EMPOWER NEWSLETTER
September 1, 2017
EMPOWERing students through personal inquiry, real-world experiences, and caring environment while challenging students to make a difference in our community.
WHAT IS EMPOWER?
EMPOWER-Ownership by the Students
Popsicles on the Playground
Popsicle Queen
It has been a great week at McKinley! Students participated in several teambuilding activities, as well as, discussing procedures and expectations. In particular, the entire team put their handprint on our EMPOWER team poster that is in the hallway. We also met at the end of the school day for some social time and popsicles. Next week will are going to reinforce students writing in their planners.
Language Arts (Swanson, Kifletsadik) We have been busy completing the District LA Assessment. We tried to “lessen the pain” by breaking it up into smaller parts, and adding in some teambuilding activities and brain breaks. Next week we will take the District Literacy Assessment, but we will also get started on our first unit, “Rules to Live By”.
Math (Miller, Kenny) The 6th grade math/science students and staff are still in the process of getting to know each other. Together, we have discussed both procedures and classroom expectations. In math, our primary focus with students is to identify the math vocabulary words that give students a clue to what operation they must use to solve real-world problems. A good portion of the first part of the year will be spent practicing basic operations and stressing correctly performing and writing math calculations.
Science (Miller, Kenny) The students are being immersed into a new science curriculum. The purpose of the curriculum is to have to students learn by doing. This STEMScopes program stresses hands-on activities to bolster science content knowledge. At the present time, the first unit focuses on Structure and Matter. Students are exploring the concepts of matter, atoms, elements, molecules and compounds. They will begin to develop an understanding of the similarities and differences of these terms. They will also begin to learn how these are the building blocks of all things living and nonliving.
Social Studies/Personalized Learning (Wilson, Reynolds, Betts) This week in personal learning we examined our own identities and how they fit in to a community. Part of this included making paper hands with our identities on them. These hands will soon be decorating our beautiful hallways, which we are very excited about. In social studies we participated in team building activities to build our community, we also looked at the first standard of social studies (getting information and drawing conclusions from sources) and practiced how we show that.
MCKINLEY MIDDLE SCHOOL
Website: WWW.MCKINLEY.CR.K12.IA.US
Location: 620 10TH STREET SE
Phone: (319) 558-2348