Newsletters

November/December Newsletter

Welcome to our new 2023-24 school year! I hope you find this newsletter informative and helpful. Always feel free to reach out to me at jbigonia@aos93.org, through Rooms, or at 644-8177.

5th Grade Homeroom

When students arrive at school, they pass in homework and unpack for the day. They then either go to breakfast or stay in the classroom for a brainteaser puzzle and to connect with classmates. After breakfast, we have a 15 minute homeroom time. We do some reading, check Powerschool, play community building games, share about what's happening in our lives, etc. At 8:15, the whole school gathers to do the Pledge of Allegiance in the center. Our 1st academic class starts after the pledge.

We regularly participate in read aloud in the 5/6 classroom. We are immersed in our readers theater book No More Dead Dogs by Gordon Korman. Every student is playing 4-5 roles in this humorous book about the making of a middle school play. The students are practicing their stage voices, paying close attention so that they know when to say their lines, and making sense of the structure of dialogue so know when to speak.

6th Grade Math

The 6th graders are making great progress in the iReady books. We are in lesson 6 right now, right at the end of the 1st unit. We have homework most nights that we have math.

Current Unit:

- Unit 1: Expressions and Equations (Lessons 1-6)

Skills:

- Find the area of parallelograms

- Find the area of triangles and other polygons

- Use nets to find surface area

- Work with algebraic expressions

- Write and evaluate expressions with exponents

- Find the greatest common factor and least common multiple of 2 numbers

Next Unit:

- Unit 2: Decimals and Fractions (Lessons 7-11)

Skills:

- Add, subtract, and multiply multi-digit decimals

- Divide whole numbers and multi-digit decimals

- Understand division with fractions

- Divide fractions

- Solve volume problems with fractions

We also do math games and/or challenges once every two to three weeks.

Students have 45 minutes of self paced independent learning to do on the iReady Classroom website. This 45 minutes needs to be completed between Monday at 8AM one week to 8AM on Monday morning the next week. This helps students review concepts and allows them to try math topics we'll cover in the future.

I am using Unified Classroom/PowerSchool to keep track of work completion in math and to keep track of assessment scores. My goal for each student is to score a 3 or better on each mathematics standard. This score indicates mastery of the standard. Students will also be scored on the Habits of Work (engaged learner, responsible learner, and respectful learner). You can login to Powerschool by going to https://aos93.powerschool.com/public/. You login using the username and password in your child's planner.

See the 'Syllabi' tab for the syllabus for this class.

5th Social Studies

We are transitioning from our study of world geography to our study of Native Americans. We have been studying the ancient world and making maps of the major civilizations of the world in 500 BCE, 1 CE, 500 CE, 1000 CE, 1500 CE, and 2023 CE (one time period map per student). We are comparing these 6 maps to see how civilizations come and go and how the world has changed over time.

Our 2nd unit of the year is Native Americans, with a special emphasis on our local Wabanaki. We took a field trip to Coastal Rivers Conservation Trust to learn about Wabanaki culture and traditions. This was a great day where students built part of a wigwam, dug for ground nuts, enjoyed Wabanaki music (drumming) and stories, played two Wabanaki games, identified and ate edible plants and learned a little of the Wabanaki language. We will be studying Wabanaki culture in depth but also looking at nations of Native Americans in different parts of the current USA.

Most Tuesdays, I am sending students home with a copy of Scholastic News to read and a single sheet to fill out that reviews the reading. These assignments are due on Wednesdays. This is part of our current events study and I hope this builds good study habits and organization.

See the 'Syllabi' tab for the syllabus for this class.

5th Science

We are finishing up our study of space. The students studied planets, seasons, the phases of the moon, shadows at different times of year/day, day/night, etc. We'll soon have a star gazing evening at Wawenock Golf Club.

Our next unit will be Earth Systems. We will briefly study the states of matter. Then we'll move on to water distribution on Earth, the water cycle, the rock cycle, comparing hardness of solids, the different spheres of earth and how they interact, and fossil evidence.

I am using Unified Classroom/PowerSchool to keep track of work completion and assessment scores in science. Students will also be scored on the Habits of Work. You can login to Powerschool by going to https://aos93la.powerschool.com/public/. You login using the username and password in your child's planner.

See the 'Syllabi' tab for the syllabus for this class.

6th/7th Science

The 6/7 class is also continuing last year's work on our buoys/lobstermen of South Bristol project. We visited the South Bristol Fishermen's Coop and got a rundown of many of the buoys hanging on the walls at the Coop. We also painted about 30 buoys in the spring. We have more research to do to make sure we have the buoys of all current lobstermen and to get a brief biography of each that will be kept at the South Bristol Historical Society in perpetuity. Later in the year, we'll make the display for these buoys and hopefully unveil it to the public.

I am using Unified Classroom/PowerSchool to keep track of work completion and assessment scores in science. Students will also be scored on the Habits of Work. You can login to Unified Classroom by going to classroom.powerschool.com. You login using your child's gmail account. He/she can show you how to do this and how to navigate around the site.

See the 'Syllabi' tab for the syllabus for this class.

8th Science

The 8th graders did a fabulous job with the own independent experiments and presenting them quite professionally to their classmates. From testing the effect of energy drinks on fouling shooting in basketball to testing different ingredients in a recipe to see how changing it affects the outcome, the students had great ideas and successfully conducted their own experiments.

We are in the midst of studying space. We have focussed on studying seasons on Earth and on stars. Students are learning how scientists classify stars and what factors affect their brightness and temperature.

We'll move outward to study galaxies and then back toward Earth to study the moon. We'll finish the unit by looking at the scale of different objects in our universe: from very, very small to uncomprehendingly large.

I am using Unified Classroom/PowerSchool to keep track of work completion and assessment scores in science. Students will also be scored on the Habits of Work. I will also be reporting conventional grades for 8th grade. The goal is to familiarize students with how they’ll be scored in high school. You can login to Unified Classroom by going to classroom.powerschool.com. You login using your child's gmail account. He/she can show you how to do this and how to navigate around the site.

See the 'Syllabi' tab for the syllabus for this class.

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