Sixth Graders Research Cool Topics

The sixth graders are doing an enrichment project involving doing some research on the topic of their choice. We have several students researching their birth cultures, planning different places that they would go if they were to go for a visit. One student is researching "giant jellyfish", one is researching breeds of dogs that she would want to have as an adult, one is finding out about how to crate train a dog to convince his parents to get a chocolate labrador puppy. There are lots of personalized topics that students are excited to learn more about. Please have a list of what you need to search for by Thursday to make your web search time super efficient. I can't wait to hear the presentations students will be giving to share their findings next week.

Enjoy your day off today students!

Reading

Students are building stamina in their reading. Most know how to choose the right books according to their reading level, interests and mood. Reading is a skill that students will use in all subject areas as they continue to learn and grow. Your child is supposed to be reading at least 30 minutes each night. They can read whatever they want. Magazines, comic books, cookbooks, fiction, nonfiction, picture books, etc... anything goes, it all counts. Encourage your child to help you set up a new piece of technological equipment or to change the filter on the furnace with you by reading the directions. Not only are they learning to read lots of different types of texts, but they get to build confidence in their ability to learn to do complex tasks. They also get to spend some quality time with an important adult.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Roland Smith

Roland Smith visited our school today. There has been a wonderful "buzz" in the classroom with exchanging of Roland Smith books, talk about events within books that they are reading and with what students want to know about this amazing author. Several students are not happy one bit with how Roland ended the book "Peak". One student decided to ask Mr. Smith about why he ended that book the way he did and they had a creative discussion about it. It is so inspiring to meet a real live author! Students get to see what motivates him to write what he does and they learn about how published authors apply the writing process. What a great speaker/presenter too. We are very impressed with him!

http://www.rolandsmith.com/

Math Games

We are doing some work with fractions in math class right now. The fifth graders would benefit from practicing finding the least common denominator. Playing this game is good practice.
http://www.aaamath.com/fra66j-lcd.html


For practice in adding fractions, you can play this one:
http://xpmath.com/forums/arcade.php?do=play&gameid=34


Enjoy!

Happy New Year!

Hi there,
I hope that you are enjoying 2008 so far! We began studying "Mixtures and Solutions" in class today for Science. Students took a quiz to show what they learned after learning what mixtures and solutions were, creating them and trying to separate them. They were able to separate the gravel/water mixture using a mesh filter, the diomataceous earth/water with a coffee filter and they were not able to separate the salt from the water successfully. We will do that next week! Have a great weekend!