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

Happy Holidays!

I'm going to share this week's adventure's through an array of pictures. I'll start with the boring. Even though it was the week before the holiday break, we did have some real work that we did. Here is the picture of our homework board for the week. The next activity I'd like to spotlight is one of my favorite activities of the season. Not because the art work turns out all that fancy, but because of the message that is conveyed with it. This goes hand in hand with the lesson I did based on Pearl Harbor in that it's purpose is to teach tolerance and acceptance. The more these children realize people are different and that's okay, the less hatred we'll have in the world.

In five of the different continents I have represented a different holiday. North America is Advent, South America is Christmas, Africa is Kwanzaa, Asia is Hanukkah, and Europe is St. Nicholas. Down in the Australian region I didn't necessarily represent a different holiday, but different customs. This season down is Australia falls during their Summer months so their customs are a lot different than our dreaming of a white Christmas. I also read them a New Zealand version of our Twelve Days of Christmas, thanks to one of my students last year for the gift whose family was from New Zealand, A Pukeko in a Ponga Tree.

The next couple of pictures are going to come from our final holiday activity, the "Gingerbread" house building. It was certainly a fun project that some of the students took a little more seriously than others. There were certainly a lot of them that turned out cute but pictured below are two of the better pictures my phone camera took throughout the activity.

A few serious things to note upon. I have grades online entirely up to date with what I have turned in. I have given the students missing assignments reports with the assignments attached to it. I have told them I am giving them until the second day back to get those turned in. After that, anything that was due before the break will no longer be accepted. the only reason I'm making it the second day is because I know there is going to be at least one student who forgets it at home, so I'm just making the adjustment for that now.

Finally, I want to thank you (both parents and students) for all of the fabulous gifts, and for those that didn't, don't feel bad. It was certainly not a necessity, but I'll tell you, if there's ever a time that I doubt that I'm making the difference I set out to make, this season really tells me otherwise. I with I could pay it back tenfold because these kids deserve it. I truly do care for and appreciate each and every one of them and I hope that I was able to convey that message to them without having some kind of gift to give them. Unfortunately, having bought a house earlier this year, I'm not in a place where I could afford that, but I do love each and every family that I'm working with this year and whatever it is you celebrate: Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa; or even don't celebrate, I hope you have a happy break filled with lots of family and lots of love because you all deserve it so very much!

"He who has not Christmas in his heart will never find it under a tree." ~Roy L. Smith

Shakespeare Unshackled Character List

For those in my homeroom, you can ignore this post. I promised Mrs. Dezember's class that I would have the parts for the play we are doing in their rotation posted today. So here it is! I ask you to realize that of the 27 parts listed on the paper, the majority of you wanted 4 of them, so I took those, along with auditions, along with what I thought would bring together a great show, and here is what I came up with. I implore you all to do the best with the part you are given as I am currently thinking that we could produce a super incredible performance with the way I have it cast! We'll see you all on Monday excited and ready to start learning your music!

December 10, 2011

December 4, 2011

I seriously cannot get over how proud I am of my students for their three performances this week. I could not have asked them to do any better. With my theatrical experiences growing up, I tend to set the bar high when I create these performances, and even though not everyone is the actor or actress the next person might be, they never seem to let me down. This year was no different. They did fantastic and I could not be more proud! I am going to be sending home an order form for both DVD copies of our play and 8x10 copies of the cast pictures. Because we had students there on some days, and not on others, I am going to make both the Wednesday and Thursday performances and pictures available, in the event that you have a preference. Here is an example of what the cast pictures will look like. This is the Wednesday cast:
With the play behind us, we can officially move on with the school year. The homework for this past week is posted above. Remember this coming week we are going to be making masks. There are also some student who are involved in an assembly we'll be putting on this Friday. I will send a note home for to the parents whose students are involved giving you more information.

Only two more weeks til Winter Break and only 22 days until Christmas! Are you ready?

"Never be too proud of who you are and what position you hold because after a game of chess the kings and pawns are tossed into the same box." ~Unknown