The Lonely Can

Mr. Loner

A Short Tale by KK

As you see in the picture, we only have one can. This lonely can, Well, we'll call him Mr. Loner. Mr. Loner was offered friends from other classes, but he said, "I want friends from this class!" 

Unfortunately, we have no other cans to satisfy Mr. Loner. If you have any extra cans or dried goods you would like to donate, please bring them to our classroom for the Canned Food Drive. Let's get Mr. Loner some friends!!! Thank You.

Ugly Christmas Sweater Day- This Friday!

On Friday, December 9th, we are invited the sixth graders to wear their best ugly Christmas sweater. Please make sure the sweaters are school appropriate! I can't wait to see what cringe-worthy selections make it into the room this year.

Homework this Week

Please be sure to check in with your student to review their weekly writing assignment ("Should students have homework over holiday breaks?"), science assignment (given on Mondays and Wednesdays), and/or math homework.  Even with the holidays approaching, we are not slowing down!!

Three Full Weeks

The holiday spirit is in the air, and we have many fun events planned for the coming weeks. I have a few events to cover today, but I will likely need to send out a number of reminder emails before winter break. Be on the lookout for important updates.

Social Studies: Country Reports and Extension Projects

Thank you to those families who helped ensure their student's country report rough draft was completed over Thanksgiving break. Again, it is not my habit to give homework over vacations, but we are now well on our way to completing this task. The typed, final draft version of the report is due Monday, December 5. We are working on revising our introductions and conclusions in class, and have plenty of time to get the typing done here at school.

In the place of writing homework this week, I have asked students to complete the extension project for the report at home. This is also due Monday, December 5. I have attached a link for the project choices below. Please let me know if your student needs help gathering materials for this activity. 

Country Report Assignment Sheet (Extension Project on Page 2)

The Season of Giving

Our student council representatives will be providing a short presentation on the various holiday drives happening at OPE in the month of December. Please feel free to start sending canned/non-perishable food items, dollars for dogs/coins for cats, and/or blankets to school with you student on Thursday. If you have questions about any of these fundraising events, please ask your students to explain. All drives will end on December 15. 

Christmas Party

On Friday, December 16th, we will hold our annual 6th grade holiday party. If you did not receive an invitation to volunteer at our fabulous Halloween celebration, and would like to help out, please send me an email and I will add you to our volunteer list. 

One fun 6th grade tradition is the Book & Sock Exchange. This is a voluntary activity for students who would like to bring a wrapped pair of fun socks or a favorite book to exchange with another student. The partners are not assigned; instead, Mrs. Angelo leads an activity in which the gifts are rotated between all the participants. Which gift you receive is a surprise, so make sure the socks and books are appropriate for all!

Conference Week

It is hard to believe we have already made it to Thanksgiving break and conferences! Thank you for reading through, signing, and returning all the various forms and emails related to conferences. This made scheduling so much easier.

Conferences

During your student's conference, we will be looking through their first quarter report card, discussing strengths and areas needing improvement, and making a quick goal for the future. This week's writing homework was designed to help your student think through these topics. As mentioned before, I would like your child to attend the conference and be a part of the discussion. If you have concerns you would like to discuss without your child present, I understand. In those cases, you may leave you student at home.

Social Studies Rough Drafts

Over Thanksgiving break, I have asked students to write a rough draft of their country report. I am sending them home with an organizer listing the different paragraph topics. If your student needs help writing an introduction or conclusion, we will be reviewing these skills after the break. The rough draft is due on Monday, November 30.

Kinder Visit by Joci

On Wednesday, Ms. Kinsman arranged for the class to see Mrs. Leeper's kindergarten class at Grant Watts. The students read them books, learned their names, and by the looks of it, they had fun. To end the visit, the kindergartners sang us songs! Make sure to ask your kids how it went, and they will probably reply that it was really awesome! 

Mystery Guest by Paige

Jack, Andrew, and Braden were closest to guessing Abby's profession

On Monday, Ms.  Kinsman invited her sister, Abby, to be our mystery guest for the month. Our class had to guess her occupation. She is a fundraiser/event planner for the Children's Miracle Network. She raises money for sick children and plans fundraisers. Our class has a new mystery guest every month and has fun guessing what job she/he might have.  

Important Information Coming Your Way

Halloween Recap

I hope everyone is recovering from their Monday Night Halloween Madness! We had an excellent celebration here in the sixth grade, and couldn't have done it without the amazing support of our parents! Thank you so much to all the volunteers who helped make the afternoon fun for our kids!

May the Force be with you!

Remember, if your child would like to donate his or her candy to the Candy Round Up, please send their extra treats to school tomorrow. I will make sure it gets down to the office and added to our class total.

Mystery Guest

Hopefully your student told you a little bit about our mystery guest last week. On Wednesday, Amber Purdell, my wonderful sister-in-law, visited our classroom to discuss her job as a NICU nurse. The students asked yes or no questions in order to establish Amber's profession, followed by a discussion about her career. The students seemed very engaged and wrote lovely thank you notes to Ms. Purdell describing what they enjoyed about her visit.

KK was able to guess Amber's profession as a nurse!

If you have anyone in your family or know someone in the community with an interesting job, please let me know. I have a few more guests in mind for the upcoming months, but would love to have at least four more visitors as mystery guests later this school year. I think it is a wonderful way for students to hear about professions they might want to undertake as they get older. 

Conferences

Conferences are just around the corner. This afternoon you will receive a pink request form from your students. Please select the times that would work best for your fall conference and send the form back to school with your child on Wednesday. If possible, I would like your child to attend, so I ask families to schedule accordingly (I have found sixth graders do not love getting up at 8:00 am on their day off :-)). I look forward to meeting with you all soon!

Upcoming Dates

No School- Friday, November 4th and 11th

6th Grade Music Program- Thursday, November 10th 6:15pm

Have a wonderful week!

It's Been Too Long

Families, it has been too long since the last blog post! There has been a lot going on in sixth grade. Please read on to here about what work we have accomplished in the last few weeks, and what is coming up soon.

Recap & Where We Are At

In the last two weeks, we have taken an assessment in nearly every subject area! In social studies, the students took a quiz on land features and latitude and longitude. In math, most classes finished chapter one (ratios & rates) and in science we finished genetics. We presented our Adobe Spark multimedia projects last Friday, and have been taking the unit one assessment this week. To say the least, it has been busy!

If you are using Synergy to follow your student's performance, most grades have been updated. By early next week, I will have the last of the big assessments entered. We are approaching the end of the first quarter (November 4th/Grade Day/No School Grade Day), so it is important your student has completed and turned in their work. If you have concerns about your child's performance on an assignment or test, please let me know. I will be offering some make-up opportunities next week when we are back to our old routines.

This week also marks the end of our time with Miss B., our amazing student teacher. Both the students and I are so sad to see her go. Not only is she a huge help in the classroom, but her positive energy and patience will be missed. We will be holding a small celebration tomorrow afternoon to see her off. 

Halloween

Mr. Jeremiah has a parent this year who would like to plan and organize our holiday parties. I have shared contact information with her for parents who offered to help at parties. If you do not receive an email, and are hoping to be here on Monday, October 31, from 2:00-3:00 pm for our celebration, please let me know.

Students are invited to wear costume on Halloween, but please make sure there are no masks, weapons, or overly gory or distracting elements to your child's outfit. I am excited to celebrate with the students, but want to be sure we can still keep a calm learning environment for the majority of the day.

I also wanted to remind families that your students can participate in the Healthy Smiles of Scappoose Candy Round Up. Have your child bring in any extra candy on Wednesday, November 2nd, and the class with the heaviest donation will win a prize. The candy is sent to troops stationed overseas as a sweet treat to help improve morale. It is a great program. 

Checking Grades

I will be sending home Synergy ParentVue Activation Keys with your students this afternoon. The purpose of the letter is to help families track student grades from home. Last year, I noticed there was a lot of confusion about how to effectively use the information from Synergy to keep your kids on track. Therefore, I have created the following Google Slides presentation.

I'm hoping the presentation will prove helpful. If you feel I missed any important details, please let me know. My goal is to help empower families to use this tool. 

I try to keep Synergy updated on a weekly basis. Work from the previous week is usually on Synergy by the Wednesday of the following week. If you ever have a question about your student's performance, please let me know. I'm here to help.

Classroom Happenings

This week we have been working hard to complete a number of assignments. In social studies, students are working on illustrated geography dictionaries. In addition, we started our first simulation of the year. Be sure to ask your student about their Caravans team and what supplies they are taking on their treasure hunting trip.

Working hard on Geography Dictionaries

During enrichment, we are learning about the different types of point of view; a challenging concept teachers and students alike. (Do you remember learning about third person limited, omniscient, and objective in sixth grade?!) These lessons are being used to support our language arts selection, a short biography by Jerry Spinelli (who also happens to be the author of our read aloud, Crash). 

Ms. B is doing a great job of teaching our genetics unit. The kids love learning about how they inherited their various traits and are full of interesting (and unusual!) questions. We will wrap up this unit mid-October, and then the class will head to Mrs. Baker to learn about cells.

Finally, we have started writing interview questions for our first formal writing piece of the year. The students will be creating short multi-media presentation about a classmate using Adobe Spark- a great digital storytelling tool. 

You may need to check in with your student this afternoon to go through their backpacks and homework folders. We had the students empty their mailboxes this morning, and I noticed a number of school picture order forms still needing to be taken home. Picture day will be next Monday. We also passed back a number of graded assignments. This is a good chance to get a feel for how your student is performing.

As you can see, we are busy in sixth grade! If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to send an email. I am always excited to hear from my new parents.