6th Grade Newsletter
November 2016
General Announcements
-November 10: Veteran's Day assembly, Early Release
-November 10: REQUIRED Student-led Conferences (reserve your time here)
-November 11: No School - Veteran's Day
-November 18: PTO Party on the Patio, Dance 5:30-7:30
-November 21: Science Museum Field Trip
-November 22: Vulcan Field Trip
-November 23-25: No School - Thanksgiving Break
**REQUESTS** - If you are willing to donate #2 Pencils, we would greatly appreciate it. Please, no mechanical pencils.
Language Arts
Vocabulary, grammar, and writing with specific purposes continue to occupy the focus of our day. Students have also been writing book reviews for Newbery Award winners that they have chosen to read. November's reading challenge will ask students to read nonfiction and use the information gained through the reading to create a specific artifact. On top of that, 2nd period has focused their attention on writing quality narratives and they have done an amazing job!
Mrs. Dyson
In Mrs. Dyson's Lang. Arts classes we have finished reading the novel Touching Spirit Bear. We have begun our vocabulary studies. Each week students will be tested on a list of words. These lists of words can be found on Mrs. Dyson's website if students misplace them. Also in the month of November we will be focused on short stories and writing online reading logs and book reviews.
Mrs. Kerr
Inspired by Touching Spirit Bear, Mrs. Kerr's class created and shared totem poles with personal symbolism. Students have reviewed parts of speech, and will be creating a class alphabet book based on the pattern in Graeme Base's Animalia.
Math
Students in Ms. Baldwin's math classes had fun applying their skills multiplying and dividing fractions when they made Punkin' Chow. The activity was FUN and the end result was YUMMY! MANY THANKS to the generous parents who sent ingredients in for that activity!
Mrs. Lowery
Math classes have wrapped up fractions and moved on to exploring the number line, integers, and rational/irrational numbers. We will begin to learn more about the Coordinate Plane and how to relate it to real situations. Students will work on a Robotic Activity in a few weeks to help the maneuver around all four quadrants. My 2nd period class has officially met Mr. McPherson and are learning more about integer operations. Ask your child, how are adding and subtracting integers the same thing?
Science
Interplanetary aliens have invaded Ms.Baldwin's science classroom! We have had fun and learned from one another as we've introduced our aliens and explained the adaptations we created to allow them to exist in less hospitable environments than Earth. We plan to leave the aliens on display so that parents can enjoy seeing our creations during conferences November 10.
Mr. Strickland
Mr. Strickland's Science class has been soaring high and digging deep into our planet's layers. How did fossils of ocean life come to be embedded in a rocky cliff atop a mountain? Our students have been discovering how continents move and will continue to shift our living spaces in the future. From earthquakes and volcanoes to all sorts of natural forces that shape our way of life. It's going to be a bumpy ride!
Social Studies
Our in depth discovery of Ancient Mesopotamia continued this week as we learned about ancient professions. Students also learned about the importance of rivers and how the invention of irrigation was a "game changer". Future activities include reading parts of The Epic of Gilgamesh and writing letters using cuneiform.
Mrs. Smith
In Mrs. Smith's social studies classes we have been busy learning about pre-history and early man. Students enjoyed learning about Otzi the Ice Man and how he may have lived long ago. We are now deep into the study of the first civilization Mesopotamia and learning about the achievements and inventions we use today that came from this early civilization. We continue to work on our geography skills by using the atlas and other maps.