September 26, 2025

Social Studies

🌍 What's Coming Up in Geography

In the coming weeks, we will continue our deep dive into geography with some exciting new learning experiences. Your students have been making wonderful progress, and I'm thrilled to build on their growing knowledge of our world.🏠 How You Can Support at Home

- Encourage your child to share what they've learned about different places

- Look at maps together and discuss geographical features

- Watch age-appropriate documentaries about different countries and cultures

- Practice using directional vocabulary (north, south, east, west)

- Explore geography apps or online resources together

6 Geography

📊 Geography Proficiency Scale

I've attached our geography proficiency scale to help you understand the learning targets and expectations for this unit. This scale outlines the progression from beginning to advanced levels, allowing you to support your child's learning journey at home. Please review this document to see how your student can demonstrate mastery of geographical concepts.

This week, students dedicated time to paraphrasing and summarizing content from "Energy and Particles in Motion" (p. 21) in their Interactive Science Notebooks. To support their understanding, we watched a helpful video on summarizing techniques. Since this proved to be a challenging task for many, I encourage you to review your child's summary with them at home—it’s a great way to reinforce learning!

Science

Next week we start October Zero Waste Challenge! Your child should have a labeled bag and put clean and dried plastic that they used. For example, if pasta was made and they ate a fourth, then a fourth of the bag goes in their container. All plastic that had dairy or meat should be tossed and recorded on their document in Part 2 in the "Threw out" section.

The Challenge goes from Oct. 1 through Oct. 31st at midnight. In other words, if they eat the candy the wrapper on Halloween goes in the bag. 👻🍬

Important note: 5% of the grade is formative and 95% is summative. At this point, only one summative grade is entered. Don't panic if there was a big drop in grades this week. That will be corrected once more grades are entered.

Math

Over the next two weeks, we’ll be wrapping up our Statistics unit with an exciting student-led project! Each student will create a quantitative statistical question of their choice, collect real data, and analyze it using measures of center (mean, median) and spread (range, interquartile range, or standard deviation). They’ll also represent their findings using a variety of graphs, such as histograms, box plots, and dot plots.

To cap it all off, students will present their projects to the class, showcasing both their math skills and creativity. We can’t wait to see what questions they explore and how they interpret their data!

PE/Study Skills

Rembrandt: We are moving to the outdoor space this week, and our class sessions will be taking place on the blacktop surface. We will continue to work through our first complete round of physical fitness testing over the next 3 weeks (push ups, mile and half-mile runs, sit ups check, PACER aerobic capacity check, flexibility measurements), interspersed with traditional and non traditional court games. We will re-visit volleyball, but also try RINGO, Ultimate Ringoni, Diabolos, as well as other old school favorites.

We are still working through the final scheduling details, but during October we will also be having a 2-day bike safety course here on campus, run through our PE classes. Children will receive instruction about traffic and safety laws that pertain to keeping them safe while riding our local streets. More details will come once the schedule is finalized.

Corbolotti: Students recently wrapped up lessons on writing professional emails, focusing on both formatting and content. This week, our emphasis has shifted to planning, students are learning strategies to develop effective planning habits that will serve them well across subjects. To keep things fun and creative, students are also working on a fun comic strip project centered on executive functioning themes.

Band

2nd period - I'm very happy with the productivity I'm seeing from this class. We're officially playing a Concert Bb scale, learning new rhythms and playing in the 40's in the Standard of Excellence book. Loving the enthusiasm I'm seeing and hoping to continue to hear improvement through home practice. Jazz band will be ready to perform at a gig in a month-month and a half.

4th period - Behavior continues to be a challenge in this class. I'm seeing lots of disruptive behavior that curbs learning and forces me to discipline and lecture. My preference would be for students to be more focused, so our time is spent enjoying music together. That being said, we are still making steady progress. We just started our Concert Bb scale, learning new rhythms and right before Jingle Bells in the Standard of Excellence book. Jazz band will be ready to perform at a gig in a month-month and a half.

Music Exploratory

As of today, we have completed one choral standard piece, one mainstream rock piece, one mainstream pop piece and a multicultural Italian piece. Today the kids received our first multicultural african piece, where we'll be introducing percussion parts, rathern than me always playing piano. I'm enjoying working with these kids and I think we're connecting on a musical and personal level. Hoping they're digging working with me, as much as I am with them.

Language Arts

Hello ELA - 6th Grade!

We continue to read Percy Jackson's "The Lightning Thief" book. Each student should be done with reading Chapters 1-9. The students have completed all Workbook assignments from Module 1, Unit 1, Lessons 1-10. The Mid-Unit 1 Assessment will be in completed in class on Friday, September 26th.

Next week, we will be transitioning the Long Term Substitute Teachers. Ted Stoeckley will be taking over for me on Friday, October 3rd. Mr. Stoeckley will pick up the curriculum from where I left off in Unit 1.

Greek Mythology will continue to be the theme of our curriculum. Thank you for bringing in your own Greek Mythology books this week.

It has been a pleasure teaching your children! I will miss them greatly.

-Dana Koch

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