Team Almaty Week 3
Week 3: September 11
Save the Date!
Wed. Sept. 16: Back to School Night (6pm)
Tues. Sept. 22: Picture Day (all students get their picture taken for the yearbook-see flier below)
Wed. Sept 23: Term 1 Half-Way Point (last chance to turn in late work from first half of the term)
Sat. Oct. 3: 6th Grade BBQ (11am-1pm)
Mon. Oct. 12: NO SCHOOL, Indigenous Peoples' Day
Tues. Oct. 13: Student-Led Conferences (no regular school)
Thurs. Oct. 29: Last Day of Term 1
Fri. Oct. 30: NO SCHOOL, Grading day
In case you haven't yet seen it, students should be bringing their agendas & yellow homework folders home DAILY. Many/most of our 6th graders would benefit from a little 1:1 help going through those folders each week to prioritize what needs to be kept, completed & returned, or recycled.
Volunteer for the 6th Grade BBQ!
We will host our annual 6th Grade BBQ at Deal on Saturday, October 3 from 11 AM - 1 PM. Please join us and celebrate the start of the school year with students, staff, and families!
We are still in need of volunteers to support the BBQ and we can use all the help we can get! Please use the following link to sign up if you are interested. Sign up here!
Even if you are unable to volunteer, we hope to see you at this special celebration
Ms. Trenkle, Individuals & Societies, Team Lead
This week in Geography we discussed the language of geographers and learned the basics of map skills, including using a compass rose and cardinal directions, and using a legend/key. Next week, we will continue to use the vocabulary and work on the map skills of: how to read a grid and longitude and latitude and interpreting map scale. Students have a formative on these vocabulary on Monday, September 14, and their map skills, on Wednesday, September 16. Their summative test will be on Friday, September 18. Students have practice sheets for each skill and will receive more practice in different forms next week as well. We will call on these vocabulary words and skills throughout this year. It’s exciting to see students becoming Geo-students! :)
For the fall semester, Ms. Emerick will be joining our class. She is a Museum Education Program (MEP) graduate student at The George Washington University. She is with us on Mondays and Wednesdays. She has met all students and will be working with us to learn how to scaffold museum education for middle schoolers. We are excited to have her!
On Orientation Day students shared a song they would like to add to our class playlist. This Spotify playlist can be found here.
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 flyer below.
Amy Trenkle
Mr. Brown, Math
This week students continue to discuss multiply and dividing by decimals while also discussing ratios and related content. The results and data from this assessment will be reviewed in the coming week to determine whether students will take Accelerated Grade 6 or Accelerated Grade 7 Mathematics based on the attached Deal Math Acceleration Policy. Reports from the assessment will be available to parents upon entire school completion of the assessment at parent’s request. Students assigned to Grade 7 Mathematics will receive an adjusted schedule if necessary. Homework is assigned weekly every Monday and due every Thursday by 11pm. Accompanying work should be submitted every Friday. Students will receive a completion grade for accompanying work and an accuracy per percentage grade for the assignment.
This coming week students will continue to discuss multiply and dividing by decimals while also discussing ratios and related content. Students are to pass one iReady Lesson per week where students will be given time during class and must complete by Monday morning. Students are permitted and encouraged to also work on iReady Lessons at home to ensure completion and success.
On Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays students will have access to my classroom during recess for “iRecess” which is a safe space for students to quietly work on Math assignments (HW/Classwork/Studying) during their recess time. Students must retrieve a pass on their way to lunch with limited spaces available on a first come, first served basis. Students with chronic missing HW assignments may be required to attend “IRecess.”
INTERERSTED IN AFTER SCHOOL TUTORING?
https://mathlink.app/join/deal
(Time Sensitive LINK CLOSES 9/11 at 11pm)
Marcus Brown
marcus.brown@k12.dc.gov
Ms. Johnson, Science
Congrats on finishing another busy (but short) week! This week, students were introduced to the scientific method and took a pre-test to see where their current understanding is. We also worked on our observation and inference skills, which led us into discussions of independent and dependent variables.
Next week, we will continue our exploration of the scientific method by completing the Hypothesis Exit Ticket formative and by completing our first big lab – the Slime Lab. During the slime lab, students will test how a single independent variable (ingredient or process that they change) affects multiple dependent variables (things that they measure, such as consistency, stretch, and more). This lab will reinforce students that their experiments throughout science (until very high levels) should only ever have 1 independent variable being altered at a time, while keeping the other variables constant. This allows the students as scientists to more precisely identify cause and effect!
Our famous Slime Lab will take place on Wednesday and Thursday, September 16 and 17. As many of you know, making slime can be a messy activity, so please ensure that your student wears clothing that can be easily washed. Additionally, students with long hair should tie it back to prevent it from getting into the slime.
Roots!
The roots for this week are:
*Mis = wrong (think mistake, misuse, misunderstanding)
*Manu = hand (think manipulate, manuscript, manage)
Hyper = over (think hyperactive, hypertension)
*Micro = small (think microscopic, microphone)
Chrono = time (think chronic, chronological)
*Keepers: uni, bi, tri, pre, post, -ic
Ms. Byrns, English Language Arts
BACK TO SCHOOL NIGHT EXTRA: Come join us at 5:15 PM on Back-to-School Night to learn more about ELA at Deal. AP Rottman and ELA Instructional Coach Lee will lead an informational session about the ELA curriculum, CommonLit 360.
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This week students read “Home” by Hena Khan and “The Scholarship Jacket” by Marta Salinas. Students worked on annotating by highlighting specific text evidence and writing notes in the margins. Together we wrote a CER/ER (literary analysis paragraph with a claim, two pieces of evidence and reasoning for each.) I’ve been really impressed seeing the writing skills they are starting off with. If you can make it to Back to School Night, you will have a chance to peek at what your student has been doing in class so far.
Next week, students will write similar paragraphs independently and we will move into our next text, “Thrown,” by Mike Jung. In this longer story, we will focus on how secondary characters affect the protagonist through conflict and dialogue.
Your 6th grader should be reading after school every day. You can ask them:
Who is the protagonist of your book? What traits make them likable?
Which character seems to have the most influence over the protagonist?
Katy Byrns
ELA 6 Resouce with Mr. Shufelt
This week, we continued practicing breaking down a prompt and annotating. We continued to practice our unit 1 vocabulary. Outside of class, students took the MAP Reading Diagnostic this week.
Next week, we will have a vocabulary quiz on Tuesday. All students will get packets they can take home to help them study over the weekend, and a digital copy can be found in the “Week 2” slide deck uploaded to our class Canvas page. We will start reading the short story “The Scholarship Jacket” which will also be uploaded and available on Canvas, or through CommonLit. After we finish reading The Scholarship Jacket, we will take our first formative assessment.
Library Corner
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:
