Short day today out at 1:15

Today there is an early dismissal.  1:15pm (1315 for those on 24 hour time).

Many students are still missing camp forms.  Check your student's binder to make sure it's not him or her!

In Science, the students finished their lab identifying whether different materials were alive.

Math: ChOW 3 is due Friday.

Social Studies: Your student is working with a group making physical feature maps.  The greatest challenge of this classwork is not the map, but working with a group for many students.  Expect that your student will need to work in a group often at Salmon Bay.  Affirm this to your student at home.

Language Arts:  The students now have a repertoire of post-it annotations they can write about the books they are reading:  Retelling, Setting, Character, and personal response.  They are basically expected to do one per day, or about every 30 pages.  Ask your student what each post-it is about.

KL

Friday 19 September: Post-its

One more week down!  167 more days to go!

Today, I believe all 6th grade students finished their district Amplify test.  Congratulate your student on their hard work and flexibility.

Science test Monday!  This will cover the definitions of Life and Characteristics of life (challenge your student to tell you all 8).

Math - Chow 2 was due today.  Chow 3 will be handed out Monday.

Language Arts - Today the rules of Post-it Annotations were covered.  An annotation is a note about a book that the student writes on a post-it.  The format goes:

1. Type of Post-it (example: character, theme, personal response)
2. Original thought (example I think the character is brave...)
3  Evidence from text (example ...Because he is in a new situation and he charges ahead instead of running away).

Anything longer than 2 sentences is probably too long for a post-it.

All Camp forms are due Monday Sept 22.

A word (or a few) on the new district assessment

This week your Salmon Bay 6th grader is taking the new district assessment, Amplify.  This has replaced the much maligned MAP test this year.  This test is in English Language Arts and Math.

I've noticed many kids are feeling discouraged at the end of the test, because they see their scores.  no one wants to see 5 of 28 correct or 13 of 28 correct.  Even students who are not masters of fractions know that they got more wrong than right.   However, it's important to remind our students that this is a test of "end of 6th grade skills" as defines by the Common Core State Standards.  This means that student who got 10 out of 28 already can answer 10 questions from the bank of skills 6th graders are expected to know at the end of the year.

This is a departure from the MAP test, which adjusted its questions for the level of the student based on how many they got right and wrong.  The MAP then compared the students of the district to one another and eventually gave parents and teachers a percentile score.  I've noticed that parents whose kids were in the 90th percentile seemed to like MAP testing more than parents whose kids were in the 20th percentile.

District and state testing is federally mandated, and is not going anywhere.  I am not advocating that one type of test is better than another.  It's just important to remind students that these tests are just one little window into their academic performance and that they do not define our success or happiness in life.

The 3rd week of school at Salmon Bay

We are in the third week of school, and things are starting to get real.

All students are taking district assessments in English Language Arts and Math.  These tests are aligned to 6th grade Common Core Standards.  This is a change from last year's MAP testing.  Each test has questions that students are expected to know answers to at the end of 6th grade.  As we all know, the students are at the beginning of 6th grade, so no one is expected to have a perfect score.  If possible, reinforce this with your student!

In other news
Social Studies is working on Maps and Landforms

Math is working on order of operations (PEMDAS = parentheses, exponents, multiplcation/division, addition/substraction)

In science the students are learning the characteristics of life and will perform a lab experiment to observe some "mystery vials."

REMEMBER to sign and send your students camp forms back to their homeroom teacher.  Other forms can go to the office.