WELCOME TO MRS. SMITH'S CLASS!!

Welcome to the 2010-2011 school year! I am extremely excited to work with the fifth graders this year as we accomplish great things and learn many new skills along the way. My name is Melanie Smith and this is my 10th year of teaching at Covert Elementary. I began my teaching career teaching 6th grade here at Covert for five years, then I was moved to 2nd grade for four years, and now here I am in 5th grade! I live in Lawrence with my husband Chris, three year old daughter KayLynn, and our newest edition to our family, Evan, who was born on September 3rd of this year.

I graduated from Grand Valley State University in 2001 with a Bachelors Degree in Language Arts/Elementary Education and then finished my Master's Degree as a K-12 Reading Specialist in 2009. I really look forward to this school year and have many ideas on how to make this year fun and engaging for everyone while at the same time exceeding learning goals and preparing students for their transition to middle school. Please feel free to stop into our classroom anytime and see all of the wonderful work or just observe how our day goes. We really love to have guests and/or volunteers to help out within the classroom so if this is something you are interested in, please let me know.

This year I am putting my lesson plans online for students and parents to access at home in case a student is absent and wants to know what has been missed so they do not get behind. I will be following the guidelines set forth in the parent/student handbook with regards to missed work due to absences so please familiarize yourself with those policies. To access the online lesson plans with homework assignments please go to www.planbook.com. The email login is This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it and the password is bulldogs. Also, please check out the links below for interesting websites that may come in handy this year.

Again, I look forward to working with all of you this year and hope to see you stop in our classroom at any time this year!

--Melanie Smith