Monday, March 26, 2012

Busy, Busy, Busy.....

Please excuse my lack of updating the blog....I have been fighting the sinus infection, bronchitis, turned pneumonia now for three weeks. I am finally beginning to feel better and dig out from all the work that I have not been able to complete!

I am archiving grades today and will get report cards out ASAP!

CONGRATULATIONS to Katie Bloker, Grace Bailey, and Ashton Ames for their presentations at the Jr. Ritchey Science Fair at Weber State. Both Grace and Katie brought home Excellence Awards and Ashton brought home an Honorable Mention! Great work scholars! We are so proud of you!

Also CONGRATULATIONS to our Math Counts Team for earning silver status in the nation for our math work! We will be taking the test to try for Gold status tomorrow! Wish them luck!!!!! :)

We have completed our study of The Hunger Games for Literature Circles and will be working on Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry come the end of next week. This is our last Literature Circles novel that we read together. Scholars will have one final piece to complete this year in literature circles, if time permits.
Scholars will be taking a course in PowerPoint and will be generating a presentation for the class as a last look at the Hunger Games and we will finish that up this coming week.

We will be finishing Animal Farm this coming week also, and then moving into setting the stage for To Kill a Mockingbird. I love the cross over from the jabberjay, mockingjay, and then mockingbird in these novels.....it knits continuity of theme that is just superb!

We are in unit 11 Circles in Math and will continue to move forward while some students take Test B for unit 10 this coming Friday. We are hoping to get back on schedule soon, but due to the lack of some very foundational skills for a good majority of our scholars, I have had to go back and reteach material they should have already mastered. We will get there though! :)

Our Science unit is currently Immunology, and then we will move into physics and a week long review of astronomy for our NWEA. We will be developing our physics projects for Lagoon, the next big event in the suite!

We will be starting the immigration unit in History this week, as well as working on our writing and entering another essay contest.

I will be updating with photos as soon as I get them all downloaded from the camera!

Fourth Quarter:
There are some changes to the way things are run in the suite fourth quarter that you need to be aware of starting today:

Thursday scholars will move to the full size downstairs lockers. They will need to be organized. They will no longer be walked to the bathroom as a group, or have "snack time" in the suite. They will have a three minute break between classes and be expected to go to their locker and use the bathrooms during that time. I will be helping to train them the first week. They are to be silent at all times in the halls and not disturbing other classes. They are expected to be in their seats at the end of the three minutes. I will be using a stopwatch and by the time I hold them accountable they should be familiar with a three minute break.

Planners - It is no longer mandatory to sign your scholar's planner. At this point in the game they know what is expected and should be able to handle it on their own. You may still want to look at their homework list, etc, but I am not requiring it to be signed.

Homework not completed will result in a detention. Detention will result in 5 lost recesses and extensive writing projects over the five days. Scholars are expected to do ALL of their homework, no excuses at this point.

Three detentions results in losing the trip to Lagoon and having to put together a project all day while we are there. I DO NOT WANT TO LEAVE ANYONE BEHIND THIS TIME!!!! Please stress the importance of getting homework completed to your scholars!

All papers (essays) are to be typed from now on, proper MLA format. If your scholar forgets that format (which at this point should be impossible) you may find it at the Purdue OWL website. There are no handwritten submissions any longer. If they need to use a computer they may use the lab any day of the week until 4 pm.

Thank you for helping your scholars to get ready for Junior High and be a success! :)

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

UTOPIA!!!!






Last Friday was the culmination of our study of different forms of governments and communities/societies. It was a day for the scholars to enjoy their own "Utopia", which consisted of chocolate fondue, marshmallows, strawberries, pizza, queso and chips......plenty to make the tummy sick! Top it off with an hour of Jeopardy and the new Puss N Boots movie, and we just about had the perfect day!

Thank you to all the parents that made it possible to just have a day to relax and not have to stress. Pictures are a little late in coming because of an illness I have been battling for the past three weeks. Enjoy what we documented.

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Stash, Stash the GEOCACHE!





GFAROCKS has produced their first geocache as we laid the Cartesian Plane over the property map of GFA. We then had to find the latitude and longitude way points and post them. We had to get special permission to plant a cache on the school property, but it's close enough to the sidewalk that the average cacher will be able to find it. We have also included "Bonehead" a travel bug that will hopefully travel the world out of our cache, and into others.....We haven't registered the cache yet because we still need to do our camo work, but the cache is packed and ready to go! We'll let you cachers know when you can go hunting..... :)

We also graphed constellations today on the Cartesian plane....this graphing work is engaging and interesting. :)

Here is the calendar for March:
7 - Math Test
8 - Science Test, Spelling/vocab tests
9 - UTOPIA DAY!/ Essay due
14 - Utopia project due
15 - Math Test, Spelling/vocab tests
16 - NO SCHOOL (for the scholars anyway...)
19 - Weber State Science Fair
20 - Latin Test
22 - Written Book Reports due
23 - Essay, Spelling/vocab tests
26 - History Test
28 - Math Test

A busy month, but the last FULL month of the entire YEAR! We will be moving quickly to cover our three novels this month, The Hunger Games will be done by the 23rd. We will be starting Animal Farm tomorrow, and we already finished The Giver.

We have begun the Latin American Revolution Unit in History and will be learning all of the Latin American geography in the process. Please encourage your scholars to be studying their maps for even a couple minutes each night. That way they won't be overwhelmed having to learn all of the countries.

We are also working on research papers based on career choices. Thank you to the parents that have already visited us, and to those that are planning on coming in. We appreciate all the outside input we can get!

Research papers will be due on April 5th just prior to our Spring Break! April 6th is the 6th grade assembly based in Perseverance. We are brainstorming on a "wow" factor for the assembly....any ideas? Email them my way and we'll see what we can do!

Have a great evening!

Sunday, March 4, 2012

Science Fair and Communism Day!






Last Thursday night found the gym teeming with people and judges as the fifth and sixth grade students presented their experiments for the GFA 2012 Science Fair. We were happy to see so many students excited about what they had produced. The judges claimed that the sixth grade was by far the hardest to judge because there so many very well done experiments. Congratulations to Katie Bloker, Grace Bailey, and Ashton Ames who will be traveling to Weber State University on the 19th of March to present one more time to another group of judges. There will be over 400 sixth graders present. We are excited about participating! :)

Friday morning the totalitarian dictator came into school feeling quite ill and did the best she could to allow the students to experience a Communistic classroom for a couple hours. The scholars learned how to kick march, sit in desks with their hands clasped behind their seats, and proclaim All Hail to Comrade Downs. They were rationed the state pencil to use for the day, and were expected to wear red. Most decided they did not like this type of a dictatorship after less than 2 hours. Since the dictator was not feeling well, AND it was Wyatt's birthday, we called it short.

Tomorrow we will be having our vocab and spelling test from Friday and working on essays again.

We continue to "March" forward into spring! :)