January Newsletter

Dear Team Keystone Families,

Happy New Year! We hope that everyone had a relaxing and rejuvenating winter break. As we begin the new year, we hope to support students in cultivating reflective habits that will help them to set goals for their learning and to monitor their own progress as we continue in the second term of sixth grade. We look forward to watching them continue to grow as learners and people in the coming months.

Home-School Connection

One of the keys to success in middle school is making sure to come to class prepared. Students should be working to organize their binders, folders, and materials during Compass Block time and at home as needed. We also ask for your support at home to help remind your child to replenish materials. We recommend students go through their binders/folders each weekend and replenish any supplies they might need for the upcoming week, especially pencils. Also, we continue to ask for your help in reminding students to please charge their Chromebooks the night before school so that they are ready for the day. It is also expected that students bring their chargers to school with them.

Another part of being successful in middle school involves students taking increased responsibility for their own learning. When students are absent from class for illness, music sectionals, or other reasons, it is their responsibility to check in with their teachers about the work that they missed in class. We are happy to work with students to help them get caught up, but we want to ensure that they take the initiative to meet with us in class or during Compass Block time. As stated in our family handbook, students have as many days as they were absent to make up their missed assignments.

Helpful Links:

Our weekly Homework Grid

Our team webpage

 Aspen 

Amazon Wishlist

The Compass Store has been a huge success thus far! Thank you to all of the families who have generously donated to help make this positive behavior system meaningful for students. For anyone who would still like to donate, we have linked our Amazon Wishlist here.  We have also included a few supplies on the list that would help our classes run smoothly.

If you would like to donate something else to the prize box, please send it in with your student and have them turn it into Mrs. Foster.  Below are some other ideas for donations. Please refrain from donating candy and other foods. Thank you in advance for your kind support.

Donation Ideas: 

Gift cards, notebooks, pens/pencils, magnets, posters, baseball cards, markers/colored pencils, stickers, key chains, highlighters, water bottles, lotion/hand sanitizer (Note: If your 6th grader would like it, chances are others would, too!)

Admirable Attributes

As a part of our Admirable Attributes program, Team Keystone recognizes two students each month who exemplify positive team attributes. The Admirable Attribute for the month of January is: Inclusive. We want to encourage students to think about what they can do to help ensure that everyone on the team feels respected and included. We do a lot of collaborative work in our classrooms, and being able to work with a variety of peers is a very important life skill. We want students to think about ways that they can be thoughtful partners and group members and to show each of their peers that they are valued members of the team. We also ask students to recognize and praise others for demonstrating inclusivity in and outside of school.

Current Class Concepts

Applied Literacy

In Applied Literacy, students are applying what they have learned about annotating and summary writing as they work in Book Groups to read shared independent reading texts during the week. 

On Fridays, students will participate in group discussions to process their reading for the week. They will also complete reflections about the topics that came up and overall takeaways from the group discussion. 

English Language Arts

In ELA, students are reading The Giver by Lois Lowry. Students have been using active reading strategies and annotating as they read to keep track of “Big Ideas” in the text. This helps us track theme development through details in the novel. When we finish reading, students will be writing theme statements and creating projects to show how their chosen theme is developed in the story.

Essential Question: Which matters more: safety or freedom?

Focus Skills:

• Identify main ideas and details and deepen thinking by reading actively

• Analyze how an author develops point of view

• Gather evidence from across a novel to support an idea

• Determine how specific details reveal a theme

Focus Vocabulary

(List 1):

-Accustomed             -Conceivable        -Defy             -Diminish           -Disquiet

-Exempt                       -Haste                  -Relish            -Solemn             -Transmit

 (List 2):

-Anguish                     -Dejected            -Expanse         -Implore            -Linger

-Outlying                    -Receptacle          -Stealthily       -Surge            -Treacherous

Math

In MATH, we are...

• Wrapping up a brief review of Decimal Operations.

Essential Question: -What do parts have to do with a whole?

.

Focus Skills:

• Fluently add, subtract, multiply and divide multi-digit numbers using the standard algorithm for each operation.

• • • Beginning a unit on Ratios and Proportional Relationships.

Essential Question: -How does reasoning with rates impact our lives?

Focus Skills:

• Understand ratio and rate concepts and use ratio and rate reasoning to solve problems.

• Understand the concept of a unit rate and use unit rate language in the context of a ration relationship.

• Use ratio and rate reasoning to solve real-world and mathematical problems by reasoning about tables of equivalent ratios, tape diagrams, double number line diagrams, or equations.

Science

We are currently wrapping up our Sound Unit and will soon be starting a new unit called Forces at a Distance. Students will be exploring different factors that affect the magnetic force and field. 

My notebook is available for all students on Google Classroom.  By mid January there will be a blooket posted on Google Classroom to help the students study and become confident with the vocabulary and concepts.  I suggest about 10 minutes review, using blooket, each night.

 Important Vocab:

-Attractive Forces                - Potential Energy

-Repulsive Forces                - Electromagnetic

-Magnetic Field

Social Studies

In Social Studies, students are beginning a unit on Ancient Egypt.

• Students will begin this unit by focusing on geography and how it impacted the development of civilization in ancient Egypt.

• Essential Question: How did Egypt’s location influence its development?

Important Dates 

• Monday, January 19th: No School; Martin Luther King Jr. Day

• Wednesday, January 21st: Half Day; Teacher PDD

Exciting News!

We wish Mrs. Ketterer all the best while she is home on maternity leave with her family and look forward to her return in the spring! We are in the final stages of hiring the long-term sub and will have them introduce themselves as soon as they begin. 

We truly believe that the success of our students depends on clear communication between school and home. We enjoyed meeting many of you at November conferences. Please feel free to contact us if you have any concerns.

Best Regards,

The Team Keystone Teachers