Welcome back, Kurt

I let the blog slip a bit.  I spent Monday and Tuesday at a very informative and engaging conference on social thinking and ways to instruct social skills to students.  I look forward to improving students' self awareness of how their actions affect others.

Stuff to know!

On Friday, your middle school students have a Halloween Block Party.  This will be the second half of the day and activities your student can choose from include dancing, watching a movie, karaoke, and finishing school work (could be mandatory for some).

In math,
There is a Chow as usual, but also a practice homework sheet on rates and ratios.

Language Arts,
As usual, read 30 minutes and write a post-it annotation.  In class, your student is working on writing personal narratives, and sentence structure.  Ask them about subjects and predicates!

Science,
Cells!  They're little, but kinda a big deal!

Social Studies,
Students are continuing to take notes in their notebook about ancient civilizations and keep up on current events.

Source reports

Starting this week, your 6th grade student can expect to get a source report.  This is a sheet with the student's classes that he or she fills out with his or her grade, missing assignments, and a sentence or two about how to improve the grade (or keep it up).  In my homeroom they are due every Friday.

Teachers will not accept these as done unless a parent signs them!  Your student must show you that he or she looked at the grades and has reflected on them.  This prevents students from "hiding" their class performance for long periods of time until it is way too late to reasonably catch up.

helpful links:

https://ps.seattleschools.org/public/

http://www.seattleschools.org/modules/groups/homepagefiles/cms/1583136/File/Departmental%20Content/dots/source/tour_students.pdf?sessionid=c58bfd6daa0bcad42e209535b7eeebf4

http://www.seattleschools.org/modules/cms/pages.phtml?pageid=206407

Agile Mind Math curriculum

This year in math, most 6th grade students are using a curriculum called Agile Mind.  This is a Common Core aligned, web based program.  Students can be assigned assessments, homework, and further lessons on the web for use at home.

The obvious issue with this is computer access and how much each student has at school and at home.  Jon is working hard to try and get more computer time with his math classes so the students can practice using the program.

At home, it would be great if you and your student can practice logging onto the website.

seattle.agilemind.com

Your student has a number that is his/her username and password (email Jon or me for it).

If you log on successfully, there is no particular homework, but you can click around a bit and explore.  If you can't log on, email Jon or me so we can get it fixed before Jon starts assigning important assessments.

Language Arts confusion...

With the added workload and transitions on Middle School, it is understandable for some students to be a bit confused about assignments.  Adding to this confusion, with block schedule, we teachers don't see each student for Language Arts every day (we do get to see them much longer per day, which is great for projects).

For clarification the current Language Arts work plan is:

1. Read 30 minutes per night (every day of the week)

2. Write a post-it annotation for each day (7 per week, 8 for a bonus point)

3. Reading log.

These are due Friday, as that is the day that we see each class.

Additionally, We are currently starting some personal narrative prewriting strategies.  Please help your student find a picture to bring in by Wednesday that could help visualize an event in their life.

Back from Camp

Now that we are back from Camp, we can really start the work up!

Math:  Chow 4 is due Thursday (no school Friday, but Jon said he would still accept it Monday in a pinch).

Science:  Test on parts of the microscope Thursday

Social Studies:  The students are making timelines with their lives as the reference points.  They may need you help to find family events that happened in the time before they were born.

Language Arts:  Keep reading those books!  We are now doing Setting post-it annotations.  We will soon start personal narrative writing.

Curriculum night tonight!!!