Greetings Families! I have a lot of IMPORTANT information to pass on, please read to the end! FSA Writing We have a practice FSA writing prompt on Wednesday, February 8th. It is VERY important that your student is here that day and on time! We will begin the prompt right after the announcements are over. It is a timed prompt (unless of course your student has an IEP or 504). I will score the essays with the help of Mrs. Anderson. We will immediately conference with students regarding their results and spend the following two weeks focusing on the skills your student needs. Each class will be grouped according to the skill they need to develop further. Please try to avoid scheduling time away from school as we are quickly approaching the official FSA writing day, which is Tuesday, February 28. Attendance is crucial on that date. Students do not perform as well if they take the test on a make-up date. Technology I recently served on a grant committee and we won the grant! We will be converting to a 1:1 technology classroom. What this means is that each student will have their own laptop to use in my classroom for Reading and Language Arts. We currently use technology quite a bit, however this will allow a fully integrated classroom. You will see less paper items coming home. More of our work will be done using Google Classroom and Google Docs. Please ask your student to show you some of their work! I am very excited for this change and I am looking forward to getting the devices! With that said, EVERY student will need headphones. This is important! Not only are the headphones used in class, they will be used for FSA testing as well. Each student is responsible for having their own headphones during FSA testing. Zach's Lie We are reading Zach's Lie which has been an exciting read! We will be focusing on sequence of events. This book jumps around a lot using flashbacks and journal sequences. It has been challenging but fun! Reading Counts Don't forget to ask your student about their Reading Counts goals! I will send home a print out of their progress at interim report card time. If you want to know how they are doing before then, please have your student look it up or ask me! Important Dates 1/23 to 2/3 Souper Bowl 2/3 Wear Your Favorite Team Shirt to School 2/7 PTO Meeting 2/8 Practice FSA Writing Prompt 2/28 FSA Writing (Important Test Day!!)
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Book club order forms will be coming home this week! You can browse online or look through the order forms. Your Reading Club orders are due by 01/27/17. You can place your orders online at scholastic.com/readingclub using my class activation code: LL6R6
Remember: You can order from any of the book clubs! Your participation this year has helped me add over 100 books to my class library! Happy New Year! I hope my students are refreshed and ready to get back to work!
Grades for the 2nd nine weeks are finalized, and report cards will be sent home on Jan 12. If you require a parent conference, please email your homeroom teacher to ask for the sign up link. Here is what we have going on: Language Arts We are resuming our study of Greek and Latin Roots. Students will receive a new unit each week. The weekly homework will look like this:
In addition to our continued efforts to master the Greek and Latin Roots, we will be vamping up our essay writing efforts. Before the break we began to look at TEA paragraphs. This nine weeks we will look at teacher and student created samples of writing, discuss the FSA writing rubric, and take our second FSA Practice Writing Assessment. Reading I am excited to announce our next novel....... Zach's Lie by Roland Smith! This is a thriller of a novel that is sure to excite all of my readers! Each student will have his or her own copy to take home which means we will resume reading homework! Yay! We have been completing Lit Circle jobs in class, but now they will be completed at home each night (except for Friday). Please note: if there is more than one assigned chapter for reading that day, students are to complete the lit circle job on BOTH chapters. They do not need to do two separate sheets, just pull the information from both chapters to answer the questions. GSP students are to still check in with me at the end of the day to make sure there isn't any other HW. Reading Counts Goals I will be conferencing with students individually on Friday, January 13th. We are going to be setting our new Reading Counts goals. You can expect to see the goal sheet coming home within a few days of our conference. Several students far exceeded their goal for the second nine weeks while others dropped the ball and did not reach their goal. This will be a time of reflection for the students and myself to ask important questions about reading habits. I know I encouraged students to pick books that interest them and not to worry about the Lexile, HOEWEVER, several students are reading 2nd and 3rd grade level books. While I am not going to put restrictions on what your student wishes to read, I am encouraging them to pick more challenging books. Upcoming Events
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AuthorJessica Elliott is a 6th grade Reading and Language Arts teacher at Manatee Elementary in Viera, Fl. Archives
March 2017
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