Today in 6th grade!

It is truly a strange moment when your students make it abundantly clear that they are having the time of their lives and never want to leave. Did I ever think this would happen? Not a chance. For the day our students took part in another morning hike and a series of games. After lunch the students went back into the wilderness to build emergency shelters.

This evening our students will forego their evening hike in favor of S’mores and line dancing. While there is a little hesitance toward this mysterious dance form, I believe they will approach the activity with the same level of joy and enthusiasm that they have embraced the rest of the week with.

You will notice that we captured as many of the moments where your children are smiling as we possibly could, which, believe it or not was almost all the time. Tomorrow we anticipate some tears and some laughter as our students make their way back to you.

Today in 6th grade!

Our students, your kids, have been rockstars (literally with the geology hikes) through the first 36 hours of their trip. A few late night conversations had to be hushed and there were a few homesick kids but as soon as the group activities began our student proved themselves to be leaders and integrators for the rest of the students. Mr Gray and myself could not be more proud of this group.

Our athletic director now has a new list of “sports” to pitch to the diocese, namely Ga-Ga-ball. Students had 3 hikes and learned a ton. More importantly, they are getting more comfortable with and their new friends from other schools which is awesome. Here are some pictures from today!

Today in 6th grade!

As some of you may or may not be aware, we have skipped town and gone off the grid... at Science Camp. We arrived early, about an hour before the other schools but were welcomed by Steve, the program director for ECOS. Once the other schools arrived the students got to meet their instructors for the week, a group of young, vibrant, and highly intelligent post grads. Our students have been carefully splintered to bunk with similar groups from Saint Francis, Blessed Sacrament, St Catherine of Siena, and Our Lady of Fatima schools.

For lunch the staff laid out strict expectations for student conduct and dining procedures, all coordinated to promote student safety and efficiency while sitting with, meeting, talking with and getting to know new friends. After lunch students went on their first hike to see a bit of the terrain while getting to know their bunk groups. After this students returned to begin journaling and the. Getting ready for dinner.

The food is excellent. The bunk house cabins are not luxurious but will certainly meet our needs. Right now students are preparing to go on an evening astronomy hike, clouds permitting. The temperature is expected to dip below 40 tonight so kids are bundled tightly. For all concerned about the warmth of their children, the facility keeps a room full of supplemental warm gear for any and all sizes. Your kids are in good hands.

Please enjoy these pictures from earlier today!

Today in 6A!

Our day was unconventional and perfect for "the day before outdoor ed." because we were able to have some make-up sessions for Music and Art. The Mobile Science Lab came by with some awesome creatures and knowledge for our students. All punctuated by our "Jog-A-Thon" assembly in the afternoon. You kids are being sent home their fundraising packages and have some opportunities to get free prizes just for sending out emails.

Tomorrow, our students are asked to be here for 7:00 AM. I understand your paperwork says 7:15, but we are trying to leave promptly for 7:30 and need to get temperatures checked for all students attending. Check in here on the blog to see pictures and summaries of everything your kids will be doing this week. And most importantly, have fun WITHOUT THEM!!

Today in 6A & 6B

ENGLISH: During class we went outside to prepare for our Greek Day festivities. Students helped to identify the locations of our events and, using chalk, decorate our place a little. I gave demonstrations on how to perform each event and what rules will govern disqualification from events. Our students now know that the entire school will be watching them compete and cheering them on. We are so grateful for the support that all other classes have shown us for this day. It's going to be a lot of fun!

SOCIAL STUDIES: Students wrote their Ancient Greece unit test today.

***ONE MORE (half) DAY!!!***

Today in 6A & 6B

ENGLISH: After ensuring that students submitted their research essays, the remainder of class was used to coordinate efforts in our Polis groups.

LITERATURE: 6A held their first ever Socratic Seminar today. After a gentle and slow start, students picked up on the purpose and flow of the discussion and a lot of great dialogue ensued. I am proud of the 6A class for openly sharing their ideas and seeking deeper understanding of the story we read.

MATH (8:00 class) pgs 354-355 1-18  (9:00 class) pgs 423 1-21 odds

SOCIAL STUDIES: Class time was used to review our content from the Ancient Greece unit. Our test will be tomorrow, the review of which can be seen here:

***Students are being sent home with their In'N'Out order forms. While the deadline for their reurn is May 1st, we will be away at Outdoor Ed. Students in the 6th grade should return these forms NO LATER than April 29th***

Today in 6A!

ENGLISH: Today was our last chance to update our essays. Our time was spent putting finishing touches on our work. For each student this is a different thing.For some, this meant completing our in-text citations or our Works Cited page. For others, it meant getting a few extra eyes on our writing to ensure that this is the best work that we can put forward. This essay is due tomorrow at the start of class, so those students who have a bit more work to do have this evening to complete it.

LITERATURE: Or class time was spent preparing for our Socratic Seminar. In 6A this will be held tomorrow and in 6B this will be held on Wednesday. To be prepared students must complete their notes, find specific examples of actions in the text that support your responses, and finally, come prepared with additional questions that seek to derive deeper meaning from the text. Students are graded on their participation and will observe each other for half of the time.

SOCIAL STUDIES: After taking up the homework from Friday, we began our review session for Wednesday's test on Ancient Greece. The format of our test will change very slightly, however each section should be familiar. While this review work is not required, it is highly recommended that students structure their approach to studying so that they have the best chance to achieve the level of success that they desire.

Today in 6A!

ENGLISH: Using the guidelines from yesterday's peer editing session, we continued with that effort today. There did seem to be a bit of confusion as to how long the essays were tobe. If the directions say 2-3 pages, that means 2 full pages minimum to 3 full pages maximum. There are students struggling with both ends of this limit. If you find yourself with not enough material. Do some more research and add a section, or add more analysis to your research. Give me more reasons why the existing evidence supports your claim. If your essay is too long, consider rephrasing sections in a more concise manner. Or eliminate sections all together.

SOCIAL STUDIES: We finished our last lesson of our Greek unit which covered notable achievements in academics. Significant minds like Socrates, Plato and Aristotle are persons that students should be familiar with. Homework for this section is on Page 433 #1, 2, 4, 5. 
While I haven't assigned specific review questions (coming Monday) students have had all lessons already and should spend time each day this weekend reviewing their homework in order to prepare for Wednesday's test.

Today in 6A & 6B

RELIGION: Students wrote their chapter 13 quiz and later worked on their research essays.

ENGLISH: Today was our first peer review session for our research essays. For each paper we review of others we need to follow the below process:
1-Each peer will review our essay 4 times
2-First read - looking at sentence structure and grammar. Does this flow nicely?
3-Second read - Review transitions - Is it repetitive? Are there transitions? Are they appropriate?
4-Third read - Review clinchers - Are they wrapping up their idea nicely?
5-Fourth read - Review spelling - Are all words spelled correctly?
6-Always ask "How does this support the thesis/claim statement?"
7-Provide suggestions for all of the above. Suggestions should be helpful and lead to better writing.

LITERATURE: I reviewed the expectations for participation in the Socratic Seminar which will be held on Tuesday of next week. Students are expected to created detailed notes that will help them not only express their impressions and understanding of the story, but will help get them involved in the conversation.

SOCIAL STUDIES: We used our time to work in our polis groups.

MATH (8:00 class) Accelerated Math  (9:00 class) Ws 8-1, 8-2 & 8-3
STUDENTS SHOULD BE 55%-60% to Goal in Accelerated Math

Today in 6A & 6B

ENGLISH: Students continued writing their drafts for their research papers. Students have been informed that by tomorrow's class they need to be ready to peer edit theirs and other peoples' essays. This will require some work from our students at home this evening. The consequence for not meeting this expectation is a detention to be held on Monday (4/15) with me so that I may ensure that students are ready and able to submit their essays for the deadline on Tuesday (4/16).

RELIGION: We reviewed our chapter 13 lessons from this week in preparation for our open book test tomorrow.

SOCIAL STUDIES: Our lesson shared a focus on both Art and Literature in ancient Greece. In Art, we talked about pottery, sculpture and architecture and how the Greek spent a great deal of time debating the ideals of beauty. It is from this line of thinking that we get our modern conflicts around racism and the justification for slavery here in the U.S. From the literature perspective the lesson detailed the similarities and difference between Greek tragedies and comedies as well as the importance of fables in everyday life. Homework is on page 427 #1-4.

MATH (8:00 class) pg 338-339 6-24 + 31-33 Chp 6 test tomorrow  (9:00 class) pg 400-401 2-28 evens + 30-37

Today in 6A & 6B

ENGLISH: Students continued with the drafting phase of their essays. There are still a few students who are slowly progressing to this phase. These students will need to do additional work at home to ensure that they are prepared to submit for our Tuesday deadline.

LITERATURE: Today 6A finished reading "A Long Walk To Water" and we will now begin preparing for our Socratic Seminar, ideally, Tuesday of next week.

RELIGION: Today's conversation centered around conscience and what informs our consciences. The text makes a great analogy to a search engine; if you plug in data that is incorrect, you'll get incorrect results. Similarly if we inform our conscience incorrectly, we will not behave in a moral way.

SOCIAL STUDIES: If we were not completing such a large project already, this lesson would have been an ideal opportunity to spend a great deal of time. In our overview of ancient Greek religion, we explored the popular tales of the Gods and demi-gods. Homework for this session is on page 419 #1, 2, 4, 5, 6

MATH (8:00 class) pg 330 1-16  Chp 6 Test on Thursday  (9:00 class) pg 400-401 1-29 odds

Today in 6A!

ENGLISH: Students wrote their Unit 14 Vocabulary quiz today. This will be graded and returned to students by tomorrow. After their test students gained approval of their pre-writing and began the drafting process. There a select few students who have yet to meet the pre-writing component. I caution these students to not draft until they have mapped out their research and defined how they plan to go about writing this essay. A good plan is the key to a good essay. All students should be at the drafting stage for tomorrow.

LITERATURE: We continued our read of "A Long Walk To Water" and will likely finish the book by the end of this week. This means that next week we will have our Socratic Seminar discussion to assess our learning of this material before we break for Easter. Students will have class time to prepare properly for this discussion.

RELIGION: To prepare students for our lesson I had small groups take 5 minutes to come up with an invention that would make their live easier. All of their inventions had a similarity, that they saved the user valuable time. This is a theme in our lives, making things easier or getting results immediately, however the only area of our lives where the opposite is true is in our pursuit of Jesus. We are not racing to get those results immediately, in fact, we often actively push it back or delay it. We observed the Hebrews as they languished in the desert for forty years in order to see the covenant made with Moses fulfilled.

SOCIAL STUDIES: Our lesson focused on the emergence of democracy in Ancient Greece and how this change impacted their societies. In addition, our lesson explored several other types of leadership and governance which lie in stark contrast to Democracy. Homework for this section is on page 392 #1-7.

Today in 6A & 6B

RELIGION: Students wrote their chapter 12 quiz today.

ENGLISH: Continuing our work with our research essays, our class time was focused on developing a strong pre-writing phase. In this work we are writing out our plan on how we intend to write our essays. We begin by turning our best research question into a strong thesis/claim statement. This sentence will be what we set out to prove or reveal. All of our evidence needs to support this so we then design the order in which we will talk about these things. After setting the order we plug our evidence into this order. We then write 3-4 sentences for EACH of the pieces of evidence that explains how this evidence supports our claim. This analysis will be the most important part of our essay, and the most difficult step in the pre-writing process. From here we will be ready to draft. Students whould be ready to begin drafting for our Monday class. Students will write their Unit 14 vocabulary quiz on Monday morning and begin drafting with the remainder of class time.

SOCIAL STUDIES: Shortly after taking up the homework from yesterday, we examined a new lesson which discussed trade and expansion of Greece. For different City-States the pressures and responses were different, and therefore yielded a different result. Homework for this section is on page 379 #1, 2, 4

MATH (8:00 class) pg 325 11-23  (9:00 class) pg 394 1-31

Today in 6A & 6B

ENGLISH: Students continued with their research from yesterday. Our time was filled with seeking answers to the questions we created yesterday. With this information students will begin pre-writing tomorrow.

RELIGION: After reviewing the key concepts from this week's lesson we worked on a "Love Chain" craft, which will be completed after students write their quiz tomorrow morning.

SOCIAL STUDIES: After reviewing the homework of our students, we conducted a new lesson that explored the details of daily life for most Greeks. This detailed the social structure of Greek city-states, the division of labor between men and women, the expectations of young boys and girls when it comes to their education, as well as the role of slaves within Greek society. Homework for this lesson is on page 373 #1, 2, 4, 5

MATH (8:00 class) pgs 324-325 1-10  (9:00 class) Accelerated Math

SCIENCE Study for chp 7 Test Tomorrow

Today in 6A & 6B

ENGLISH: After reviewing our flash cards for unit 14 vocabulary, students were instructed on how to conduct research for their Social Studies research essays. In our research it is important to start by narrowing our topic and we do that by asking questions. This begins with simple questions to determine scope, but our core is determined by questions that lead us in the direction of more questions. This is the basis of good research. A decent research question is one that someone cannot satisfy with a simple Google search, but one that requires thorough analysis of different sources to piece together information. Each student is researching a different topic so there is no cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all way to ask correct questions, but the part that unites all is the line of questioning, the questions that lead to more questions. From here students cast a wide net gathering all they can and keeping what answers their questions.

LITERATURE: On Monday our students began reading "A Long Walk To Water," a touching story that follows two parallel plot lines about life in Sub-Saharan West Africa. Today we continued with this read. Students were given the discussion questions that will guide the Socratic Seminar which will serve as their assessment of learning for this read. The book reads quickly and I anticipate that this will be completed prior to Spring Break.

RELIGION: Our lesson picks up from yesterday's review of the 10 commandments and we examined how each shows our respect for God and his wishes. Similarly, we talked about names, nick-names and how God calls each and every one of us by name, specifically.

SOCIAL STUDIES: After correcting the homework from our last lesson, we pressed on for a new one. Today we examined what a City-State was and how certain features of the Greek history have lead us to where we are today. Homework for this section is on page 368 #1, 2, 4

MATH (8:00 class) Ws 6-5 (9:00 class) pgs 376-378 1-45 Chp 7 Test Tomorrow

SCIENCE Chp 7 Test Thursday

Today in 6A!

RELIGION: Students wrote their quiz on the Chapter 11 lessons that we held this week.

ENGLISH: We picked up today's lesson where yesterday's left off with us working on creating citations. As a means of helping students determine the language of the cheat sheet given to them, I worked them through the first one together as a class. Students who are still working on this assignment over the weekend will need to skip the YouTube video because the website is restricted on their Chromebooks. Each of the provided sources deals with a different type of source asking students to retrieve information and present it through a variety of standards.

SOCIAL STUDIES: Our lesson/activity built on yesterday's examination of Grecian geography by identifying significant locations on a map of Greece and then having them answer a number of questions that address our topic from yesterday's lesson.

****Monday is "Teresa Day" where students may dress in free dress for a $5 donation to the Nguyen family to support their daughter's cancer treatments. Students must wear Purple or Pink****


An alarming trend has come to my attention recently where some of our students are using "gay" as an insult toward each other. This is inappropriate behavior for many reasons but primarily because it suggests that being gay is something inherently bad or to be ashamed of. It's not, and we need all hands on deck to ensure that our kids grow up understanding the value of people who are different from ourselves. I have spoken to both classes about this issue and I assured them that if this continues I will pursue the maximum allowable discipline for this type of discrimination.

Today in 6A & 6B

RELIGION: As part of our review for tomorrow's open-book quiz, students answered ten questions that help them center around how they might navigate the road to god on their spiritual journey.

ENGLISH: After reviewing our flash cards we continued our work on citations, this time focusing on "how" we cite information in MLA format. Students were issued an assignment that requires them to make full and proper citations for 5 different sources of information. This assignment will be picked up tomorrow and if not finished by the end of our English session, will be weekend homework.

LITERATURE: Today was our last literature class to work on our Egypt Game essays. Next week we will be starting a new class read that will have a different assessment associated with it.

SOCIAL STUDIES: As we begin our Ancient Greece unit, today was our first of eight instructional lessons. Homework for this session in on page 362 #1, 2, 4, 5, 6.

Students have 2 projects (one group, one individual) and a chapter test for this information, all of which is finishing within a 3 day period right before we break for Easter. It is important that students pay close attention to their ongoing studies and do good work throughout so that they can be well prepared for the various assessments that all seem to show up at once. We have lots of time, but please don't use that as an excuse to avoid work.

MATH (8:00 class) pg 314 #'s 2,4,6,8,12,14,16 & 18  (9:00 class) pg 367 3-13

SCIENCE pg 218 1-4

Today in 6A & 6B

ENGLISH: After reviewing our flash cards, I asked the students what they understand about citations and why we might put them to use. For the remainder of the week students will practice using MLA citations, which will prepare them for not only next year, but for the next 10+ years of their education. Understanding the importance of and reason for citing evidence is the key to respectfully using evidence in life.


Today we visited Rabbi Young at the Congregation B'Nai Tzedek in Fountain Valley. Rabbi Young was a very informative and gracious host who presented the Seder with a lot of color and then gave us a tour of the sanctuary, complete with a revealing of one of his congregation's Torah's. I am so proud of the participation and behavior of our students, for the support of our volunteer parent chaperones and facilitators, and for Rabbi Young's warmth when opening his doors to us. This was a truly wonderful experience for all in attendance.

SOCIAL STUDIES: With the remainder of our day, students gathered in their Polis groups to set their team colors, determine logos and generate strategies for cooperation and collaboration.

MATH (8:00 class) WS 6-4  (9:00 class)  WS 7-6

Today in 6A!

Many thanks to everyone for such a wonderful day yesterday at Knott's Berry Farm. Students were well behaved, checked in when asked, and had a great time. Parent volunteers, thank you for your time and help in making this a successful Ditch Day. Finally, a huge thanks go out to the families that sponsored this event for us at this year's auction. Without naming names, I just want to express my deepest gratitude for your generosity.

ENGLISH: As we start another Vocabulary week, students begin with defining and associating our new list of 20 iWords.

LITERATURE: Our class time was used to work on our Egypt Game essays which will be due this coming Friday. Students should be finishing up their first draft and getting peers to edit and suggest changes.

RELIGION: We started Chapter 11 in our Christ Our Life texts that explores in depth the laws of Moses, not just the Ten Commandments, but all messaged passed on to Moses from God. We likened our story of the Exodus to what happens when we move from our homes to a new place many miles away. What do we need to consider when moving? How do we adjust?

SOCIAL STUDIES: Students were issued their culminating projects for our Ancient Greece unit on the first day of the section. Students will have 2 projects to work on; one independent and one as a group. The group project requires students to study their assigned City-State's characteristics and be model citizens while representing that city-state in the Greek Olympics. There will be 6 events that all students participate in, and are listed on the assignment page. The independent project will be a research essay that students will complete and then present in a symposium on our Greek Day just before the Easter holidays. Greek Day will be Thursday, April 18, 2019 (a half-day on our calendar). Students are expected to be in attendance that day to participate in both events. Research papers will be due on Tuesday, April 16, 2019, that day being our review session for the Unit Test April 17, 2019.