Team Kathmandu: Week 1

Monday, Sept. 1: Labor Day, No School

Friday, Sept. 5: Wear College Gear Day

Tuesday & Thursday, Sept. 9 & 11: 6th Grade Family Workshop Nights

Wednesday, Sept. 17: Back to School Night

Thursday, Sept. 25: FIRST FIELD TRIP: Sandy Spring Adventure Park (more info. to come)

Congrats on helping your 6th grader make it through week one of middle school! Students are doing much better at opening their locks, getting to class without getting lost and carrying their necessary supplies (always the green folder & agenda) with them.

Please help your student make a habit of checking their green folders and agendas after school for important reminders or things to do! This week students should have all brought home a technology use agreement form to be signed and returned so that they may be assigned a school laptop.

If you missed last week's newsletter with teacher intros & a pro-tip about tote bags, you can find that HERE.

At Deal, homeroom is students’ first period class. Team Kathmandu students have homeroom with Ms. Byrns & Mr. Shufelt, Ms. Trenkle, Mr. Brown, Ms. Johnson or Mr. Fontalvo. During the first weeks of school we have extended first periods. This means first period is twice as long. In the first week we are using this extra time to figure out lockers, go over school procedures, and so on. In the second week of school we will have extended first period classes as students take their beginning of year assessments in Math and ELA. Students who have testing accommodations will test in small groups.

Advisory is a class held only on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We will not be starting the Advisory schedule until a bit later this month. Students on our team will be with one of the previously listed teachers or with Ms. Liang. During Advisory classes we engage in culture building and lessons around organization and keys to school success. We also have time for “Academic Advising” in which students can complete homework, make-up missing assignments, or retake tests and quizzes. More information to come on this when we get closer to our regular Advisory Tu/Th schedule.

This week in Geography we have been spending a lot of time getting to know each other, the school, expectations, and routines! It’s been wonderful to start to get to know Team Kathmandu students!! In Geography, we opened our curriculum by learning/reviewing the continents and locations and students will have their first map quiz of the year on Wed. September 3! Each day we have review activities (practice maps, Flocabulary videos and songs, and reminders!). All students have a map that is in their green folder and can use this link to practice with on a device: bit.ly/dealworldmap . We also did a Where am I Geography pyramid to place us in our own geography matrix of time and space! We ended the week with IB Learner Profiles and creating a class contract.

All students should have their supplies for Geography on Tuesday, September 2 so we can set up our binders in class. (please see supply list above). All students also have the supply list taped into their agenda.

Next week in Geography, in addition to our binder set up and our map quiz, students will create our giant classroom map.

On Orientation Day students shared a song they would like to add to our class playlist. This Spotify playlist can be found here:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7nWMWui4YoJ5WUxe9zqWIY?si=hV7LhQaNSu2SzPI6k58-QQ

A final request—if you, or anyone you know is traveling, and can send a postcard to our class, or post a picture with description from their travels, it would be greatly appreciated! Please see the adjoining flyer.

Amy Trenkle

amy.trenkle@k12.dc.gov

Classroom Wishlist

During our first week, we have been getting to know one another, learning the Mathematics class culture and expectations, systems of the school and each class, making class agreements, and beginning to access the Mathematics curriculum.

This week, students will participate in their Beginning of the Year Assessment (BOY) on September 3 and 4th, which will determine their Mathematics placement. Students will also work on multiplying and dividing whole numbers, powers of 10, and decimals. Homework given on Mondays is due on Wednesdays. The second homework is given on Wednesdays and due on Fridays. All students are expected to pass (80% or higher) one iReady lesson per week with the first passed lesson due September 8th. With the dissemination of computers, students will begin to become acclimated to the platforms that will be used both in and outside of the classroom.

Students should have supplies by Tuesday, September 2nd.

Looking forward to an AMAZING year.

Marcus Brown

marcus.brown@k12.dc.gov

Hello families!

Students did a great job getting to know each other through their Gab Lab last week and have been busy learning and practicing classroom procedures and expectations. During this upcoming week, our students will begin with an introductory activity involving a "Letter to a Science Teacher." Students will work on their rough drafts in class, with the rough draft due by Thursday, September 4th. After incorporating feedback, students will submit their final drafts by Monday, September 8th. In addition, students will complete a creative assignment due by Wednesday, September 3rd. This involves creating a comic strip that illustrates class expectations and procedures.

We are looking forward to a productive and engaging week!

Please make sure you have all your science supplies ready by Tuesday, September 2nd (the day after Labor Day)!

For our class, you will need:

• A 1 inch 3 ring binder (this will permanently stay in the science classroom)

• 5-tab dividers for the binder

• A notebook with holes punched in it (will permanently stay in the science binder)

• Pencils

• 1 roll of paper towels OR

• 1 box of tissues

Optional:

• 1 bottle of hand sanitizer

• Disinfectant wipes

Please let me know if you have trouble acquiring any of these supplies, I have a few extras from last year. If you want to donate extra paper towels, tissues, or hand sanitizer they are always appreciated!

Roots!

Throughout the school year, our scientists will study Latin and Greek root words to strengthen their scientific vocabulary. For six weeks each quarter, they will learn five new roots and their definitions each week, totaling 30 roots per quarter. At the end of the six-week cycle, students will take a summative assessment covering all 30 roots. Once the quarter ends, we will begin studying a new set of 30 roots.

Each week, three of the newly learned roots will become "keepers" and will appear on all subsequent quizzes for that quarter. This means that by Week 6, students will be responsible for studying 20 roots—five from that week plus 15 keepers from previous weeks.

Studying root words will be assigned as homework every week. Students will have a Roots Organizer in their agenda, and we will also share the weekly roots in our email updates.

This week's roots are:

• Uni = 1 (think unified, united, unicorn)

• Bi = 2 (think biannual, bisect, bilingual)

• Tri = 3 (think tricycle, triplet)

• Quadr = 4 (think quadrilateral, quadruplet)

• Penta = 5 (think pentagon, pentathlon)

shanishka.johnson@k12.dc.gov

Ms. Johnson's list SY25-26

One week done! This week we did a variety of activities to get to know one another as readers, writers and people. Students worked in groups to learn about the benefits of reading and created related posters. Students completed writing baseline which I will grade and go over with students individually as we set writing goals for the coming year.

On Tuesday we started our monthly reading challenge. Every student checked out a graphic novel from our classroom library. Their goal is to finish reading these by Tuesday, Sept 2. Each month there will be a different independent reading assignment. Students will have the opportunity to visit our school library and borrow books from our classroom library. The expectation is that students will be able to independently read a book each month of the school year. Most of our reading work this year will be short stories and articles, so in this way we will keep up the practice (or maybe start the practice) of reading full novels. There will be one book project each quarter. More to come next week. Students keep their monthly reading challenge trackers in their classroom binders. You can read along with them by using the document attached below.

Next week we will begin our first ELA unit. This unit will focus on the ways in which characters change and grow. To begin the unit, we will be reading an article that explains key personality traits and explores the question of whether or not people’s personalities ever really change.

Thank you to Katherine's family for the book donations from our wishlist!

Katy Byrns

katy.byrns2@k12.dc.gov

Amazon Wishlist

Politics & Prose Wishlist

Greetings, Deal families! This week in our resource Math 6 class we spent time getting to know each other, setting expectations, practicing classroom routines, and brainstorming our classroom compact. The students emphasized our class community should be a kind and respectful environment where everyone supports each other.

We’ve just begun our content material, and this week we reviewed addition and subtraction of decimals. Next week students will take the Beginning of Year assessment and we’ll move on to practicing multiplication and division of whole numbers and decimals.

I look forward to continuing to work with the wonderful students on Team Kathmandu!

Brandon.shufelt@k12.dc.gov

Parents and caregivers must submit excuse notes for attendance through Aspen GO—a mobile friendly version of Aspen Parent Portal, and the same platform used for school enrollment and reenrollment. Please visit the DCPS Attendance webpage for guidance on how to submit an excuse note.

According to DCPS, the system will go live on September 8. In the interim, students must bring a paper excuse note (tardy and/or absence) to the Welcome Center.

https://app.smore.com/u/patricia.balestra4

Meet Deal's librarian Mr. Reichlen! Learn about the great things happening this month at Deal's library. Check out great books and media, read about events at Deal and around the city, and stay connected with Deal's Library:

https://secure.smore.com/n/ep68k

Thanks,

Stephen Reichlen

Library Media Specialist

Deal MS – DC Public Schools

stephen.reichlen@k12.dc.gov