Today in 6A

ENGLISH: Students spent the day finalizing their writing. We've seen some enormous progress in this area and I can't wait to share. Thank you to all friends and family who took the time to read their student's work. This process really helps our 6th graders learn and understand their language. Bravo!

Today in 6A

ENGLISH: As mentioned in yesterday's post, today's class was entirely dedicated to the writing process for the students' argumentative essay. Entering class, students should have their road map completed, their pre-writing phase complete. The example provided on the assignment page and in class shows a minimum of 3 body paragraphs to be sandwiched by an introductory paragraph and a concluding paragraph. With this road map student have worked on developing their first draft. Some of our students are already editing each others' papers and this is excellent. I encourage all students to get as many eyes on their writing as they can. Please take some time to help your kids by reading their compositions. Tomorrow, students will be finalizing their last draft and submitting to the Google Classroom page for assessment.

Today in 6A & 6B

ENGLISH: Since Monday I have been explaining the format of this chapter/unit's English test, to the students. Today we began the initial work to determine our footing for this assessment. Students will be writing an argumentative essay and will be working on it for the remainder of the week, submitting after class on Friday. Please see the assignment on Google Classroom to understand the requirements, grading structure, how you might assist your student, and brainstorming resources that have been made available to all students.

MATH (8:00 class) pg 148 27-49  (9:00 class) Accelerated Math

Today in 6A & 6B

ENGLISH: Building on yesterday's lesson we explored Compound Subjects and other problems with verb-subject agreements. As a visual learner myself, I drew up 3 linear equations that should help students understand when to apply singular and plural verbs to a compound subject.

Plural Subject (PS) Singular Subject (SS)

(PS) / (SS) when joined by AND (PS) / (SS) = Plural Verb

(PS) / (SS) when joined by OR/NOR (PS) = Plural Verb

(PS) / (SS) when joined by OR/NOR (SS) = Singular Verb

The biggest trouble students seem to have is in identifying the singular and plural verb forms. This visual helps in identifying what should be used, but knowing what the plural and singular forms of specific verbs are can be confusing. The logic is often reversed from plural and singular nouns. With Nouns we add an "s" to the end to pluralize. With Verbs it is the opposite, we add "s" to the end of a singular verb. Johnny acts weird. Johnny and Suzie act weird.

MATH (8:00 class) pg 148 1-26all  (9:00 class) pg 167 1-42 Chp 3 Test Tomorrow

Today in 6A & 6B

ENGLISH: We started a new set of Grammar lessons today as we explored the agreement between subject and verb. The key to this lesson was to ensure that the subject and verb carry matching plural or singular forms. Adding complexity to this was the prepositional phrases between the subject and verb. By having students first identify the subject and and prepositional phrase, they could easily identify the verb and then the proper form of that verb.

LITERATURE: We read chapter 2 "October" of the Wednesday Wars where we saw our first person narrator and middle schooler, Holling Hoodhood, surrender his Wednesday afternoons to Mrs. Baker's chores. The cream puffs were ruined by chalk dust and the classroom rats escaped. A lot of excitement for a single 7th grader.

RELIGION: We observed the last two presentations from our work before Thanksgiving in connection with the World Food Programme.

SOCIAL STUDIES: Students used partner reading to review the section we read the week prior to Thanksgiving. They were assigned questions 1-7 on page 175. If this was not completed in class it is homework.

MATH (8:00 class) pg 143 1-27  (9:00 class) WS 3-6 & 3-7 Chp 3 Test Wed

Today in 6A & 6B

Students continued with preparing their presentations, adding posters and songs and skits to their slideshows. Additionally, we had several parents kindly volunteer their time to support the crafting of our Stone Soup. This story and small meal serve as a gentle reminder to think of others and value the spirit of community giving. What a wonderful opportunity to share our bounty with others!

Today in 6A & 6B

Today we started our special Thanksgiving program which has the students creating presentations regarding the work of the World Food Programme. WFP has 7 focus areas that they work in and each of our seven groups were issued one of these areas to profile. On Wednesday students will deliver a 10 minute presentation that explains the work of the WFP through this focus area.

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

Today in 6A!

ENGLISH: Students wrote their Unit 5/Chapter 9 test today.

RELIGION: Students wrote their session 11 quiz in a open-book format.

SOCIAL STUDIES: Instead of diving in to all of the new information of our Ancient India unit, on a Friday... we instead introduced students to Indian culture by exploring the Diwali celebration that happened two days ago and made an attempt at creating our own Rangoli design. We're not experts but the students did good work practicing many of their soft skills when it comes to cooperation, collaboration, team work and group effort. This was a graded assignment based on those characteristics and their first "group project" for social studies.

Today in 6A & 6B

RELIGION: Today we reviewed the week's material for tomorrow's quiz, which will be open book.

ENGLISH: Our Chapter/Unit review today went well. For grammar, I have directed students toward sections A, B, and C of the chapter review, as well as 9.1 (Ex #2), 9.2 (Ex #1), 9.3 (Ex #1), 9.4 (Ex #1,2), 9.5 (Ex #1). Students should also practice their vocabulary as antonyms and synonyms will be on this test like the last several.

LITERATURE: Our activity today was to review the story and try and identify the mood or tone of the reflective essay. In identifying this feature I requested that students identify 3 pieces of evidence that can be used to support that feeling. The author's intended mood of  "Happy" was easily balanced by students who found evidence of "Scary" "Violated" "Disgusting" and more. At the end of this, I asked students to provide descriptions of how the evidence made them feel. Converting this brainstorming would act as an excellent rebuttal or response to the essay a a challenge to the tone that was obviously intended.

SOCIAL STUDIES: Students wrote their Chapter test on Ancient Mesopotamia.

MATH (8:00 class) pg 122-123 1-41 Chp 2 Test tomorrow (9:00 class) pg 139 1-9

SCIENCE pg 97 1-4

Today in 6A & 6B

ENGLISH: The final section of our grammar week covers Conjunctions and Interjections. It would have been a trip down memory lane for most of the parents and even for some of our students as we watched the classic School House Rocky clips for "Conjunction Junction" and "Interjections!" These videos really helped drive home these very simple concepts. With a little more drilling, students were easily applying the skills in writing their own sentences.

RELIGION: Today's lesson is centered around the home the Israelites made for God in Solomon's temple. Students imagined what their own "happy place" would be like and some of the common characteristics were around serenity, quiet, and in nature. Interestingly enough, this is where we often find God.

SOCIAL STUDIES: Our review session was filled with questions regarding the format of the test and what areas students should focus their studying on. As mentioned to the students, this is what I might call a test-taker's test. It is engineered to allow for students to communicate their understanding of specific content in their own words. This means writing. There is a "short answer" section where students will respond to a prompt and are encouraged to write as much as they can about the topic. The question is only worth 5 points, but the more a student writes, the more room I have to make sense of their understanding of the material. Likewise for vocabulary, I ask students to explain in their own words the definition of a term. If they give me the book definition they will be correct, but if they can communicate their own definition that aligns with the book's definition, they would also be right. I have every belief that these students will be successful tomorrow.

MATH (8:00 class) pg 119 1-23 odds only (9:00 class) WS 3-1, 3-2, 3-3  Everyone needs to be doing Accelerated Math (unless you are already 100% to Goal)

Today in 6A & 6B

ENGLISH: Irregular comparisons build on yesterday's lesson on making comparisons much the same way that our irregular verbs lesson built on our verbs lesson. When conjugating irregular verbs, there is no pattern or predictable way irregulars evolve. Similarly with irregular comparisons, words like little become less or least, badly becomes worse or worst. We also looked at prepositions and prepositional phrases as a way of indicating where something is or the relationship between things.

LITERATURE: In a writing exercise, students brainstormed 4 interactions they have had with nature and recorded how they felt in those scenarios. Then when they wrote about the events of that moment, they were able to inject their feelings about the moment. The result was some more colorful writing pieces that made the readers feel like they were there with the author.

SOCIAL STUDIES: In a bit of a thought experiment, students were presented with actual scenarios that King Hammurabi was faced with, and they would see if they could identify a judgement on the scenario that would match the King's. What resulted was a robust conversation about what constitutes fairness both today and 4000 years ago.

MATH (8:00 class) WS 2-9 Chp 2 test Friday (9:00 class) pg 134 1-18

Today in 6A & 6B

ENGLISH: Students started a new Grammar chapter today (9) where we look at Adjectives and Adverbs. Much of the first half of today's lesson was a review of concepts from previous years, but while it all makes sense to the students, they do need some drilling on how to identify which is which. Similarly, as we started making comparisons in 9.2, I ask students to give me the justification for WHY an adjective/adverb is classified as a Comparative or Superlative comparison. This will most certainly be a part of Friday's English test.

LITERATURE: We read the short story "Turkeys" today and afterward we started exploring the motives of the author. Through some interesting interpretations of our students, we found that a lot of our assumptions are linked to our personal experiences, and similarly, the writer's tone in linked to her own experiences.

RELIGION: This week's lesson will likely be the last that comes from our "Finding God" text as we are moving toward a new guidebook that provides a stronger multi-grade reinforcement of the religious concepts of our faith. Today we talked about St. Helena, the mother of Constantine, and her influence on the growth of the early church.

SOCIAL STUDIES: In a bit of a thought experiment, students compared the positions of Hammurabi of ancient Mesopotamia and that of Martin Luther King Jr. The two were both champions of "fairness" in their respective times and we explored this as a concept, and how it might be beneficial to society for laws to be fair.

MATH (8:00 class) pg 114 1-20 Chp 2 Test on Friday  (9:00 class) pg 129 1-31

SCIENCE Chp 3 Worksheets

Today in 6A & 6B

ENGLISH: In a shortened session, we reviewed our flash cards, this time demanding the definition of our vocabulary words after the word is given. This exercise helps students identify the various meanings of our words. We then wrote in response to the following prompt: What are 3 good books or movies that you would recommend to a friend? Give detailed reasons why these books/movies are worth reading/watching. Students are encouraged to include as many of the vocabulary terms as they can.

RELIGION: Students wrote the Session 9 quiz.

SOCIAL STUDIES:  To bolster the themes and fine points of yesterday's lesson on early empires, today we. played. Risk! In explaining the rules, students really got an opportunity to apply strategies to some of the problems of conquest that were outlined in our section. Additionally, students performed this task in assigned groups, forcing them to communicate clearly, efficiently, secretively and effectively in order to accomplish their goals. I am hoping to bring this game back in to our lessons at various moments to help students make sense of the many challenges global conquest poses.

Today in 6A & 6B

ENGLISH: We started our vocabulary lesson with our flash cards once again. From there we practiced identifying sentence errors through the Sadlier website. Afterwards, we tested our vocabulary knowledge in timed multiple choice questions. This week it was the 2nd English class that won this competition with a score of 27,000 - 26,200.

RELIGION: Today we summed up the week's lesson by reviewing the key concepts. Students will write an open-book test tomorrow for the session.

SOCIAL STUDIES: Today we read the last sections of the Chapter on ancient Mesopotamia, the First Empires. Students learned the distinction between a battle and a conquest and how through conquest and trade, cultural borrowing happens. Students were assigned questions 1-4 on page 86.

MATH: (8:00 class) accelerated Math finishes Nov 9th for the 1st trimester (9:00 class) pg 125 1-34

Today in 6A & 6B

ENGLISH: Today we started with Flash cards and the quickly transitioned to our first of two activities: Vocabulary in Context. Here students see their words used in their proper context and help to define their use. In the next activity, Passage Based Reading, students read to understand nuance in language use.

LITERATURE: Students applied a different pre-writing technique today when writing about an animal encounter they have previously had. We then talked about the pros and cons of the different graphic organizers. I have few opinions on which is the best, truth is that there isn't a "best" overall method, but rather there are several "bests" that each student needs to identify for themselves.

RELIGION: Today we talked about King David and Ruth as examples of making ethical decisions. When asked to write about a serious decision that the students have had to make, some were dipping a bit shallow to find inspiration, while others dug deep to respond to the prompt. I encourage all students to answer honestly and conscientiously in their reflections.

SOCIAL STUDIES: Today students took their clay tablets and had them translated by 2 peers. After this they responded to the following reflection prompts:
-What was the most challenging aspect of writing clay tablets? Why?
-Why do you suppose ancient Mesopotamians used this method?
-Do you think this method will come back some day? Why?
If the reflection questions and translations were not completed, students are required to finish them for homework.

MATH (8:00 class) Ws 2-6 & 2-8  (9:00 class) Accelerated Math