Happy Friday!
Just a reminder that next week is a short week with early out at 1:00pm each day. Please make arrangements to pick up your children at this time.
Sign ups for PTC can be found at this link.
Have a great weekend.
Archives
Box Tops Store
Our next Box Tops Store is Wednesday, October 8. The date was moved up to be able to submit the Box Tops before the November submission deadline.
All children who have non-expired, cut and counted box tops will be able to participate in this Box Tops Store.
October Book Report and Next Science Fair Deadline
Our September book reports turned out great! I was so impressed with the creativity of the students!
This month’s book report is student choice. They can choose their genre as well as the format they would like to report in. I would ask that if they are planning on doing a power point that they let me know a week in advance so I can reserve the projector.
Please remind your children to bring their book of choice to school. We have silent reading after recess on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. This is a great time for your students to read the book they are planning to use for their book report.
Our next science fair deadline is October 24. Students need to have their background research plan submitted on or before this date in order to stay on track with their project. We will be discussing this plan in detail in class this coming week. The research plan form was sent home with your student at the same time the proposal form came home. If you need to print another copy of this for your child, you can find the link on the PDF page at the top of the blog.
A research paper is required for 6th grade students (recommended for 4th and 5th grade students). As such, we will be doing a teacher guided mini-research paper in the months prior to Science Fair.
Just a reminder that science fair is a mandatory home project and all upper elementary students are expected to participate.
Engineering Opportunity for Girls
Happy Friday!
I wanted to share this opportunity with you and your 6th grade girls. The Expanding Your Horizons Conference, sponsored by ATK, is a wonderful experience for girls. Please consider sending your child. My own daughter went last year and has been chomping at the bit to go again. Spots fill up fast, so register early to guarantee your daughter’s first choice workshop.
http://www.expandingyourhorizons.org/conferences/ATK/
~Cheers
Normalization Nearing and End and an Update
I really, truly cannot believe that we are beginning our 7th week of school. It is nutty how quickly time is passing.
The students are all settling nicely to our daily routines, and most of the time are using their time wisely. We still have some fine tuning to do before I can say they are completely normalized, but overall I am pleased.
The last two weeks we have spent a lot of time discussing what it means to write a complete sentence. As such, we insist that all answers (written or spoken) are done so using complete sentences. Last week we discussed the parts of speech we use when writing complete sentences, and the students all did follow up work honing their skills. This week we are getting down to the actual writing of “good” sentences which contain an adjective, subject, and vivid verb. The goal is to write “best” sentences. Though this simple sentence writing has been time consuming, I am confident the time we take now will pay off 10 fold in the long run.
Level 4 students are studying Utah History and began studying the five Native American Tribes of Utah. This preliminary study before the field trip next week will give them a great background to the activities they will be participating in at the American West Heritage Center.
Ute Dwelling
Level 5 students are studying Mesopotamia and the people of Ancient Babylonia. Today we talked about King Hammurabi and the students interpreted the early code. They acted as judges to pass down a sentence they thought was appropriate before comparing their sentences to Hammurabi’s Code. Whew! I would not want to go before some of your children in court. They were harsh!
Hammurabi’s Code
Level 6 students have been studying Ancient Rome. Today we discussed the three types of government in Ancient Rome and then they began researching and interpreting the Twelve Tables. We will continue this discussion throughout the week.
This year our cultural routine is working out marvelously. We are working in units of individual subjects rather than a different subject daily. This is allowing the students to really immerse themselves in one subject rather than continually switching gears. My observations during their individual work time have convinced me that this is a good change.
If you have volunteered to help with reading groups, I will be sending out an email by mid-week. Watch your inbox please.
One more thing, book reports and science fair questions are due tomorrow. So far the cereal boxes and questions have been fantastic.
~Cheers