Newsletter 2-3-13

Dear Sixth Grade Families,

The month of January flew by! We are starting a new semester and we want to start off with our best foot forward. We have a ton of learning to do this next semester and we must keep communication between home and school a top priority. This is why students are now going to have their planners checked for a signature in the morning before heading into class. Without a signature they will be calling home to ask for help to remember to get their planner signed. We know it is not your job to remember to sign their planner, but rather it is their job to remember to ask you. It takes time to go through the whole room and sign planners at the end of the day and it is worthwhile as that is our #1 way of communicating what they need to be doing at home to help their school day(s) be successful! This process will also begin taking place for math, as students correct their work in class and should be showing you what they missed as well as the corrections they make each night.

Core Knowledge

We finished our Enlightenment unit and have moved on this past week to our Human Body unit. We reviewed the circulatory system and will cover the lymphatic and immune system during our unit. Students did a fantastic job doing skits/jingles to portray, vaccines, epidemics, communicable and non-communicable diseases in small groups and then presenting them to the class. We had Mr. Detter (a nurse) join our class as a guest speaker on Thursday. Students did a great job identifying the lymphatic system on themselves as well as making a note page in their science notebook. They also did a great job with human body trivia! The next unit just around the corner is our Energy unit! We have kits from the Energy Trust of Oregon and will link this month's field trip to Energy, heading to Covanta Waste to Energy Plant in Brooks, Or..

Math

We are over half way through our book! Concepts are getting more challenging and it will not work to try to skip over a concept and hope to get it later. Students are reminded daily if they don't understand to come to me and get help, but they will need some additional one-on-one help at home as well. Please check their notebooks for corrections daily. They should be making a spot for you to sign in their homework. A corrected test will come home on Monday and is due back to school on Wednesday with corrections and a signature from home! Students may be needing a new notebook this time of year as well.

Language Arts

The class did a fantastic job on the last two Greek and Latin root quizzes and we will continue them for the remainder of the year. Students have a Grammar notebook as well as a Riggs notebook and this seems to be helping them stay organized. Riggs is also improving in the area of homework quality and should only get better this next semester. We are currently focusing on homophones, homonyms, and homographs, as we have seen some need for them based on our writing. A chart for reference can be found in their Riggs notebook. Reading groups are going smoothly and we have been lucky enough to have a few volunteers over the past month! While we are working on unit five in IEW writing, we will be focusing on our science fair paper this week. Students should be bringing their science journals and any parts of their paper to class.

Spelling Bee—February 4th—Come watch our school spelling bee in the gym at 8:15 a.m.! Representing our class is Adin Williams and Ember Flickema

Field trip—February 8th---We need drivers or we will not be going! Currently we have spots for 11 children.