WE PUBLISHED! After some peer editing, our 6th graders turned in their first piece of writing. They responded to the question In the short story "Eleven" by Sandra Cisneros, does Rachel, the protagonist, act more like a child or preteen? 

Next up this week, students will create their Digital Portfolios using Google Sites and start publishing their writing. This will be an ongoing project and a way to share their writing in a meaningful way. 

Library on Tuesday was awesome. The wonderful Ms. King led students through a poetry read-aloud with poems from Paul Fleischman's book of poems Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices. Excellent presentation practice.

EL All Grades We are savoring each chapter of Seedfolks, written by Paul Fleischman, a Newberry Medal winner.  We are learning how to pull out the important elements of each story and creating a slide to showcase those elements. 

We are learning about the types of heat transfer: convection, conduction, and radiation. This week we used solar ovens to make apple crisps using some apples from the school garden! At the end of the week, we will discuss what type of heat transfer was used to heat up the crisps. 

On Friday, we will take a short trip to the school seed library that is run by students. Here is the orientation video. Your child can check out seeds at lunch.

Remember if your child misses school or if you or your child wants to know if they have completed all the work to go to the weekly slideshow on Google Classroom.  Here is the weekly checklist for Week 5:

We will be moving on from landforms and timelines next week.  Next week, our Fast and Curious content will be the 5 Themes of Geography.  If your students haven't played you the Timelines, 5 Themes, of the GRAPES songs yet, you should check them out on the class website.  This year will be filled with lots of interesting songs.  I will update the playlist as the year progresses.  By the end of the month, we will be studying history detectives, early humans, and the Stone Age.  Thanks to everyone who sent in cookies for our archeologists to excavate artifacts from.  Pictures are posted on the class website.

As we wrap up our Badminton unit this week the students are competing in one v one games to further develop their racket skills. Students are allowed to choose which group they wanted to compete in (Good Times or Fast Play), so that they can find a group to play in with their desired skill and intensity level. 

Next week we will be moving into our Playground Games and Fitness Testing unit out on the blacktop. For the next four weeks we will be learning some new and classic playground games as well as taking our first round of fitness testing scores. We will be checking each student for scores in the following areas: 1/2 mile run, mile run, PACER aerobic test, push-ups score, crunches/curl-up score, sit and reach (flexibility), trunk lift (flexibility). Students will record their data and track their growth over the course of the year as we conduct re-checks each trimester.

BAND - Currently working on note identification (via musictheory.net), aiming for 95% and above.  We've also started working on rhythm studies (in the back of the standard of excellence) and incorporating our 4-5 notes we've learned.  Currently on #22 in the standard of excellence book (9/16) and working by quartet, sections and as a band.  Also, we completed one listening assignment (listed in aeries) called, "Por Una Cabeza," an argentine tango.  Our current struggle is transitioning from one task to the next without being very chatty or off task.  

MUSIC EXPLORATORY - Currently working on note identification (via musictheory.net), aiming for 95% and above.  We've completed, "A light of hope, a song of peace," and just completed a medley of, "Over my head" and "I wish I knew how it would feel to be free."  Thursday we're going to decide on our next piece.  Your kiddos are really hoping to do a few repeats from last year, specifically "Hamilton" and "Blackbird."  We'll see what happens... Also, we completed one listening assignment (listed in aeries) called, "Por Una Cabeza," an argentine tango. 

Design6 - Rodgers!!!

The design class is a combination of student success strategies each with a different graphic design element assignment. In the previous week, and this week, we have been practicing Cursive Writing, in order to work on fine motor skills, which will be needed for more advanced graphic design strategies. We are using cursive to write a rough and final draft famous poem AND creating a Scheduling Priorities Chart to help students understand their short term school related priorities.