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Conference Week - October 12-16
This Week at a Glance
Tuesday -Early Dismissal
Wednesday - Early Dismissal
Thursday- Early Dismissal
Friday- Early Dismissal - Pali Forms Due
Please note, there will be no GATE or Spanish this week.
Conferences will be held in Room 19
Dear Parents,
As a result of our evaluation of student progress over the course of the first quarter, we have decided to restructure the scaffolds we have built into our courses. In order to better meet the needs of this group, we feel these changes are necessary to promote the independence that is vital to success in seventh grade and beyond.
Each week, you will receive a Missing Assignment Report in the Thursday folder. If your child has all the work turned in from the previous week, the Missing Assignment Report will consist of your child’s name at the top and a blank page underneath. If work is missing from the previous week, you will see the name of the missing assignment/s underneath your child’s name. Your child has until the following Thursday to turn the missing assignments in for half credit. After this, the missing assignments will no longer be accepted. If the assignment was missed due to an excused absence, your student has one day for each day absent to complete the work for full credit.
During class, all students will receive the necessary documents for their assignments. If a student is absent, their documents will be in the absent work binder. If students lose a document, it is the student’s responsibility to print another copy from our websites.
How to help you child and foster independence:
If your child is having trouble getting their homework done, ask to see your child’s agenda and homework. You can also see the homework assignments listed on our websites. Once your student has shown you the completed the assignment, check the assignment off in their agenda.
If you child completes the homework but has trouble remembering to turn the assignment in, remind them of our turn in policy which is to place their work in the turn-in basket for their block. The baskets are located at the front of each of our classrooms.
If your child is struggling with the content, please ask them to see us during our offices hours or make an appointment.
Miss Patito’s office hours are Tuesdays before school, after school, and at lunch and lunch recess.
Mrs. Fungo’s office hours are Wednesdays before school, after school, and at lunch and lunch recess.
You will be receiving a hard copy of this in your students Thursday folders which we ask that you and your student sign and return.
Thank you,
Kate Patito
Revised Office Hours:
Due to conflicts with students being unable to be two places at once :) I will be moving my formal student office hour days to Tuesday. Every Tuesday before school. during lunch and after school until 3:15 (unless a student has made prior arrangements) I will be available for 'walk-in' help. Outside of Tuesdays, I am always available, but please have your student make an appointment or check to make sure I will be available and not in a meeting.
Upcoming Events for you Calendar:
10/13-16 Conference Week; 11:35 dismissal (Tuesday-Friday)
10/24 Halloween Haunt
11/2-11/6 Pali Mountain
Homeroom STEM Challenge
Test Day
Great Minds at Work!
6th Grade Committees
Tutoring younger students during time built into the school day.
Yearbook - Increasingly active towards the end of the year, students will be responsible for promoting and distributing yearbooks
Activities Committee- Students are responsible for promoting and help organizing activities like Dress-Up Days, the 6th grade Holiday Charity Drive, Earth Week Activities, etc
*Activities Committee and Yearbook have occasional, short after school commitments (not beyond 3:15) and we will do our best to schedule them so as not to conflict with other activities - Yearbook meetings do not start until later in the year.
Forms were provided for students to fill out with their interests and top choices and many of them have already turned them in!!
Pali Mountain
ALL FORMS DUE THIS FRIDAY - OCTOBER 16th.
District Medical Permission slips came home today, They are pink.
Regardless of your choice, we must have one on file for your student.
If you choose 'no' you will need to sign and return it.
If you choose 'yes' you and your child`s doctor will need to sign and return.
You may electronically submit the form to them for their signature, have them sign, scan and return to me via email if that is easier.
I have attached a link to the document here.
Also, if you use google docs/google drive, there is a great app called DocHub that allows you to edit PDF documents and sign them.
Please return all Pali Forms by the 16th.
Currently I have recieved
Permission Slips from:
Xander
Audrey
Braden
Maddy
George
Alyssa
Enrique
David
Sydney
Angel
Ethan
Kelly
Rebecca
Jacob
Joe
Hanan
Sophia
Aidan
Cade
Dara
Nikila
Ryan
Alec
Alexa
Kendryek
Medical Forms:
Enrique
Maddy
David
Sophia
Aidan
Dara
Ryan
Alexa
Kendryek
Please contact me if you have any questions or concerns at kpatito@lcusd.net
PTA and the Halloween Haunt - Patito Homeroom
Thank you for all your support and for volunteering your time!
If you would like to check the time you signed up for, please check the PTA page on the classroom website.
Science
Students have been researching with their groups and brainstorming innovative ways to market travel to their biomes!
The sixth grade students have been hired as travel agents at The Sustainable Tourist. They have been tasked with selecting and researching a biome and marketing their research to our Board of Directors.
Mathematics
This week marks the beginning of our unit on the Division of Fractions
Topics we will be covering this week:
Interpreting and Computing Division of:
- Fractions by Whole Numbers/Visual Models
- Whole Numbers by Fractions /Visual Models
- Fractions by Fractions/Visual Models
- Division Stories - Real World Context
The unit will begin with looking at using working visual models to dividing fractions by whole numbers. While many of the students have a strong understanding of the process involved in division, we ask students to use visual models to continue to strengthen their ability to manipulate number and see numerals as representations of quantity as opposed to an abstract symbol.
Many students find themselves confused when seeing a fraction show up in a division problem. A goal of the visual modeling is to help students see the fraction as a quantity - just like a whole number is a quantity, and that the process is the same- we are simply working with part of a whole, instead of a whole number.
Real-World context word problems (which will be looked at later this week) help students work through what is happening in the problem and when looked at without number, will provide them with insight into how to solve the problem- for example, having students read the problem with no focus on the numbers themselves, just to identify what is happening in the problem and what they need to do will guide them in making sense of the problem.
From here they can add the quantity to the identified.
In these ways, students will strengthen their ability to compute and understand increasingly complex concepts mentally.