Sixth Grade News
By Yvonne Matulka
November 21, 2008
As November is drawing to an end, I want to express my thanks for how hard I see your children working. They are learning to be so organized and are all working diligently to get homework handed in when due. With this busy holiday season just beginning, I know how busy it is for most families. With everyone’s busy schedule, please check that your child stays caught up with his/her homework. Assessment folders were sent home at the end of October with October assessments completed to be signed and will be sent again at the end November.
Ask your child how they are doing in ECRI. The trade book group is reading the autobiography Kids at Work. The Scott Foresman group has finished reading a selection from the book Hatchet in which a young boy is tested as he tries to survival a plane crash in the Alaskan wilderness. All the students are doing a great job with finishing and testing out on their mastery tests by Thursday of every week. Their main idea worksheet is due every Monday before they leave and once this assignment is done, the rest of the activities are done in a timely manner. The students have finished their Accelerated Reader book that was due for November. I am impressed with the progress they are making to organize their time, so they are not waiting to the last day to finish reading their books and trying to test out. That can be very stressful for them. The next AR book is due on December 8th, and some students are done or almost ready for that test. I congratulate those students who are learning to use their time wisely and not waiting to the last moment to finish an assignment. The students are also doing their QuickReads. The purpose of the short nonfiction articles they read is to improve the students’ reading fluency. Fluency means reading at a rate of at least two words per second. By increasing fluency, readers can better comprehend what they have read. These are due usually on Friday.
Students in 6th grade Math has finished Unit 3. We used formulas, tables, and graphs to make predictions and draw conclusions. We will also worked with spreadsheets. We are now preparing for assessments related to Unit 3. The first week of December we will be starting Unit 4 which is on fractions, decimals, and percents.
In writing we are learning ways to improve our writings of descriptive paragraphs by using strong verbs and adjectives. We have practiced improving paragraphs that “show don’t tell.” We are finishing up a project called “Serious Cereal.” Ask your student about this project. Hopefully these activities will prepare us for writing a descriptive paragraph/s for our upcoming assessment in December.
In Social Studies, we are beginning a unit that helps us understand the relationship between the Industrial Revolution and how immigration increased production and the available labor force. When we finish this unit we will have an assessment on immigration.
In Science we have completed a long unit on cells. We learned about plant and animal cells and how they are different. We made cell models in which students came up with a variety of ways to display their knowledge of an animal cell. The projects were well done. Finally we learned about the process of cell division called mitosis. We are now working on a human body unit where we are presently learning about the human nervous system.
With Thanksgiving near, I hope everyone has the opportunity to enjoy this time of year and count their blessings.
