Dear Families,
Time flies. I meant to send out an update last week and am only finally getting to it! Better late than never, though. Please note the list of ways families can support the classroom at the end of this update.
Good news is that the class agree that attention-getting behaviors (and encouragement for these) have lessened. They also agree there is still room for improvement. We will continue to work on this positive behavior trend.
Writing & Language Arts
This week we kicked off a grammar unit focusing on sentence structure. I am using the Framing Your Thoughts curriculum to teach about subjects, predicates and later the expanders we use to make basic sentences much more interesting. This work will include comma usage. We ask our students to write in complete sentences, but many students don’t really know what that means. Without the knowledge of sentence parts and the vocabulary to talk about these parts, it is hard to explain to students why their sentences are incomplete. We start teaching this with very basic sentences and then work to more complex sentences. The Framing Your Thoughts curriculum is good because it uses a lot of visuals.
We have also launched a realistic fiction unit. I am basing our sequence of lessons on Lucy Caulkins’ Units of Study in Opinion, Information and Narrative Writing, which is a highly regarded writing curriculum that develops students into writers with a wide variety of skills and personal voice, instead of just teaching a canned procedure. So far we have begun by teaching a variety of strategies for generating story ideas. You can ask your child what some of these strategies are and what some of their ideas for stories are. This week, after collecting a few more story ideas, students will choose one to expand into a published piece. Before we write the stories, however, we will spend time developing characters. This is the step children often skip, but is key to a quality story. The essence of most stories is usually what happens inside a character or in the relationship between characters. Having fully flushed out characters before you flush out the plot is an important step.
Science
We are nearing the end of our unit on light, having covered the basics of reflection, refraction and introduced absorption. The students have done many hands-on activities to explore these behaviors of light, including a trip to the playground to simulate how light changes speed and turns (refracts) when it enters a material of a different density. Have your son or daughter tell you about our trip to the playground with the black overhead cart! Refraction explains, for example, why a prism creates a rainbow, as different wavelengths (colors) of light bend (refract) different amounts and are separated out.
The cold weather seems to be dragging its feet, which is fine by me, as we take a pause in our science unit on light and begin to prepare for the planting of our tulip test gardens at the very end of October. On Friday, I introduced this project to the class. It is primarily a science unit focusing on climate change, experiment design and data analysis, but also integrates geography, technology, and math. I posed the question: “Is Nature’s Calendar changing? The class created a calendar (for Chesterfield) based on natural phenomenon by month (when the lake freezes over or thaws, when the first robins return, when you see flocks of baby turkeys, etc.). Was this calendar different in the past? Is it changing? How would we know? We talked about the need to gather data over multiple years and looked at a historic diary of natural observations kept by a man in Keene in the 1800’s, which the historical society gave us a copy of. This diary is written in script and documents when lilacs bloomed, when the first bobolinks (a bird) appeared, when frosts happened etc. These changed year to year but were still relatively predictable. Would they be different today? Is climate change affecting the natural rhythms of our world? Your sixth graders will be helping gather data for a larger study to answer this question. The Journey North Tulip Test Garden project has been tracking the emergence and bloom of red emperor tulip bulbs for over 15 years. You can check out more by viewing the short slide show we viewed in class which introduces this citizen science project schools across the northern hemisphere do.
www.learner.org/jnorth/tm/tulips/sl/CitizenSci/0.html
Math
After reviewing fraction concepts, prime and composite numbers and area and perimeter of rectangles, all of which are foundational skills for what we will study this year, we’ve begun our first unit from the textbook. This unit reviews and introduces:
As we are now using the textbook, math homework will often be from the textbook. Students have been shown how to look back in the lesson for examples if they get stuck, and that odd numbered exercise have answers in the back of the book. I also expect students to set up their homework page in a uniform way (header with first and last name, date and assignment, work shown, answers circled etc.). This makes correcting and recording homework much easier on my end. All students should have a gold page in their homework folder modeling these expectations.
Reading
We are now over half of the way through our read-aloud of Wonder. This book is generating some interesting conversations. Last week we read a chapter in which one of Auggie’s friends punches the boy who is bullying Auggie in the face and knocks out a tooth. Many of us felt good, thinking, “He deserved that!” A deeper conversation opened up more thinking however. When is okay to use violence? Does violence work? Does nonviolence work? Where do you draw the line in using violence? Everyone has a different line. Some people are pure pacifists while others advocate strongly for the use of force. This is a conversation for the playground and for foreign relations with other countries. We took a little time to talk about the Civil Rights Movement and Martin Luther King’s strategy and philosophy of nonviolence. It turns out the class had little knowledge of this (it does seem way in the past for these 11 and 12 year olds!). I also talked about how a similar incident would likely be handled here at Chesterfield School. These conversations don’t end in clear answers. Instead they open up bigger questions and require students to think about and justify what they really believe, which is how we build our individual value systems. Sixth graders are at the age where they are beginning to build their own personal identity, and not just accept what their parents or teachers say. I want to challenge them to question things, look deep inside themselves and also to listen with an open mind to others’ ideas.
We are also now several chapters into Crash by Jerry Spinelli. Students are reading this book in class in partners. Partners shift from assignment to assignment. Students are asked to read a page and then have their partner summarize before switching for the next page. This routine builds summarizing skills as well as helps boost comprehension for less-advanced readers.
One of our main objectives throughout our curriculum is for students to support their ideas and conclusions with evidence. In Reading, this takes the form of pulling examples and quotes from the text to support our arguments. In particular, we are practicing this with character analysis, supporting our choice of character traits to describe a character with specific details. Discussion and comprehension work for this book are divided into five main areas:
Social Studies
We are beginning a Geography unit in Social Studies. Last week students reviewed parts of a map: legend, scale, compass rose, symbols and title. This week students will practice using the legend to explore the large range of information that can be displayed on maps by doing a more focused guided discovery in groups with one of National Geographic’s amazing maps. They will then plan a short presentation for the class to share what they discovered, as well as practice their listening and speaking skills. Ask your child to share with you about the map he or she is exploring.
Our study of maps will also link to our tulip project this week as we examine climate regions using a variety of climate maps on ArcGIS. We will use these maps to write hypotheses for where we think tulips will emerge and bloom first in the US. At the end of this week you should ask your child to explain to you where they think tulips will come up first and why. (Again, the "why"- the justification- is important!)
Ways for families to help
There are many ways to help in the coming weeks. Please read through this list and be in touch if you can help!
Thanks again for all your support and trusting me with your children all day. We are having a fun year so far!
Sincerely,
Laura White
Time flies. I meant to send out an update last week and am only finally getting to it! Better late than never, though. Please note the list of ways families can support the classroom at the end of this update.
Good news is that the class agree that attention-getting behaviors (and encouragement for these) have lessened. They also agree there is still room for improvement. We will continue to work on this positive behavior trend.
Writing & Language Arts
This week we kicked off a grammar unit focusing on sentence structure. I am using the Framing Your Thoughts curriculum to teach about subjects, predicates and later the expanders we use to make basic sentences much more interesting. This work will include comma usage. We ask our students to write in complete sentences, but many students don’t really know what that means. Without the knowledge of sentence parts and the vocabulary to talk about these parts, it is hard to explain to students why their sentences are incomplete. We start teaching this with very basic sentences and then work to more complex sentences. The Framing Your Thoughts curriculum is good because it uses a lot of visuals.
We have also launched a realistic fiction unit. I am basing our sequence of lessons on Lucy Caulkins’ Units of Study in Opinion, Information and Narrative Writing, which is a highly regarded writing curriculum that develops students into writers with a wide variety of skills and personal voice, instead of just teaching a canned procedure. So far we have begun by teaching a variety of strategies for generating story ideas. You can ask your child what some of these strategies are and what some of their ideas for stories are. This week, after collecting a few more story ideas, students will choose one to expand into a published piece. Before we write the stories, however, we will spend time developing characters. This is the step children often skip, but is key to a quality story. The essence of most stories is usually what happens inside a character or in the relationship between characters. Having fully flushed out characters before you flush out the plot is an important step.
Science
We are nearing the end of our unit on light, having covered the basics of reflection, refraction and introduced absorption. The students have done many hands-on activities to explore these behaviors of light, including a trip to the playground to simulate how light changes speed and turns (refracts) when it enters a material of a different density. Have your son or daughter tell you about our trip to the playground with the black overhead cart! Refraction explains, for example, why a prism creates a rainbow, as different wavelengths (colors) of light bend (refract) different amounts and are separated out.
The cold weather seems to be dragging its feet, which is fine by me, as we take a pause in our science unit on light and begin to prepare for the planting of our tulip test gardens at the very end of October. On Friday, I introduced this project to the class. It is primarily a science unit focusing on climate change, experiment design and data analysis, but also integrates geography, technology, and math. I posed the question: “Is Nature’s Calendar changing? The class created a calendar (for Chesterfield) based on natural phenomenon by month (when the lake freezes over or thaws, when the first robins return, when you see flocks of baby turkeys, etc.). Was this calendar different in the past? Is it changing? How would we know? We talked about the need to gather data over multiple years and looked at a historic diary of natural observations kept by a man in Keene in the 1800’s, which the historical society gave us a copy of. This diary is written in script and documents when lilacs bloomed, when the first bobolinks (a bird) appeared, when frosts happened etc. These changed year to year but were still relatively predictable. Would they be different today? Is climate change affecting the natural rhythms of our world? Your sixth graders will be helping gather data for a larger study to answer this question. The Journey North Tulip Test Garden project has been tracking the emergence and bloom of red emperor tulip bulbs for over 15 years. You can check out more by viewing the short slide show we viewed in class which introduces this citizen science project schools across the northern hemisphere do.
www.learner.org/jnorth/tm/tulips/sl/CitizenSci/0.html
Math
After reviewing fraction concepts, prime and composite numbers and area and perimeter of rectangles, all of which are foundational skills for what we will study this year, we’ve begun our first unit from the textbook. This unit reviews and introduces:
- Multidigit addition, subtraction, multiplication and division with a focus on determining which operation to use in word problems.
- Exponents and order of operations
- Greatest common factor and least common factor
As we are now using the textbook, math homework will often be from the textbook. Students have been shown how to look back in the lesson for examples if they get stuck, and that odd numbered exercise have answers in the back of the book. I also expect students to set up their homework page in a uniform way (header with first and last name, date and assignment, work shown, answers circled etc.). This makes correcting and recording homework much easier on my end. All students should have a gold page in their homework folder modeling these expectations.
Reading
We are now over half of the way through our read-aloud of Wonder. This book is generating some interesting conversations. Last week we read a chapter in which one of Auggie’s friends punches the boy who is bullying Auggie in the face and knocks out a tooth. Many of us felt good, thinking, “He deserved that!” A deeper conversation opened up more thinking however. When is okay to use violence? Does violence work? Does nonviolence work? Where do you draw the line in using violence? Everyone has a different line. Some people are pure pacifists while others advocate strongly for the use of force. This is a conversation for the playground and for foreign relations with other countries. We took a little time to talk about the Civil Rights Movement and Martin Luther King’s strategy and philosophy of nonviolence. It turns out the class had little knowledge of this (it does seem way in the past for these 11 and 12 year olds!). I also talked about how a similar incident would likely be handled here at Chesterfield School. These conversations don’t end in clear answers. Instead they open up bigger questions and require students to think about and justify what they really believe, which is how we build our individual value systems. Sixth graders are at the age where they are beginning to build their own personal identity, and not just accept what their parents or teachers say. I want to challenge them to question things, look deep inside themselves and also to listen with an open mind to others’ ideas.
We are also now several chapters into Crash by Jerry Spinelli. Students are reading this book in class in partners. Partners shift from assignment to assignment. Students are asked to read a page and then have their partner summarize before switching for the next page. This routine builds summarizing skills as well as helps boost comprehension for less-advanced readers.
One of our main objectives throughout our curriculum is for students to support their ideas and conclusions with evidence. In Reading, this takes the form of pulling examples and quotes from the text to support our arguments. In particular, we are practicing this with character analysis, supporting our choice of character traits to describe a character with specific details. Discussion and comprehension work for this book are divided into five main areas:
- Vocabulary
- Reading for detail (literal, fact-based comprehension)
- Inferential Thinking (“reading between the lines”)
- Critical Thinking (going deeper, connecting to issues beyond the book, etc.)
- Literary Devices and Author’s Craft (simile, metaphor, idioms etc.)
Social Studies
We are beginning a Geography unit in Social Studies. Last week students reviewed parts of a map: legend, scale, compass rose, symbols and title. This week students will practice using the legend to explore the large range of information that can be displayed on maps by doing a more focused guided discovery in groups with one of National Geographic’s amazing maps. They will then plan a short presentation for the class to share what they discovered, as well as practice their listening and speaking skills. Ask your child to share with you about the map he or she is exploring.
Our study of maps will also link to our tulip project this week as we examine climate regions using a variety of climate maps on ArcGIS. We will use these maps to write hypotheses for where we think tulips will emerge and bloom first in the US. At the end of this week you should ask your child to explain to you where they think tulips will come up first and why. (Again, the "why"- the justification- is important!)
Ways for families to help
There are many ways to help in the coming weeks. Please read through this list and be in touch if you can help!
- Plan to donate refreshments to sell at our sixth grade-sponsored Halloween dance on Friday October 27th. Concessions generate a lot of money so the more refreshments the more money we make. We are making a big push for healthy snacks, however, to keep in line with our school wellness policies and philosophy. Think: juice boxes, string cheese, baked goods with some whole grains in them, bags of grapes, cups of fruit salad. Ask your child what he/she would buy/eat. Basically if the first ingredient (main ingredient) of the snack is a whole grain, protein, dairy, fruit or vegetable, this is considered a healthy snack. So sweet baked goods or granola bars are fine if the whole grain flour is more than the white flour! If you can make a donation of bought or prepared snacks, please email me so I can keep track. Packaged snacks can be sent in any time. Perishable snacks should be sent in the morning of the dance or brought with your child the night of the dance.
- We will need parent volunteers for our tulip planting day, which I’m hoping will be Friday October 27th, if weather cooperates. Volunteers needed 9:20-2:30. Please email me if you can help for all or part of that time!
- We will need to borrow tools and gloves for our tulip planting day (Friday, Oct 27th): large spades, shovels, trowels, garden gloves. Send in or drop off yourself at any time before Friday (send me an email if you plan to do so, so I can keep track of if we have enough tools). Please do not send large tools on the bus with your child.
- Chaperone our trip to the Orchestra. It is likely I will need at least one parent chaperone the morning of Thursday, October 26th. If you can join us, send me an email. I will base it on a first come- first-serve basis.
- Donations to the classroom/Class Wishlist:
- Snacks for kids who forget snacks are always welcome
- Class sports supplies for our bonus recess (basketballs, soccer balls- used is fine!) (Please email first to confirm that we still need it!)
- Class games: Games are a great way to teach thinking skills: math, logic, vocabulary and also cooperation. We could use another copy of SET and BLOCKUS (very popular!). QUIRKLE and RUMIS are other great logic and spatial reasoning games I would love a copies of for our classroom. (Please email first to confirm we still need it!)
- Put the week of November 27-Dec 1st on your calendar for the book fair and plan to be available to volunteer. This is our book fair week and a big fundraiser for Nature’s Classroom. We will be needing parent volunteers to man the book fair during the day and will be setting up a schedule shortly.
Thanks again for all your support and trusting me with your children all day. We are having a fun year so far!
Sincerely,
Laura White