August 22nd-25th

Welcome to week two of 6th grade! Thank you students and parents for making the first week back to school an exceptional one. Below you will find out plans for the week as well as a few pictures from out first week.

Projects:
Our unit on cells and structures is in full swing. This week we will learn about  more organelles: Golgi apparatus, rough ER/smooth ER, nucleoli, lysosomes, and ribosomes. Students will add to their cell vocabulary list and work on building their models. Students must make sure to refer to the rubric provided and create a booklet as an informational guide to explain each part of their model and how it relates to a specific cell structure. The goal is to present on Monday, Aug. 29th. Stay tuned!

6th & 8th grade writing:
Students did a wonderful job on their writing assignments to describe themselves last week. Sixth and eighth grade assignments are on display outside our classroom. Thank you to families who viewed them last week during back to school night. This week, students will be working on adding details to their friendly letters describing three things that represent them. We will call these details elaborations. We will also be taking notes and watching a video on how to write an effective introductory paragraph. We will also be reviewing a rubric to provide feedback on peer writing.

6th grade Language Arts:
Students will continue to review parts of speech and even create a descriptive writing paragraph about a topic, such as an animal, by using specific parts of speech.

8th grade Language Arts: We will review singular and possessive nouns by taking notes on a Google document. Also, students will begin their parts of speech step books and write sample sentences in which they will demonstrate their understanding of each part of speech.

6th grade Reading: We continue to add to our CAFE menu of reading strategies. This week we will add: infer and support with evidence, back up and re-read, use reference materials to determine meaning, and summarize. We also continue to work on main idea and key details of informational text. By the end of the week we will introduce summarizing which will allow students to extend what they've practiced in writing about main idea.

HOMEWORK:
Students must read 20 minutes every night. They must read the SAME book everyday until completed and fill out their reading log daily. I will e-mail each family to let them know what book their child had chosen.

Class Dojo:
Class Dojo is a classroom management tool in which students and I will track classroom behavior. I will be sending home a welcome letter to parents so they can log on and view their child's behavior. Students will get awarded points for positive behavior and will get points taken away for negative behavior. Students can also log on and view their behavior and teacher comments for the day and/or week.

Students working on building plant and animal cell models.