Saturday, November 2, 2019

Team Aurora has a new blog post!

Hello Aurora Families,
We hope this post finds you safe, dry and with electricity. What a truly scary Halloween.

In LA, we were supposed to finish our final draft of our true story and post on Friday.  We will do that on Monday.

Here is an example of what a sixth-grade expectation looks like: Look Up and See the show.  Students may want or need to work on this at home. Feel free to share your story with me if it is a google doc and ask me for comments.

Next week, students may have the option of writing a short fiction story or a chapter of their Nanowrimo novel. During the week of the 11th to the 15th, we complete our post-assessment, which is to write an on-demand story in class. This is what will be on the report card - the pre-assessment on demand, the process grade (what you are writing now and next week) and that post-assessment.

We are also finishing up our Deep Study of Character reading unit, by finish our Global Read Aloud book this week,  The Bridge Home. Students are completing work on Seesaw.com to share with our friends in Virginia. That work can be done at home also. This unit also has a post-assessment that we will complete the week of the 11th to the 15th. This assessment will be revising our responses to Karate (the pre-assessment.) We will first work together on a story called The Fight.

Our next reading includes not only keeping up with your own reading of 40 pages per day, but joining a book club for a week from a group of books chosen because they are set in or around India.

The next units will be reading nonfiction and research-based information writing. During this unit, we will study teen activists and complete our National History Day project on Breaking Barriers in History This year students will learn to make a website for their presentations.

In math students were able to revisit their most recent Prime Time assessments and make adjustments to their thinking. These final grades will be put into the upcoming report card. Fear not if you notice some 2's! We will be doing intervention groups to help with building understanding of these big ideas. Stay tuned with more information regarding that.

We continue this week with learning ratios and connecting them with fractions. Starting Monday, we will be doing comparison statements of candy student's collected on Halloween. On a side note, students have been doing a great job turning in their required assignments for math. Nice job Aurorians! We will continue to practice time management throughout the school year.

In science, students took their first assessment on Thursday (of three total). We used study guides for big ideas and students had the opportunity to use their science notebook (we are learning how valuable good notes can be). Once Ms. Roberge reviews these assessments, students will have an opportunity to revisit their thinking if they so choose. We begin with the second part of our Geology unit this week, looking at the cycling of Earth's materials. We will dive deeper into convection currents and begin to answer some "burning" questions students have regarding this new learning. So punny! We will introduce our fun activity "Geology Rocks!". The students will think this is a hoot. More information to come on this fun twist to learning science in the following blog.

Our marking period ends on November 15th. That means new homeroom configurations! It is always great to have a new mixture of kids to work with.

Work now due Monday is:
Word study
Seesaw assignment on character chart
Final draft of true story
Math Menu

Work due next week includes:
The true story if not done or needs more revising OR another true story OR fiction story
Word study (new one)
Seesaw assignment of your character traits
Seesaw assignment on theme

See you kids on Monday. Remember, no candy in the classroom. Thanks.