January 27, 2001

With the week I've had (Our Informance, Report Cards, Observations, State of the School), I'm not going to write very much, but I still want to relay the basics. Here's our homework board:

Thanks to everyone who attended the State of the School/Celebration of Arts. It turned out to be quite the evening. The performances were great! It's not the best picture in the world, but here's a shot of the 4-6 graders performing their song.

The plan is to have report cards go home on monday or Tuesday. It's looking a little unsure right now, but that's still the "plan" so I'll keep you posted if it changes.

Our second field trip of the year is coming up on February 14. We will be going to Clark Planetarium. It's really a fun time and a great correlation with the 6th grade Science core. The money and permission slip are due by February 7. The paperwork will be coming home on Monday.

Thanks to everyone who has been turning their reading minutes in on a daily basis. Our class goal is 72,000 minutes by February 22. We've already got one student over the 2,500 mark, so we're making really good progress, but to get to that mark we're going to need everyone reading, Reading, READING! Keep it up those who have been turning it in! Let's break the precedence set by my class last year!

"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them." ~ Mark Twain

January 22, 2012

Term 3 is officially under way! Can you believe we're already halfway through the year. On that note, Parent Teacher Conferences are coming up here in a bit, February 15 and 16. I'll get a schedule made up as soon as I have some free time. This however is going to be a busy, busy week.

First thing to make mention of is our informance on Thursday. For those who don't know, an informance is an informal performance. It's a short presentation we invite parents to so they can get a brief snapshot of how we integrate the arts into the classroom. As I said, we will be performing it this Thursday, January 26, at 8:45. All parents are welcome to come and see and celebrate how the 6th grade has been using the arts within the classroom.

Also on Thursday, our school board is hosting a State of the School Address as well as a Celebration of Arts! Being involved with this with my Tech Club, I know that it is going to be a pretty fun evening. There will be several performances from grades K-9 as well as a few minutes of talking from the POEC, Board, and Administration. It will definitely be worth it to attend. We are also asking that you bring your students with you. They are involved in one of the songs being performed. The more students we can get here, the better the performance will be. From what Mrs. Bayn tells me, our class is doing the best with the song, so as an incentive to get them to want to be here, we are offering two homework passes to those who attend. This isn't something I freely give out, so hopefully they take advantage of it and help us out. It should last only about an hour and it begins at 6:30. Thank you in advance for those who get your family here to share this evening with us.

With second term over, I suppose I should make a mention about report cards. The plan is for them to go home on Monday, January 30. That gives all teachers this week to get things loaded and locked so the office can print them up.

As you know, make making started this week. Phase one ended up taking us a little longer than anticipated, but the results are worth it. Here is an example of one of our masks:

With the school year marching right along, it won't be long before it's all over. I hope everyone is enjoying their time here in sixth grade as much as I enjoy teaching it!

"Every artist was first an amateur." ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

January 16, 2011

Lots of pictures and stuff to show this week, so we'll begin with the homework board.
A few things up and coming:

* Mask making will be Wednesday this week.
* The official end of the term will be Wednesday this week.
* Reports cards should go home January 30.
* Term 3 gradebook will hopefully be up and running by Friday, so start keeping an eye on it.

And really, that's about it, as far as I can think, so onto the more fun things. This week in Math, we did a graphing group project that included haveing to everything from figure out a function, to graphing it, to writing a story problem around it. I randomly chose one from the pile of 9 as an example: There were also lots of great book reports presented this week. Below is a picture of a few of the three dimensional displays that were brought in.

Finally, we all know we had Monday off this week for Martin Luther King Jr. Day. He is one of the greatest facilitators for civil rights in history. I believe it is important for the students to realize why this is a holiday, so, I will leave you with a video. This is the second annual performance of Mr. Pratt giving King's I Have a Dream speech:

"I have a dream that one day my four children will live in a world where they are not judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." ~Martin Luther King Jr.

January 6, 2012

Welcome back to the new year! We have the first week under our belts. As much as I tried to ease us back into the year, we did quite a bit this week. Here's our homework board:

A few things to keep in mind as we move forward with this next week. The end of the second term is quickly approaching. The official last day is January 18, but this Friday will be the last day I will accept any work for this term. Most of the things we turn in this week will actually count toward term 3, aside from the book report and the math test. With that said, keep in mind that book reports are due this coming week. We will be presenting them Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Here is a list of who presents on what day:

Please make sure these are ready to be presented on their assigned date. As I mentioned, we will also be having a math test this week. We have been working on graphing functions. This next week we will put together a group project on the same topic. On Wednesday we will review, and Thursday we will test. There will some questions on the test from previous lessons, so let's make sure we haven't forgotten everything.

With the end of the term coming, please, please, please make sure we keep a close eye on the online gradebook.

One of my classroom incentives is earning marbles in an attempt to fill a jar. Each time they fill a jar, they get a class party. Back in the end of November, we filled the jar, but we had so much going on with the play and all that it was just to hectic to fit in the party. Well, we finally fit it in today. We had a fun day playing all kinds of Minute to Win It games. Thanks again for the support of the volunteers who came in. You guys really made it run a whole lot more smooth than it would have were I to have tried to pull that off on my own. Thanks so much! I'll leave this weeks blog with a couple of pictures from our game day.

"All work and no play is no good for the soul." ~ Feliz Sabates