Dear Parents and Guardians,
First of all, we'd like to thank those of you who attended the "Who Am I?" Gallery Walk on Friday. It was wonderful to see so many family members there to support our students! We really do appreciate you taking time out of your day to attend. Overall, we were very impressed with the 6th graders presentations! The grades for their narrative essay should be posted early this week.
It's going to be another busy week in 6th grade, so here's a look at what's going on.
6th Grade Math: Students will be finishing up their Digits lessons on multiplying and dividing decimals. There will be a quiz over this content on Friday. Also, students who did not score an 80% or better on their fractions-to-decimals conversions will retake that portion of the quiz as well. Please check with your student and have them study if they are struggling with this.
Math HW: Complete 60 minutes in IXL, study for fractions-to-decimal conversion quiz if needed
Language Arts: We will be focusing most of our time on strategies to read nonfiction material. As much of our next project (see below!) will be centered around research and nonfiction materials, students will need to be able to read and understand information from multiple sources. Students will be reading and annotating multiple nonfiction news articles, and then we will eventually transition into the Social Studies content for their project. In conjunction with the nonfiction reading, we will be looking closer at facts vs. opinions.
Additionally, any student who did not pass their Author's Purpose and Sequence of Events Common Assessment with an 80% or better will have an opportunity to review these standards and retake the Common Assessment.
Also important to note: All students will take the AIMS Web fluency and comprehension tests this week. We use this data to assess a student's ability to read aloud and how well they understand what they are reading.
Language Arts HW: Complete two Achieve 3000 articles at 75% or higher, read 30 minutes every night
PBL: We are very excited to begin our second project of the year! This project will be centered mostly around Social Studies standards. The focus of this project will be on ancient civilizations like the Olmec, Maya, Aztec, Inca, Greeks, and Romans. This will be the students' first group project of the year, and we anticipate we will spend a substantial amount of time with this content.
The driving question for this project: What physical and cultural characteristics make historical societies interesting to modern-day travelers?
In this project students will be acting as travel agents, and they will eventually have to create an argument detailing why their ancient civilization and area of the world is the best to travel to. The great thing about this project is it lends itself to all subject area content, including math.
We're excited because we have a local travel agent joining us for part of our entry event, and we hope to include many opportunities to talk with people who live in these areas or have traveled to these places before. If you have traveled to any of these locations and would be willing to share photos, your experiences, etc., please let us know!
Once the students have finalized their Group Contracts, we'll send you a copy of what they as a group have agreed to. More information on this project will come often. Feel free to check in our website for project updates as well: http://pblinnovationacademy.weebly.com
Other Important Dates and Information: *AimsWeb testing this week*Fundraiser kick-off this week on 9/18 *Math and Language Arts Acuity tests will be administered next week
As always feel free to email any one of us with questions or concerns! Thanks for all you do!
6th Grade PBL Facilitators
First of all, we'd like to thank those of you who attended the "Who Am I?" Gallery Walk on Friday. It was wonderful to see so many family members there to support our students! We really do appreciate you taking time out of your day to attend. Overall, we were very impressed with the 6th graders presentations! The grades for their narrative essay should be posted early this week.
It's going to be another busy week in 6th grade, so here's a look at what's going on.
6th Grade Math: Students will be finishing up their Digits lessons on multiplying and dividing decimals. There will be a quiz over this content on Friday. Also, students who did not score an 80% or better on their fractions-to-decimals conversions will retake that portion of the quiz as well. Please check with your student and have them study if they are struggling with this.
Math HW: Complete 60 minutes in IXL, study for fractions-to-decimal conversion quiz if needed
Language Arts: We will be focusing most of our time on strategies to read nonfiction material. As much of our next project (see below!) will be centered around research and nonfiction materials, students will need to be able to read and understand information from multiple sources. Students will be reading and annotating multiple nonfiction news articles, and then we will eventually transition into the Social Studies content for their project. In conjunction with the nonfiction reading, we will be looking closer at facts vs. opinions.
Additionally, any student who did not pass their Author's Purpose and Sequence of Events Common Assessment with an 80% or better will have an opportunity to review these standards and retake the Common Assessment.
Also important to note: All students will take the AIMS Web fluency and comprehension tests this week. We use this data to assess a student's ability to read aloud and how well they understand what they are reading.
Language Arts HW: Complete two Achieve 3000 articles at 75% or higher, read 30 minutes every night
PBL: We are very excited to begin our second project of the year! This project will be centered mostly around Social Studies standards. The focus of this project will be on ancient civilizations like the Olmec, Maya, Aztec, Inca, Greeks, and Romans. This will be the students' first group project of the year, and we anticipate we will spend a substantial amount of time with this content.
The driving question for this project: What physical and cultural characteristics make historical societies interesting to modern-day travelers?
In this project students will be acting as travel agents, and they will eventually have to create an argument detailing why their ancient civilization and area of the world is the best to travel to. The great thing about this project is it lends itself to all subject area content, including math.
We're excited because we have a local travel agent joining us for part of our entry event, and we hope to include many opportunities to talk with people who live in these areas or have traveled to these places before. If you have traveled to any of these locations and would be willing to share photos, your experiences, etc., please let us know!
Once the students have finalized their Group Contracts, we'll send you a copy of what they as a group have agreed to. More information on this project will come often. Feel free to check in our website for project updates as well: http://pblinnovationacademy.weebly.com
Other Important Dates and Information: *AimsWeb testing this week*Fundraiser kick-off this week on 9/18 *Math and Language Arts Acuity tests will be administered next week
As always feel free to email any one of us with questions or concerns! Thanks for all you do!
6th Grade PBL Facilitators