Hey Mr. Gray

November 8th

Dear Parents,

We’re going to have a great upcoming week. Below is a short description of what’s coming up and important links and/or announcements:

Reader’s Workshop

We will continue our study of nonfiction books. This is a deep dive into how to read nonfiction books since they are different from fiction books mostly because they are trying to teach something, rather than entertain or affect you. The kids will make predictions, then confirm or revise their predictions, take action to clear up confusion, and set reading goals. The will continue reading their fiction books at home and I will check the work they’ve done of their fiction books in their reader’s notebooks.

Writer’s Workshop

The kids will take up a cause of their own interest to give a speech. During the week they will craft their persuasive speech using all the tools we have learned during our opinion writing unit and finally give the speech on Friday.

Math

Math Answers and Help Here

Tuesday will be a review day before the end of Unit Assessment on Wednesday. The end of unit assessment will cover Unit Rates and Percentages. This will be all the work we’ve done since Fall Break. Be sure to go over the coursework quizzes to study. Have students meet with me on Tuesday if they have questions.

History

For week 4 of our pyramid projects the kids will set out the task of turning their drawings into small models. I will ask students to bring in some materials to build (cardboard from amazon boxes, paper, etc.).

Science

Information on new textbook

The students will begin learning science from our new science textbook, Twig. We will start by studying human body systems.

Thank you,

Mr. Gray

Tessa was our kid of the week!

Dear Parents,

We’re going to have a great upcoming week. Below is a short description of what’s coming up and important links and/or announcements:

Reader’s Workshop

The kids will move to a focus on nonfiction texts. We will be visiting the Woodbury library to get a handle on where to find nonfiction texts and then the week will be spent on learning about how to read nonfiction because it is different that reading fiction books. The kids will still be reading fiction books at home and now we have added an expectation of doing some work each day related to their fiction book and the following tasks:

Understanding Characters as friends, seeing different sides to characters, making strong predictions, growing ideas about characters, asking questions and answering them in deep ways, and supporting thinking with evidence from the book.

Writer’s Workshop

Next week, the kids will move on from review writing and onto writing (and eventually giving) persuasive speeches. We’ll discuss important causes and what we can do to get people on our side.

Math

We will continue working percentages all next week and get ready for our end of unit assessment next Wednesday November 13th.

History

The students will continue their pyramid projects. This week they made inspiration boards to define their plans. Next week, they will make drawings of their planned pyramid.

Science

Students will continue working on their science fair projects and we will begin our next Science textbook.

Thank you,

Mr. Gray

Yuki was our kid of the week!

Dear Parents,

We’re going to have a great upcoming week. Below is a short description of what’s coming up and important links and/or announcements:

Reader’s Workshop

We will finish up the trimester continuing with our unit on seeing more in ourselves and in our books. This week will be all about taking all the practice we’ve been doing and producing work in reader’s notebooks that makes that work thinking visible. In addition, students will be conferencing with me and their reading partner on their thinking.

Writer’s Workshop

We will continue the work of Opinion writing by constructing more thorough reviews. We also start the next section of our opinion by crafting persuasive speeches.

Math

We will continue learning about Unit Rates and Percentages. The kids will wrap up our focus on unit speed and price (and comparing those) and move on to percentages. Tuesday will be a day of review with a quiz to follow later on Tuesday or Wednesday.

Math Answers and Help Here.

History

The kids will continue their pyramid projects. At this point they are still working individually and having finished their background research will begin the design process by defining their plan using an inspiration board. We will look at inspiration boards created by my sister who is an interior designer in Brooklyn for inspiration “from the pros”.

Science

Students will continue working on their science fair projects.

Thank you,

Mr. Gray

Emily was our Kid of the Week!

Dear Parents,

We’re going to have a great upcoming week. Below is a short description of what’s coming up and important links and/or announcements:

Reader’s Workshop

Next week we will be working on a unit practicing reflecting on the process of becoming a better reader.

Writer’s Workshop

The kids will finish up their award nominations for their collections and then move on to writing reviews.

Math

We will continue with the work of ratios exploring real world applications of ratio thinking. Next week, we will focus on converting units, and comparing speeds, prices, and rates. Finally we will discover the relationship between equivalent ratios and unit rates.

History

The kids will begin working on their pyramid projects We will tie in the study of pyramids with the Nile River, Pharaohs, and the religion of Ancient Egypt. Eventually the students will be presenting a proposal to build a new, better pyramid for a modern-day Pharaoh.

Science

The students will have time to research their science fair projects.

Thank you,

Mr. Gray

Dear Parents,

We’re going to have a great upcoming week. Below is a short description of what’s coming up and important links and/or announcements:

Reader’s Workshop

The kids will continue exploring their characters as well as the characters in our read aloud: The Year of the Dog.We will close out the trimester finishing up our beginning of the year fiction unit by seeing more in ourselves and in our books.

Writer’s Workshop

We will begin a new unit on Opinion Writing in preparation for a later 6th grade unit on Argument Writing.. For this Unit students will begin by evaluating and ranking collections of their own that they bring to school. Then, we will write reviews, and finally write persuasive speeches.

Math

We will begin our next unit on Unit Rates and Percentages. This unit builds on what we were learning in the previous Ratios unit. See more about what we will learn here.

Math Answers and Help Here.

History

We will begin our unit on Ancient Egypt. Ancient Egypt is so rich for study but we will focus on the GRAPES of Egypt looking at the Nile River and how it supported the Egyptian civilization and the relationship between religion and the social and political order. We will look at pyramids and mummies as well.

Science

The students will have time to research their science fair projects and will learn how to create a works cited list.

Thank you,

Mr. Gray

Olivia was our kid of the week!

September 13th

Dear Parents,

We’re going to have a great upcoming week. Below is a short description of what’s coming up and important links and/or announcements:

We are nearly ¼ of the way through 6th grade. Our class had read 85,000 pages and 6th grade has read nearly 300,000 pages since the beginning of the year! Wow!

Reader’s Workshop

We are shifting gears to a new part of our Setting Up a Powerful Reading Life Unit where the focus is on envisioning and prediction, two essential reading skills that undergird comprehension. The students will continue setting goals with a partner and working on predicting and getting an introduction to studying characters.

Writer’s Workshop

We will write our final Information book for this unit and turn it in on Friday. We are going to celebrate by having an information fair on Friday that other students will be invited to.

Math

We will continue our Introduction to Ratios unit. This week we studied double number lines, triple number lines, and ratio tables. We will put these ideas together next week to solve ratio problems with ratio tables. The kids will have their end of Unit Assessment on Thursday. Math Answers and Help Here.

History

We will continue our study of Ancient Mesopotamia for Lesson 1 and Lesson 2 (still working on this. We will review Lesson 2 and study for a Mesopotamia test which we will take on Friday.

Science

In preparation for the upcoming science fair we will be studying about research skills.

Thank you,

Mr. Gray