For Parents

Email is the best way to reach me (tholmes1@houstonisd.org). However, you may also leave a message at 713.917.3531.

Leaving a note through the Parent Student Connect is not a good way to reach me. We have to bring up a special screen, one that we don't normally use on a daily basis, just to look for notes. To make it worse, each grade level for each class has its own screen. Since I might have two or three grade levels in one class, I have to look at two to three screens for each class just to see if there might be a note from a parent. It doesn't happen. Please email me directly.

Download a PDF copy of the Technology Applications syllabus here.

Download a PDF copy of the HISD Code of Student Conduct. You and your child should have received this at the beginning of the year.

Assignments and Grading

Be sure to check out the Assignments page to see what your child is (supposed to be) doing in class.

To check on your child's grades and assignments for all classes, login to HISD's Parent Student Connect. Note that Revere uses a weighted system for grades: daily grades count for 60% of the overall grade, major grades count for 30%, and minor grades count for 10%.

Important note about my gradebook: Almost all assignments have a default grade of 0. This is for two reasons:

  1. It shows the students what their grade will be if they do not turn in the assignment.
  2. Failing grades appear in bold red in the teacher's gradebook, making them easy to see and harder to overlook.

If no grade is entered for an assignment, it's as if that assignment does not exist, and it gives the students a false average. Grades should be the earned grade (which could be a 0) or Exc if excused. There are a few exceptions, but very few.

If an assignment is due and a student has not turned it in for any reason, including absence, it will remain a zero until the student turns it in. Absences are not excuses for failing to turn in assignments. All assignments can be made up, most without penalty.

Your child will be held to Revere's Appropriate Use Policy. You may want to discuss it with your child, along with the Online Safety Pledge that I found at another web site. For reasons that I hope are obvious to everyone reading this, the use of the Internet is no longer an option at school.

Here are the TEKS (Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills) for Technology Applications, grades 6-8.

Although this is not a keyboarding course, we do 10-15 minutes of touch-typing practice each day. If you would like to have your child practice keyboarding at home, there are several online typing tests and tutors. Here is a page with links to some of those: http://typingsoft.com/all_typing_tutors.htm. You can often find inexpensive typing programs at Office Depot and other stores. In the classroom we use Type to Learn, which was developed by teachers and is great for K-8 students. It can be hard to find locally, but it is available from many online retailers at an academic discount, including Academic Superstore and K12Software.

You also may find the typing page to be of some value.

Here is the bell schedule (on reverems.org).

The Parents' page on DiscoverySchool.com links to software reviews, study tools and homeschooling resources, and articles designed to help parents help their kids.