Team Almaty Week 5

Deal will host conferences on Tuesday, 10/13 from 12-7pm. You can make appointments to meet with 6th grade teachers using this online system: https://www.ptcfast.com/parent_registration1.php Please see the attached document for access codes for your student's teachers.

Sat. Oct. 3: 6th Grade BBQ (11am-1pm)

Tues. Oct. 6: Sandy Spring Adventure Park Field Trip

Mon. Oct. 12: NO SCHOOL, Indigenous Peoples' Day

Tues. Oct. 13: Parent Teacher 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.

Deal will host conferences in-person on Tuesday, 10/13 from 12-7pm. Beginning on Monday, 9/28 families will be able to make appointments for 5-minute meetings with 6th grade teachers. Detailed sign-up instructions and access codes for teachers will be shared beginning 9/28.

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

This week students received a letter to take home and a permission slip sharing our upcoming 6th grade Team Almaty’s trip to Sandy Spring. The purpose of the trip is for students to get to know each other and to have some team building and bonding time. Team Almaty will go on their adventure on Tuesday, October 6. We will be gone all school day. Permission slips and money should be turned into Ms. Trenkle; she will collect it during Geography class. Any questions about the trip should be directed to Ms. Gathers, our assistant principal, or Ms. Trenkle.

There are three steps to prepare for this trip:

• Sign and return the permission slip (needed for DCPS) (this is paper only and return to Ms. Trenkle)
• Complete the waiver tinyurl.com/Almaty26 (needed for students to get in a harness)—this is online only.
• Return the $55 (cash, check, or Money Order) (there is not electronic payment location at this time, please turn in only to Ms. Trenkle)

Links to the parent/guardian letter and permission slip can be found here.

English: Permission Slip Almaty English 10 06.pdf

26 27 Sandy Spring Letter.docx

Spanish: Permission Slip Almaty Spanish 10 06.pdf

26 27 Sandy Spring Letter Spanish.docx

On Monday we rolled out our CEA (Current Events Analysis) weekly assignment. We all read one article together (about the newly adopted world map by the UN) and completed a CEA exemplar for students to keep as a reference in their binder. Starting this coming Monday students will receive a weekly current events article to read and an analysis handout to complete. The article and the template will be posted in Canvas by Monday a.m. and is due by the start of class on Friday. A hard copy of the template is provided to every student. It is an engagement grade each week. Students will turn in a hard copy of their work on Friday in class. Students may turn it in the following Monday for a late grade of 20% deduction. After that the assignment is not accepted. Students will receive feedback on their CEAs each week—on their paper and their grade will be in Aspen.

This week in Geography we also began putting our map skills knowledge to work! We started the week reading thematic maps of DC and interpreting the story they tell. We continued our local focus by talking about community mapping—we did this through Geospatial Revolution video examples and then bringing it closer to home by doing a neighborhood look for assets and opportunities. On Friday students went over their assignments that are due on Monday, September 28. Students will choose a neighborhood/community they would like to study and complete an observation handout on this community and then make a map based on their community profile (observation) notes. Both assignments are due September 29. Handouts were provided for both assignments and are posted in Canvas as well.

Next week students will use their observation notes and the map to identify an opportunity that they will write about to a DC leader (Mayor, council member, or ANC member). We will brainstorm for the letter and draft it in class. The final letter is a summative grade and will be due on Wednesday, October 7.

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

amy.trenkle@k12.dc.gov

Classroom Wishlist

This week students in Accelerated Math 7 worked on Rigid Transformations (translations, reflections, and rotations) in Geometry, while continuing to review multiplication, and division of decimals. In the upcoming week, students will work on the geometric relationships (dilation and congruence) .

This week students in Accelerated Grade 6 will continue to work on determining what information is needed to solve an equivalent-ratio problem and choosing a diagram and use it to explain the reasoning. We also will continue to discuss multiplying and dividing by decimals. Homework is assigned weekly every Monday and due every Thursday by 11pm. Accompanying work should be submitted every Friday. Students will receive an accuracy per percentage grade for the assignment and will be penalized 10 points from their score.

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.”

Marcus Brown
marcus.brown@k12.dc.gov

Hello Scientists!

Another great week has flown by – thank you for being on your best behavior during school pictures, and congratulations on completing your first assessment level assignment for science class, the Scientific Method Post Test. This week we also started Unit 1: Plate Motion with an introduction to the layers of the earth and a scale model cross section of earth.

Next week, your scientists will dive into explanations about density to prepare them for understanding convection currents, and they will map out the locations of earthquakes and volcanoes to trace the edges of plates. This will prepare them to understand the overarching idea that convection currents within the layers of the earth drive plate motion on the surface, which creates formations like volcanoes, mountain ranges, trenches, and more through our Milky Way Lab.

Donation Request: Fun Size Milky Way Bars

As it turns out, Milky Way Bars are a fantastic demonstration for the layers of the earth – a thin crunchy crust that can crack and buckle (chocolate), an ooey-gooey mantle underneath (caramel), and a soft spongy core at the bottom (nougat)! For our Milky Way Lab on Thursday, October 1st, we need bags of fun size milky way bars to help our students understand how these layers interact and form surface structures like mountains and trenches.

Roots!

The roots for quiz 1.5 are:

• *Petro, petri = stone (think petrified, petroleum, petrichor)

• *Sub = under (think submarine, subconscious, subway)

• Macro = large (think macromolecules, macroscopic)

• *Super = over, above (think supreme, supersonic)

• Pan = all (think pandemic, pan-American, panorama)

*Keepers: uni, bi, tri, pre, post, -ic, mis, manu, micro, geo, multi, seismo

Shanishka.Johnson@k12.dc.gov

Amazon Wishlist

This week students completed their first typed formative on Class Notebook. It was a tricky question but they did a great job (especially for the 5th week of 6th grade!) These will be graded in the next few days and students can show your their work and feedback by accessing Class Notebook through Office 365 on Clever or through Canvas. We also visited the Deal library and students learned how to check out books independently so they can visit it and do so during recess or after school.

Next week we will read “The Medicine Bag” by Virginia Driving Hawk Sneve and “Skitter Hitter” by local author Jason Reynolds. With these texts we will practice identifying the most relevant evidence in support of a claim and identifying the theme of a short story.

Test Corrections: Students who would like to raise their score on the Unit Skills Assessment 1 multiple choice can come see me during recess or advisory on Thursday October 1st. There isn’t anything to study. Instead, we work together on understanding the questions they missed.

Katy Byrns

katy.byrns2@k12.dc.gov

Amazon Wish List

Politics & Prose Wish List

This week, students finished their work on “The Scholarship Jacket” with the completion of Formative B. They were asked to write a CER paragraph responding to a prompt about how the protagonist changed over the course of the story. We also began reading our next story, “Thrown” by Mike Jung. A copy can be found on the class Canvas page. During this text we will focus on how the protagonist changes through conflict and dialogue with secondary characters.

Next week we will finish reading “Thrown.” We will also have our first Unit Skills Assessment where students will read a short story, answer multiple choice questions, and then write a one paragraph response to a prompt

brandon.shufelt@k12.dc.gov

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://app.smore.com/n/9unb1

Newsletter HERE

With DCPS’ 10:1 student–teacher ratio for field trips, we are building a parent chaperone list to ensure we can fully staff upcoming trips. Joining the list does not commit you to any specific trip—it simply lets us know you’re open to being contacted when chaperones are needed. All parent chaperones must be fully cleared as DCPS volunteers that do not expire before June 15, 2027, so families who are interested should review the clearance process here: https://dcps.dc.gov/page/volunteer-our-schools. If you would like to be added to our possible chaperone list, please reach out by emailing Ms. Trenkle at amy.trenkle@k12.dc.gov and attaching your clearance letter. Thank you for your continued support!

We are very committed to supporting your student's on-time daily attendance. Students' regular attendance in school and engagement in instruction is critical during their important middle school years.

If your student is absent, excuse notes must be shared with Ms. Stephens, attendance counselor. To ensure accurate attendance records, please submit attendance excuse notes – including those from a doctor – in one of the following ways:

• Submit through Aspen Go
• Send an email to DealAttendance@k12.dc.gov
• Drop off at school (Welcome Center)

Tardy arrivals and early dismissals require a submitted excuse note. You can also reach out to teachers for information about missed assignments.

Our goal is for every student to be as close to 100% in-seat attendance as possible, with every student's over 95% in-seat attendance.

Your student's transition to middle school includes a new responsibility - being on time for each class period each day. Sixth grade students who are late for three or more class periods per week will be required to attend tardy hall on Thursday afternoons from 3:30 - 4:30 PM.

Because students are missing important instruction when they are late for class, students at 6th grade tardy hall will leverage their time to complete missed work and reflect on ways they can ensure on-time arrival moving forward. If your student qualifies for tardy hall, you will be notified by Ms. Watson, 6th grade dean, during the week of their tardy hall assignment.

Congratulations to our IB Learner Profile Students of the Month. This month Team Almaty teachers are highlighting the RISK TAKER learner profile: Sydney and Matias. Risk takers approach uncertainty with forethought and determination; they work independently and cooperatively to explore new ideas and innovative strategies. They are resourceful and resilient in the face of challenges and change.