A reminder that today is the final meeting for the 6th grade field trip to the Redwoods! We are all so excited! The meeting is tonight at 6:30pm, in the library. Please bring your completed paperwork if you have not already submitted it.
We will be reviewing important details including revealing who your child’s chaperone and cabin mates will be. You won’t want to miss it!
See you there!
Cheers
This Friday is Pi Day (3-14). Because Friday is professional development, and since there is no school, we will celebrate Pi Day on Thursday.
We Love Pi!!
We will celebrate by discovering Pi, doing the Dance of the Sugar Pie Fairy and, of course, eating pie! In order to eat pie, we need to have pie. If you are interested in donating a pie, plates or plastic ware, sign up on the WeJoin in link on the sidebar.
Thursday afternoon, Weber County Library will present The Odyssey during an in class “field trip”.
As always, thanks for all you do to support our class!!
Good Morning. I hope you are all enjoying the beautiful weather this weekend. I know I am.
We have a lot planned this week, and being that it is a short week, we are going to be very busy.
First off, we have been practicing with the new testing program SAGE. This is the first year this format is being used by the State of Utah and we have so much to learn. The only way for the students to be prepared to use this program is to practice. We are practicing in class, but I’m asking you to have your students to practice at home as well. In math, this new testing format, not only asks the student to answer the questions, but to build the equations as well. This type of critical thinking is so important as we begin preparing for Jr. High, and the rest of their academic careers.
With limited technology resources, and time, in the classroom it is imperative that you have your children practice at home. Your students can take practice exams at home, by logging in as a guest, to the link below. Click through the guest options and they can select math, language, writing or science exams.
https://utpt.tds.airast.org/Student/Pages/LoginShell.aspx
Tuesday we have our 5 and 6th level Maturation Program called, Growing Up Comes First. This will be held from 9-10:30 and parents are welcome to attend.
This Friday is Pi Day (3/14) but since we are out of school, we will be doing some Pi Day activities Thursday morning. I have some fun, learning activities planned as we celebrate Pi.
In addition, in the afternoon, we have a representative from Weber County Library coming to our school to introduce us to The Odyssey with a classroom presentation. Each year Weber Reads focuses on a different subject and this year it is The Odyssey. This will be a perfect introduction as our 5th level students have just begun studying Ancient Greece.
The Odyssey
Parents of level 6 students can be on the lookout for a packing list for the field trip to The Redwoods. You should receive this by spring break (March 31-April 4) so you can finish gathering necessary supplies during the break. The students are getting excited and I’m getting excited as well.
I hope you all enjoyed the three day weekend. I can’t believe it’s Friday already. Whew! Time flies when you are working hard, like the students have all week.
There are a lot of updates so pull up a chair, pour a warm drink and settle in.
Science Fair was Wednesday and we had some really fantastic projects from our class. Our very own Hailey, a 6th level student, won 3rd place overall and will be moving on to the Ritchey Science Fair on March 20th. Congratulations to Hailey!
Today we had a whole class lesson on context clues and how to identify words we don’t know the meaning of by looking for four clues: synonyms, antonyms, explanations and examples. We watched a short video to help the students understand each on of these clues a little more. Follow this link, and you can watch the video with them if you would like.
http://www.flocabulary.com/context-clues/
We also had a zoology lesson on mountain biomes. We started watching the BBC Planet Earth Mountains DVD and looked for 3 animals, 3 plants and 3 mountain ranges that were mentioned in the video. The BBC puts out amazingly beautiful educational films.
Our 4th grade students have been working on improving their sentence writing, learning about decimals and learning how to identify locations on a map given their longitude and latitude.
Our fifth grade students are finishing their unit on Ancient Egypt and have a pyramid project due on Tuesday, February 25th. They are to create a pyramid from whichever medium they prefer. It could be clay, sugar cubes, paper, cardboard or whatever materials your have available in your home. They also created a classified ad looking for workers, instead of slaves, to help them build their pyramids.
In preparation for our DWA Tuesday, February 25th, our 5th level students have been practicing persuasive essay writing. Please have your 5th level student log on to Utah Write this weekend and practice, practice, practice. With less than one week to go, any amount of practicing they can do will benefit them greatly. We have discussed ways to make their writing longer, by using more detail and examples within their writing.
In 6th grade this week, we had two lessons on how to write a short response to a literary passage using “ACE”. Answer the question concisely, Cite the information directly (quote) or indirectly (summarizing), and Explaining by giving examples from the text. This is a concept that is a little bit challenging, but with practice will become much easier. We also discussed some of the causes of the Revolutionary War. We talked about the Stamp Tax, Townshend Duties, Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party. Next week we will discuss the First Continental Congress.
Next week we have Ballet West coming to do an in school fieldtrip. They will be visiting with us on Wednesday. Also coming up next week, we have a Parent Education Night entitled: School Safety for our Generation. This will be held Thursday, February 27th at 7:00pm. Representatives of NOPD and North View Fire Dept. will also be there.
Lastly, we have a maturation program for our 5th and 6th level students on March 11th. A permission slip was sent home with your student this week. Please sign and return the form with your student by March 7th. The program is called Growing Up Comes First. You can see an overview of the program online by visiting www.growingupcomesfirst.org/en/parent-guide
Have a wonderful weekend.
Cheers!!
I hope you all had a relaxing holiday season with your family. I know I did.
Here we are back at school, it’s 2014, and there is so much work to do. We started out the new year talking about goals and resolutions, both academic and personal. The children started compiling their portfolios for the upcoming parent teacher conference. Each child is working on writing goals for each of our major content area with a specific, measurable method for attaining these goals. In addition to goal writing, some children began working on a resolution mobile that we will hang in our classroom.
We chose specific countries to accompany the continent study the students have been working on. This assignment was given the beginning of November, and while the students have been given some time in class to work on them, these are long term at-home projects and are due January 30.
At the end of this month, level 5, students will be attending JA Biztown in SLC Monday, January 27. Each student will apply for a job within one of our two class businesses. They will experience a real job interview, learn how to write checks and balance a checkbook. In addition, they will become registered voters and vote for mayor, treasurer and United Way Director. In order to make this happen for our class, we need at least two parent volunteers who can spend the entire day with us in SLC. We will also need parent drivers (with background checks), to drive our students and pick them up. If you are interested in volunteering as a chaperone, driver or both, please email me as soon as possible. There will be a small fee for this field trip.
Have a wonderful weekend!
Cheers.