NDMS 6th Grade
December Newsletter
General Announcements
- Dec. 5 - Dance 6pm - 8pm. Students will need to go home after school. 6th grade students are to be picked up in the front parking lot of the school promptly at 8pm.
- Dec. 6 - Band Performance at Holiday Home Tours for the Arts Council
- Dec. 8 - Progress Reports go home
- Dec. 10 - Subway Night (location outside of Wal-Mart). Proceeds go to NDMS.
- Dec. 11-12 - Winter Musical Performances
- Dec. 19 - Early Release
- Dec. 20 - Jan. 4 - Christmas Break. Students return on January 5, 2015.
Math
Math classes have been learning all about integers and the coordinate plane. We have expanded our previous knowledge of Quadrant I to all four quadrants. Students are becoming familiar with plotting, identifying, and reflecting ordered pairs on the coordinate plane. In addition, we have also discovered how to find distance between points using absolute value. Students are working with integers and rational numbers to help order them on a number line. Next week, will will be doing a hands-on activity with robots and the coordinate plane.
Mrs. Lowery's 7th Period: Consumer Projects due December 12.
Language Arts
This week students are completing their first piece of writing that they have taken through the entire writing process. Students were asked to write a "seed" story about a moment in their lives. They wrote first drafts, peer edited, revised, and will be publishing their final version later this week. Concurrently, students are busy reading and discussing Hatchet, a novel by Gary Paulson. These should be completed before the Christmas holiday. Remember that Newsela is due every Friday morning as well as reading logs.
Mrs. Whitehead
We are currently working on some short non-fiction pieces, like the story of Malala. She was shot in her homeland, Pakistan, for speaking out for girls' education. She just won the Nobel Peace Prize and has become a spokesperson for the crisis in Pakistan and around the world.
We have also begun working on stems (word parts - prefixes, roots, suffixes). Please make sure they are looking at this list each week.
Science
Sixth grade science students have come back to Earth from their travels through the universe! Earth's structure, the formation and deformation of earth's crust and the effects on human life is the emphasis this quarter. To celebrate learning about the theory of continental drift, students have had fun dancing The Drift ("Ice Age").
Social Studies
We have been immersed in Ancient Mesopotamia! Students went on a virtual archaeological dig where they dug up many artifacts. This week students created "help wanted" posters using Google Docs, explaining jobs and specialties of the people of Mesopotamia. This week students will be exploring Mesopotamian writing and customs including Hammurabi's Code.
Mrs. Smith
In Mrs. Smith's Social Studies classes we are finishing up studying Ancient Egypt. Our final assessment on Egypt will beDecember 11th and to finish off our time before the Christmas break we will learn about how the Holidays are celebrated around the world.
Mrs. Whitehead
We just began our unit on Ancient Egypt. Students have been writing epics to wrap up our unit on Mesopotamia.