September 26-30

September 19-23

We had fun reading to our first grade reading buddies on Friday!

Since September 22 was the first day of fall, we drank apple cider and learned why the seasons change.

We used context clues to figure out unknown pirate words. We had to talk like a pirate while we worked!

 

Spelling Words:

1. throw
2. threw
3. know
4. knew
5. write
6. wrote
7. sleep
8. slept
9. really
10. thing

September 12-16

Spelling words for next week:

1. skipped
2. hopped
3. wished
4. waited
5. treated
6. closed
7. pleased
8. surprised
9. there
10. when

Important Dates:

September 23 – Book order due

September 23 – Parent Teacher Conference Requests due back

October 14 – First grading period ends

October 18 & 19 – Parent Teacher Conferences

October 20 & 21 – Fall Break

ISTEP – Feb. 27-March 10 & April 17-May 5

IREAD – March 13-17

 

Last week we finished learning about Spain and Mexico. We tried Spanish tortillas and made a balero game! We also practice making a map key and compass rose on our maps of Mexico and Spain.

2016 Genius Hour

We had a brainstorming session about our Genius Hour projects today! Students were supposed to answer the following questions: What are you passionate about? What do you want to know more about? What big questions do you have about the world? These questions are to help students come up with a project and topic that they can work on from now until December. We will spend some time each week researching for our projects and working on our presentations. We will start presenting our projects in December.

Students brought home their project proposals . These will need to come back by Wednesday. Students need to come up with two project ideas by Wednesday. I will sit down with each student and discuss their ideas. I will approve one of them, and send home the approved proposal for you to sign as well.

Genius Hour projects need to have a question that cannot be answered by a quick internet search. Since students will be researching and working on these projects for several months, it needs to be something that will last that long and hold your child's attention.

Students need to bring back both proposals by Wednesday. They can bring them in any day this week, but must be completed by Wednesday.

Please contact me if you have any questions about the project. This is supposed to be a fun learning opportunity for students. I am looking forward to hearing their ideas! This project will be graded, but my focus is not on the grade, it is on students learning about a topic that interests them. There is a rubric in the Genius Hour folder that you can look at if you are interested.

Below are some videos we watched in class about Genius Hour. The first one explains what Genius Hour is and the second video has some examples of projects sixth grade students did at another school.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEQzKH7v0-Q

(Start at 1:26)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jl-FucEbUSM

This is a blog post that contains some examples of projects completed last year in my class: 
 http://missbarge.blogspot.com/


Below is the Genius Hour project rubric.
 
 

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