trial not only for 90 days but for the rest of the school year, so I want to try it out with your smarties. :) The Upside: Students learn vocabulary words in an engaging, fun way; it's a personalized program geared to each students' current knowledge; there's lots of repetition so that they learn and retain the words; and they learn roots and derivations in addition to words themselves. The program uses graphics, audio, video clips, and engaging pictures to improve learning and retention, and on my end, I can see how frequently the students are using the program and how fast they are progressing. Another upside is that as far as your life goes, it should make homework easier. The program is intuitive so they won't need any help from you except perhaps reminders to do the studying. As long as they're putting in the time, the words will be learned because of the way the program repeats the words, so I won't test them, and they won't have a workbook to complete, either. (Don't toss the Sadlier books, though! Mrs. Pettit and I will give students extra credit on the first day of 7th grade if they complete the chapters on their own over the summer.) The Downside: Membean is a computer-based program, so students will need time on their personal or family computers to complete the assignment which will start at 10 minutes a day, 3 times a week. How You Can Help: while students are getting used to doing vocab at home, please remind them to complete their 10 minutes a few times a week (of course they can do more!). It is helpful if students have their own email account when they enroll so that they can reset their own passwords should they forget the one they created. I can reset them from my teacher screen, but it's easier for them to do it themselves. If you want them to use your email, they only need the account name (like freitask@chapel-hill.org), not your password.freitask@chapel-hill.org I'm very excited about this trial. Thank you for your help as we see if this system is an improvement to our language arts program at CHA! Katelyn Freitas