First Whole Week!

We've made it through the first whole week! Yay! I hope your students are having as good a time in my class as I am having teaching them. It's been a fantastic week really getting to know the kids. All of our preassessments are out of the way. I'm really hoping that I can make it through the Words Their Way tests this weekend so I can hand out the leveled spelling lists next week. I didn't even test the spelling list this week because it wasn't a part of our program. The main concept behind this week's list was getting the kids used to the different sorts.

Thanks to everyone for getting all of our locker forms in this week! Our class has our lockers. The kids have been enjoying getting used to the combinations and how to open them. We are going to be focusing this next week on making sure we have everything out of our lockers before we need it. I have posted in the hallway a whiteboard that will tell the kids what they are going to need for the morning and again what they are going to need for the afternoon. So long as the students look at this list and abide by it, it will eliminate all the senseless trips to the lockers during class time.

On that same note, I sent home our Computer Usage Agreements on today (Friday, August 28). These need to be signed and returned before the students will be allowed to use the computers. Our first trip to the computer lab is this Tuesday. The ultimate goal is to have these all signed and returned on Monday, but Tuesday at the latest so the kids will be allowed to participate with our Computer Specialist this week.

We have a lot of fun things planned for the coming week. We will be moving on to the next story in our Basal reader, which is "Yang the Eldest and His Odd Jobs". On Monday we will be filling in our Words We Love Chart, which we will change once a month. We will be looking at prefixes, suffixes and root words and complete and simple subjects. As I said prior, hopefully I will have the leveled spelling lists ready by Monday this week. That is my goal at least.

We will keep pushing forward in our first chapter of Math. It is still a lot of review and solidification of things we should have learned last year. (You should ask your student to sing you our order of operations song. It was fun!) This week we will be looking at the distributive property and expanded and scientific notation and then we will jumping into algebraic equations.

We began our Drama art elective this week and we will continue with it for the rest of this term before rotating to our next elective. For the first few weeks we will just be doing small in class drama activities. It will only be either next week (Aug. 31) or the week after that we will begin looking at the script for this terms production.

Finally, in science this week we will begin looking at microorganisms. This is our focus for the rest of this term. More specifically this week, we will be looking at what the six characteristics of living things are and how we can apply them to the real world.

I'm looking forward to another fantastic week this week and I hope everyone else is too!!!

Days 1 and 2 down!

And what a fantastic couple of days it was! My class is stacked with a good bunch of kids, which makes me all the more excited for this year. We all now know the policies and procedures of the classroom and school. We've seen it all in action and know how it all works. We're bright and ready to come in full steam next week.

Next week we start almost full bore, minus library and computer specialists. We're going to break into our Basal reader with the first story of the book, "The Best School Year Ever". The first week of math is a lot of review of basic concepts from last year: place value, exponents, estimating sums, differences, products and quotients, and order of operation. We are going to begin a class read aloud of "Bridge to Terabithia" which I'm sure is going to be a heart wrenching way to teach the kids the power of friendship. Finally, during science we are going to begin exploring the scientific method and different methods of measurement in the metric system.

I would like to thank all of the parents for the outpouring of support. The supplies we had donated for our classroom will be put to good use. Thanks you so much for all that you've done so far and all that you are willing to do in the future.

Mr. Pratt

Quote of the week:
"A man paints with his brains and not with his hands." -Michelangelo

Welcome to Sixth Grade

Hello Parents!

It’s that time of year again! Time to fly our Dragons into the 2009-2010 school year. I would like to start by welcoming us all together for what I hope will be one of your student’s greatest years yet! Yes, welcome to the sixth grade. My name is Aaron Pratt and I will be your child’s teacher, mentor and confidante throughout the year.

I am excited to be breaking my way into the teaching world with Syracuse Arts Academy. I graduated in December of 2008 from Weber State University with a Bachelors of Science in Elementary Education with a Fine Arts Emphasis. For the next few months, I kept myself active within the school system by substitute teaching, where I was referred to a long-term job at Eagle Bay Elementary where I finished the last four months of the school year with a fourth grade class.

When I did my screening with Academica West, it was with the Syracuse Arts Academy as my primary school of interest. I am happy to be one of the newest members of the faculty. I am even happier to be teaching your child.

I wish to be available for you, the parents, as well. My e-mail address is apratt@syracuseartsacademy.org and of course the school number is
(801)779-2066. If I am unavailable to answer, please leave me a message as to what your call was regarding. I will return your calls and e-mails within 24 hours of receiving them.

If you have any questions throughout the year, feel free to contact me with any of them. Also keep an eye on this blog, because I will be attempting to update it once a week, usually Saturdays.

I'm looking forward to us having a wonderful year together.

With warm ragards,

Aaron Pratt