Today in 6A & 6B

ENGLISH: Students continued their work on their argumentative essays. Today they finished their first drafts and shared their work with a classmate for peer editing. Most students were unable to complete their final draft in class and will therefore be homework. Students should be submitting all of their work in one single document (pre-writing, 1st draft with peer edits, final draft). I have set a deadline of midnight on Sunday for students to submit their work. Should they submit Monday morning, they will get a maximum grade of 70%. 

RELIGION: Students wrote their session 12 quiz today.

SOCIAL STUDIES: As a follow-up to yesterday's presentations, we looked at the interesting nature of the rise and fall of the Indus Valley Civilization. Not much is known about these people regarding their religion and government which remains a mystery for archaeologists. There are many inferences we can make and comparisons drawn to other ancient peoples, however significant gaps in knowledge regarding specifics remain unknown, and are still super cool to explore.

Today in 6A!

RELIGION: Today was a session review for tomorrow's open-book test. This will likely be the last session from our Finding God resource as new workbooks have been issued to us. We will be employing the new books in the week following parent-teacher conferences.

ENGLISH: After doing our Flash cards, students were assigned an argumentative essay in response to the prompt: Homework is a valuable tool that should be mandatory for all subjects. Students began by indicating their feelings toward this topic and then jotting down bullet points that would help support their opinion. From this point students began drafting. We will continue this exercise tomorrow and students should be prepared to share their work for editing purposes with their table partner within the first 15 minutes of class. Final drafts will be due after class tomorrow.

LITERATURE: Today we started a new novel study. Thanks to the generous donation of one of our parents, we have a full class set of "The Wednesday Wars" to explore. This book presents at a higher  reading level than our last book, "Crash," and therefore requires a different approach. Instead of following our past process of recapping, predicting and seeing if our predictions came true, we will make note of difficult words that are presented and workshop them together. This may end up in some additional homework for our students but will better root their understanding of the text.

SOCIAL STUDIES: Students presented their real estate development plans for an ancient Indian civilization. Overall, this was done reasonably well. Students have been sent home with a self and peer evaluation that is to be returned tomorrow completed. This is their chance to share/complain/celebrate/suggest anything that they want about the project. This will be part of their grade and failure to return the evaluation will negatively impact their score.

Today in 6A & 6B

ENGLISH: Starting our day with flash cards helps the students wake up and be ready for the lesson at hand. Without our word lists to help us, students have to retrieve the words that match the definitions provided. The vocabulary lesson in Unit 6 evolves from identifying sentence errors to improving given sentences. We would normally extend this exercise in this way anyways, so it is nice to see the program make this adjustment at this time.

RELIGION: Today's session takes a closer look at the role of the shepherd in everyday life as well as how it is used in the Bible. The shepherd is constantly brought back as an example of God's love for us, His chosen people. When examining the difficult life of shepherds in reality, this message becomes more clear to us.

SOCIAL STUDIES: Students continued work on their development brochures for their presentations tomorrow.

MATH (8:00 class) WS 3-1  (9:00 class) pg 148 3-27

Today in 6A & 6B
ENGLISH: We started our lesson with our flash cards. Students have their worksheets from yesterday to draw from. We then explored our vocabulary in the context of a written passage, pulling additional meaning through the use of synonyms. Finally we explored a passage to examine the purpose of the writing, its tone and intention.

STAR math: Students wrote their STAR math test for Trimester 2 today.

SOCIAL STUDIES: Students were given a new assignment today. It is posted on Google Classroom for the full instructions, but in short; Small student groups will make a pitch for a "new development" in the ancient Indian subcontinent. Their proposals must be era-appropriate and they will evaluate the input from their peers as part of their grade. They will be given tomorrow's class to continue working and presentations will be done on Thursday.

MATH (8:00 class) pgs 133-134 2-36 evens + WS  (9:00 class) WS 3-4 & 3-5

Today in 6A & 6B

ENGLISH: Unit 6 iWords. First we define, then we associate. Our associations have evolved to help us understand the meaning of the word much better, especially when looking at the word type (noun, verb, adjective) Today we had our first word that is all 3; Gross. It is essential that all students understand and be able to master the use of these words in their proper contexts.

STAR testing: Today students completed the second trimester STAR testing for reading. Tomorrow they will take the math portion.

RELIGION: As we await our new materials we are doing one last session in our Finding God books. Today we talked about prayers, but more specifically, childhood prayers. Prayers that we learn early in our lives as we begin our faith journey.

SOCIAL STUDIES: Students started their new Chapter/Unit on Ancient India today, exploring the intense geography of this country; its important rivers, mountains and bodies of water and how these features impacted the growth of civilization in this region.

MATH (8:00 class) pg 133-134 1-37 odds  (9:00 class) pg 144 3-30