May 30th

Today the students watched one act plays made by other students.  They were quite impressive.

Math
Students still have ChOW 26.  This invloves making 5 "pattern trains", drawing the first 3 combinations, and creating a function to solve the perimeter of the patterns at any step.

Science

FLASH!  AH AAH!!!  Parents, be ready as your student may have questions about sex.

Language Arts

Students are working on short literary essays as a final writing/reading assessment for you year.

Social Studies

Greek and Roman Stuff.

A word (or 231) on functions

In math, the 6th grade students are beginning to work on algebraic functions.  These are hard for lots of students (including and especially 6th grade me).

There are two main reasons why:

1. Algebra requires computation, and computation is hard.  It requires lots of memorizing and instant recall, or tedious operations that can lead to mistakes and frustration.  This part is just practice practice practice.  I think as adults, we have computed so many times (bills, tips, budgets, gas mileage, etc.) that we forget how hard it was to learn and master.
2. Algebra is really a language of notation for thinking.  Learning languages is also hard.  Just like English is a language for communicating meaning, algebra is a language for communicating mathematic phenomena.  Equations and expressions are types of sentences and phrases, but with very specific meanings, that we are not fully used to in English.   f(n) = n +1 is just saying for every number input, a number one bigger is output.  f(2) = 3 and f(3) = 4.

At this time, students are probably not thinking of the myriad careers (science, engineering, medicine, business, teaching Special Education, accounting, making sure they have money in their bank account at the end of the month) that use functions every day.  But, children are not always known for their long term planning and experience, so let's all try to remind them of the importance of trying functions out.

Just a few weeks to go....

It is Monday again.  Hopefully all the students are well rested for the final push!

Students are practicing their performances for biography night this week.  Tomorrow (Tuesday the 20th) students will do a dress rehearsal in their performance room.  Students will need their costumes and props at school.  On Wednesday, the students will have another dress rehearsal, but with the moving to different performances and green room.  Finally, Wednesday night at  will be our final performance.  Parents and family are encouraged to see your students and others perform!

In other news

Math
Still working on Algebraic functions.  We need to create number expressiosn with n  that can be true to complete the function.

Science
Students are complimenting their understanding of Ecology with the story of The Lorax.

Language Arts

ALL BIOGRAPHY, ALL THE TIME.

Social Studies

Students are starting to learn about Greece and the story of the Trojan War.

Finishing strong with Binder organization.

Students in my study skills class (and others who might need this help) will be interested in this binder rubric.  They will be "tested" on Monday.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/18QUygviWPyseNJZ4vIsjJp5ZGV4wtFUVP3PecChrY5w/edit?usp=sharing

Those were some long weeks...

After a week of MSP, plays, weird schedule things, and whatever, it is time to get back to business.

THINGS THAT ARE CURRENTLY GOING ON

Katie/Ticely

We are in full Biography night speech memorizing mode.  That is the main work for Block.  This might be a good time to check the source and make sure to be caught up on any missing assignments.

Math

Chow 25 is now happening.  This chow is starting to explore the concept of functions.  You might remember these as those equations that look like f(n)=n+1...

Keep that late work coming.

Science

We are reading an ecology packet.  Many students have fallen behind on readings and current events.  Use the source to find out which.  Joel or I can provide you the materials to bring home.

Biography Night

Biography night (the big project we have been working on with the speech writing) is May 21st.

It is time to bring in props and costumes to make sure they are available for rehearsals and such.

WILD WAVES REMINDER

Wild waves field trip June 18th.  The field trip form (it was green and handed out on monday) is due tomorrow (May 9th).

[update] There is some discussion of making the deadline Wednesday.  This would be the LATEST possible time that the money and forms could be collected.

I realize it was a very short turn around, but I guess it's very hard to reserve these things.

reading MSP tomorrow!

Reading MSP tomorrow!  Make sure students are nourished.

Math MSP tomorrow!

Tomorrow, your 6th grade student will take the math MSP.  Obviously there isn't too much they can learn in one day, so....

1. Make sure they get lots of sleep.
2.  They should bring a snack and a silent activity for when they finish.
3.  Remind them (as we will) to read each question carefully and look at any possible choices for clues.

Otherwise
In science, we are working on thinking about reasons for the decline of a population of a species (ecology)

Katie and Ticely
We are still working on finishing and memorizing our speeches for Biography night.

We watched this talented dog in Study Skills today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39oGCTAJ9Vw