Team Almaty Week 6

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.

Please leave a 5 minute buffer between conferences to ensure we can stay on schedule. Note that some teachers (PE, Spanish Humanities) will be unavailable to schedule with. These teachers will be doing student-led conferences with their 7th or 8th grade Advisory students. Please feel free to email these teachers to check in.

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.

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

Next week is our field trip for Sandy Spring on Tuesday. Students should arrive at the regular time and report to the cafeteria. Students need to bring a lunch to eat at Sandy Spring and wear clothes for a day outdoors. They must wear closed toed shoes. Layers are recommended. Bring a water bottle. It is suggested that students bring a string backpack to carry their lunch, water bottle, and layers (as the day gets warm). No money is needed for the day of the trip.

Students who have not yet turned in their permission slip and/or money to Ms. Trenkle should do so no later than Monday. Parents/guardians with concerns should reach out to our Grade Level Assistant Principal Ms. Gathers.

Please make sure you have completed the online waiver! Students cannot get into the trees until the online waiver is completed. The waiver link is here: https://tinyurl.com/Almaty26

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 Friday CEA #1 (Current Event Analysis) was due. Students are reminded each of the due date and encouraged to turn it in before Friday. Students may turn it in on Monday for a high score of 80%. After Monday, the CEA will not be accepted for a grade. A new CEA is always rolled out on Monday and due on Friday. This is a great assignment to discuss at home, or even read together! :)

I am so, so proud of the community profile notes and community maps that students turned in this week! Wow! They are amazing! We then used these maps and notes, along with the DC thematic maps that we looked at in class, to start our community action letter (CAL). Students are writing their letter to a DC official (Council Member, ANC, or even the mayor!) in class. Students completed a brainstorm organizer and received feedback on their ideas. In Geography, we are specifically working on using detail to describe the issue and propose a reasonable solution. Students’ draft letters should have been completed by the end of class on Friday. If students didn’t complete it, they should complete it over the weekend. All handouts for the assignment, along with sentence starters and checklists are in Canvas>Geography>Assignments>Summative: Community Action Letter. Students will type this letter, or handwrite neatly, in class on Monday, address their envelope on Wednesday and mail them to District officials on Thursday! If students type it they must print it from home. If they are unable to print from home, they are welcome to hand write their letter. Students are asked to bring a business envelope and a stamp on Wednesday. They will use the envelope and stamp to mail their letters with on Thursday.

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 will work on angle relationships and the angle relationships within a triangle.

This week students in Accelerated Grade 6 continued 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. This week students will convert measurements from one unit to another using double number lines, tables, or unit rates. 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

What an incredible week of sweet science! Students used their knowledge of plate tectonics to examine its effects on the different land formations on Earth, culminating in the Milky Way Lab where students showed how convergent collision, convergent subduction, divergent, and transform boundaries can deform the surface of Earth in multiple ways. Wonderful work!

Next week is centered on reviewing the different ways that plate motion at boundaries affects the surface of the Earth in order to prepare students for our next sweet lab (sorry for the dental bills) - The Great Shakeout Lab, which will occur over this upcoming week and the following week. In this lab, students will use examples of earthquake-related building adaptations from seismically active regions around the world to design a building out of toothpicks and marshmallows which will be tested for survivability with P, S, and RL earthquake waves. The final design will be built the following week, which is a perfect way to celebrate International Shakeout Day, a worldwide earthquake drill event on Thursday October 15th!

Since we can't use industrial concrete, our scientists will be using 32 toothpicks and 20 marshmallows to create a structure at least 2 toothpicks tall to test in our Great Shakeout Lab! We ask that families please donate a bag of miniature marshmallows to help your students achieve new heights (literally)!

Donation Request: Toothpicks and Miniature Marshmallows

Roots!

The roots for quiz 1.6 are:

• Alp = mountain (think alpine, The Alps)

• Div = to separate (think division, dividend, divorce)

• Sphere = ball (think geosphere, atmosphere, spherical)

• Co/con/com = with, together (think coworker, connect, communicate)

• Epi = on, upon (think epilogue, epithet, epinephrine)

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

This is your student's last Roots Quiz of the first quarter – their summative is scheduled for Friday, October 16th. This is their first summative on paper, and it is imperative that students complete the assigned study guide AND to work on the Roots Blooket that's been posted to Canvas.

Shanishka.Johnson@k12.dc.gov

Amazon Wishlist

This week we wrapped up “The Medicine Bag” AND we read Jason Reynolds’s “Skitter Hitter.” For this story we actually read along while listening to the audio book reading (not robot voice but actual voice actor) of “Skitter Hitter” so students could better appreciate the rhythm and word play of the story. This was definitely a fan favorite despite the heavy subject matter (bullying, grief). On Friday we talked about “theme” (the universal message or life lesson of a text) and identified themes of our past stories.

Next week is a PACKED week.

• Monday: Students will work with partners to write a practice literary analysis paragraph analyzing theme and it’s connection to character change.
• Wednesday-Thursday: Students will also look back at the stories of the unit to think a bit more deeply about the themes of the unit for a class discussion. The in-class preparation they do for the discussion will be scored as a Summative for Criteria A: Analysis.
• Friday: Students will begin the second Unit Skills Assessment. The written portion of this assessment will be the second (and final) Summative of Term 1. It will be graded, like the “Things That Can Go Wrong in Idaho” paragraph, as for Criteria B: Organization.

Katy Byrns

katy.byrns2@k12.dc.gov

Amazon Wish List

Politics & Prose Wish List

This week, we finished “Thrown” and started our first Unit Skills Assessment. This has students read a short story, answer ten multiple choice questions, and write a CER paragraph response to a prompt. We will complete the paragraph on Monday. We also began our Read 180 homework system – Read 180 is a reading intervention platform that has a unique path for each student based on their level and their NWEA MAP reading diagnostic. We will do 10 minutes of Read 180 in class three days each week. As long as students work diligently during this class time, they will get the full ten points for the weekly homework.

Next week, we will complete the Unit Skills assessment, introduce our independent reading project, and start our next story “The Medicine Bag.” We will also begin preparation for our Summative Assessment which will be a class discussion based on themes from various stories we’ve read this year (“The Scholarship Jacket,” “Thrown,” “The Medicine Bag”).

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.