October News

Oct. 15, 2013 Dear Parents, It is hard to believe that more than seven weeks have flown by since the beginning of school. Your students have been like sponges: learning tons of new things and embracing sixth grade. In social studies we finished up our study of the geography of the Western Hemisphere with a salt dough mapping project and assessment. Hopefully, they brought home their map and shared it with you. When you are here for conferences, you can still see some dough in the carpet, and paint splattered around. It was messy, but they learned a lot, and had fun while they were learning. We are now understanding the early cultures: Olmec’s, Toltec’s, Mayans, Aztecs, Algonquin’s, Inuit’s, Incas, and the Mound People. They will start their presentations tomorrow. You should check out their Google Sites they designed. I will be hosting a study hall after school until 4:30 on Mondays for those students who struggle with getting their homework completed, or who need a bit of one on one time. In science, we just finished our unit on properties of matter: gas, liquid, solid, volume, density, and mass. We are touching on atoms and the Periodic Table of the Elements. Remember that? Our next unit will be water and the living environment. During our math time we have finished with our data analysis, and diving into multiplying decimals. Mr. Lupo will be hosting a morning math club, starting in November for those students who struggle and need a little one on one. We have completed a short writing unit on note taking, summarizing, and paraphrasing. We then put these new skills to work during our social studies time as we researched the early cultures. We have moved on to informational writing, which will be about everything they learned in the properties of matter science unit. Our reading is so differentiated between classes, and within classes, that it is difficult to generalize for you. Just know that we have many groups going at once, working on different skills, at different reading levels, and in different texts. • Remember to sign up for conferences next week through the signup genius. • Send in bags of candy for Trick or Treat street • Save pop tops for our classrooms • Picture retakes are Tuesday, Oct 22 • Early release is Wednesday, Oct 23 (1:15) • Conferences are Wednesday, Oct 23, and Thursday Oct. 24 • Halloween parade and parties are Thursday, Oct 31 at 9:15-10:45am • Mandatory parent outdoor lab meeting Wednesday, Nov 6th, 6:30-7:30 in LMC Thank you for all your support, and letting us be a part of your children’s lives. Mr. Lupo and Mrs. Story