Team Kathmandu: Week 7
October 10, 2025
Save the Date!
Friday, Oct. 10: No School, Prof. Development Day for Teachers
Monday, Oct. 13: No School, Indigenous People's Day
Tuesday, Oct. 14: Progress Reports Distributed in Advisory
Friday, Oct. 31: Last Day of Term 1, last day to submit work
Monday, Nov. 3: No School for students (records day)
Friday, Nov. 7: Picture Day Make-Ups
Tuesday, Nov. 11: No School, Veterans Day
Thank you to all who were able to come out for Student Led Conferences. It was great to see you and support our students as they share about the transition to middle school.
Geography with Ms. Trenkle
This past week in Geography students typed their Community Action Letter, addressed the envelope, and mailed it! Congratulations local activists! I am so, so proud of the Community Action Letters students turned in this week! We had 100% mailing rate on Wed. (submission date!) Way to go! To wrap up the end of our first unit, students completed a Unit 1 Reflection posted in Canvas. There is no homework over the long weekend.
We will begin our new unit on Tuesday: Sub Saharan Africa (SSA). Before we dive deep into SSA, we will learn about the 5 Themes of Geography, a lens we will use every unit to analyze and evaluate where we are in the world! Next week be sure to ask your student to sing the 5 Themes of Geography song! A definite ear worm! After the 5 Themes, we will complete a physical map and glossary and work on our political and thematic maps the rest of the week. We will use these maps to help us better understand the region, geographically. Students will have their map quiz on Thursday, October 23 in class, using these maps and the vocabulary.
CEA #3 will be assigned in class on Tuesday, but will be posted by Sunday in Canvas for any student who wants to get a jump start on it.
Be sure to check out our GeoNewsletter, written by our own GeoScribes! Follow along and see the class through your students’ eyes! https://secure.smore.com/n/nbc3t
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
Math with Mr. Brown
This week in Accelerated 6th Grade Math
This week, students worked on writing and solving division and multiplication equations from scenarios with mixed numbers and their real-world application and took their first RCT Assessment.. It is imperative that students continue to master and strengthen their basic multiplication facts. This week students will take assessments on our current concepts and will begin working on equivalent ratios Students should take advantage of iRecess (a quiet space to work and get help during recess MWF), our Virtual Classroom (www.framevr.io/brownmath after school help available upon request), and our Parking Lot (an in class means to submit requests, reminders, and questions) which are amongst various resources available to students outside of their normal class periods (and Advisory) to help towards success. Students should see me about any makeup opportunities.Resources available from Illustrative Mathematics to assist families with the curriculum we are following can be found at https://im.kendallhunt.com/MS/index.html.
This week in 7th Grade
This week students worked on identifying the constant of proportionality to find the unit rate with fractions. Students this week will work on calculate percent given various factors. Please converse with students about the following terms and where they can be seen in their day-to-day lives: discount, markdown, mark-up, tips, commission, and sales tax. As we will be discussing percent, percent increase and decrease in upcoming lessons. Please encourage your child to take advantage of iRecess (a quiet space to work and get help during recess MWF), our Virtual Classroom (www.framevr.io/brownmath after school help available upon request), and our Parking Lot (an in class means to submit requests, reminders, and questions) and all resources available to students outside of their normal class periods to help towards success. Students should see me about any makeup opportunities. Resources available from Illustrative Mathematics to assist families with the curriculum we are following can be found at https://im.kendallhunt.com/MS/index.html.
Thank you for your support
-Mr. Brown marcus.brown@k12.dc.gov
Science with Ms. Johnson
Hello Scientists!
Thank you for a great short week. I loved seeing you all have fun with The Great Shake Out design project. We had many successful buildings, and some were not so successful. But that’s ok because we all learned something about how serious earthquakes can be!
Next Wednesday, October 15th, we will be taking our Advisory 1 Roots Summative. Blookets and a study guide have been posted on Canvas. Those items can be found in module, Unit 1. We will also have a review day on Tuesday to ensure students are prepared. This is the students' first substantial summative. I highly recommend that they study these as much as possible over the long weekend.
Also, next week, students will continue to explore plate motion using a Gizmo simulation. This will help students prepare their Plate Motion summative on Wednesday, October 22nd. This summative will be recorded for Term 2. No new Roots until Term 2!
Opportunities/Challenges
shanishka.johnson@k12.dc.gov
English Language Arts with Ms. Byrns
This week students enjoyed reading Jason Reynold’s “Skitter Hitter.” This is a short story from the novel Look Both Ways. Many students were interested in reading the entire book and I’ve ordered a few extra copies for the classroom that should be here by Tuesday. We also engaged in a class discussion of the novel.
Next week, we will focus on identifying theme and look back to the stories we’ve read in past weeks as we practice this work. In ELA, while we might start with a single word like “friendship” or “honesty” the goal is that students can identify a complete idea when discussing the theme of a story. For example, one theme of Frozen is that what makes us different can often be our greatest strength. You can discuss themes of T.V. shows, movies and probably even KPop Demon Hunters.
On Wednesday and Thursday students will complete Unit 1 Skills Test 2. The written portion of this test will be a summative assessment grade.
A few students have already turned in their Term 1 reading projects. You can see what they look like in the picture below. If your student rather complete a digital option, they can include all the same information on a PPT/Canva/Google slide. If you are able to print at home, that would help my ink reserves here in the classroom. 😉
Katy Byrns
Math 6 Resource with Mr. Shufelt
This week we continued to review word problems that involve mixed and improper fractions, converting fractions, and various operations with fractions. On Wednesday we completed their RCT assessment which covered everything we’ve learned so far this year. Next week, there’s no school on Monday. We will complete the RCT assessment on Tuesday and then begin our next unit on ratios.
As a reminder, all students have one iReady lesson due every Monday. By 10/13 students should have passed 6 total iReady lessons. Please reach out to me if there is any issue with students completing the iReady lessons at home. Pear assignments are opened on Mondays and Wednesdays and due Wednesday and Friday.
Please note that I’ve also uploaded a document for all the notes for our first unit to the class Canvas page and I will continue to periodically upload future notes as we progress.
Deal Clubs
Is your child looking to meet some new friends? Or maybe they just want to join an afterschool activity. You can find the current list of Deal Clubs in the document below.
Attendance
Beginning this year, families are required to submit excuse notes for students in Aspen GO—the mobile-friendly version of Aspen Parent Portal. The previously existing online system we used has been disabled.
Instructions on how to submit an excuse note are available below.
Submitting an Excuse Note in Aspen GO (Parent Portal).pdf - 443.2 KB (pdf)
Envío de una nota justificativa en Aspen GO (Portal para padres).pdf - 543.4 KB (pdf)
Soumettre une note d'excuse dans Aspen GO (portail parents).pdf - 489.0 KB (pdf)
በ‘Aspen GO’ (የወላጅ ፖርታልParent Portal) ላይ፣ ፈቃድ-ማግኛ ማስታወሻ (Excuse Note)ን ማስገባት.pdf - 504.7 KB (pdf)
在 Aspen GO（家长门户）中提交请假条.pdf - 507.6 KB (pdf)
Nộp Giấy Xin Phép Nghỉ học Trên Aspen GO (Cổng Thông Tin Phụ Huynh).pdf - 315.5 KB (pdf)
Additional information on how to use the Parent Portal can be found at dcps.dc.gov/page/parent-portal.
Library Corner with Mr. Reichlan
Mr. Reichlen has created a new web collection of school and public library links to support the novel lists for independent reading texts from the CommonLit 360 ELA curriculum. Here students can find access points to all of the catalog records for recommended texts that support each of this year's unit themes organized by grade level and unit. Students can checkout and place items on hold. The collection will be updated throughout the school year to provide access to recommended titles as units change. See the link below for more information:
https://bit.ly/ADMSLibraryLibGuide_ELA_Resources
Stephen Reichlen
Library Media Specialist
Deal MS – DC Public Schools
