This week, students are completing revisions to their memoir and their favorite poems. These will be placed in their school writing folders, along with pieces they select from their elementary writing folders. Writing folders are maintained throughout their years at middle school and move to the high school with them. The piece selected showcase their growth as writers over the years. It is so interesting to see their reactions to paragraphs they wrote at the beginning of this year and hear their comments about the mistakes they made then.

Next Tuesday, there is no school for students due to election day. Sixth Grade awards will be given Monday, May 21, beginning at 8:30 a.m. If your child will be receiving an award, a note will be sent home by Thursday of this week.

Students have worked so hard this week, and I am very proud of them. They completed K-Prep tests during the mornings and revised their memoirs in the computer lab in the afternoons. When finished with their memoir revisions, students selected poems to type which they had written earlier in the year.

As the time draws near to state tests next week, we are using this time to review, practice, and discuss strategies students need to use when analyzing and responding to test questions. We have practiced identifying the best choice for introducing and closing a particular topic. We have reviewed the scoring criteria for On Demand Writing and students applied that criteria to evaluate their own response to an On Demand prompt. Using SPAF and a House Organizer, students have planned their response to a stand alone prompt. We will finish the week by analyzing a variety of situations and writing tasks so students will be prepared to do the same on their own next week.

On Thursday, sixth grade maroon students may wear jeans. This is a reward for our team winning the floor hockey tournament. There are two Spirit Days this week. As an incentive to “not flop” on testing, students may wear flip flops on Thursday. On Friday, students may “Put on their thinking caps,” and wear a hat all day.

Good Faith Effort signature sheets are due. These are explained in the newsletter that was sent home with students on Tuesday, May 1.

We continue our review of on-demand writing this week with The Lunchroom Murder crime scene to practice identifying evidence to include as support in an argument. We will also practice analyzing, planning, and drafting a response to a passage based prompt. Students are using SPAF to identify the situation, purpose, audience, and form required for a given writing prompt.

This Friday, April 27, is the last after-school dance of the year. Students need to be picked up in back of the middle school at 5:00.

Spring pictures or the money for them is due by this Friday, April 27.

I hope everyone had an enjoyable spring break and came back rested and ready to prepare for our state tests in three weeks. On Monday and Tuesday, students completed study of ten new cartoon vocabulary words. On Wednesday, they read a long passage about animals and answered twenty questions about the meaning of words in context in this passage. Thursday and Friday we will begin our On-Demand Writing Unit with a pre-test and power point presentation. Next week, we will explore how to present an argument by studying a drawing called, “The Lunchroom Murder.” Don’t miss it.

Mid-term reports went home Wednesday, 4-18-12 and spring pictures or the money for them are due 4-27-12.

Students have worked this week to complete a vocabulary packet in class. These sheets provide a review and additional practice for prefixes, suffixes, synonyms, antonyms, and homophones. Often, the simple mistakes students make in their writing are choosing the wrong word for a particular situation. Hopefully this vocabulary practice, some of it with a partner, will help them recognize the correct words to use in any given situation.

We have continued our vocabulary study using cartoons which depict the meaning of a group of ten words. Students fill out a graphic organizer to record the meaning of each word, its “sounds like” word, and the cartoon caption. They compose an original sentence for each word and then take a review quiz over the ten words. All work is done in class.

On Monday, after studying the criteria of the Kentucky Writing Scoring Rubric, students evaluated each others’ memoirs and assigned a score. On Tuesday, I modeled scoring a student memoir, pointing out strengths and weaknesses, for students to make final revisions to their pieces. Students then scored their own memoirs and explained why they gave themselves the scores they did.

The rest of the week will be devoted to Vocabulary Cartoons. Students will make notes about the meaning, a “sounds like” word associated with the vocabulary word, and a cartoon caption before composing their own original sentences using each word. Students will then complete a quiz over the ten vocabulary words in a lesson. Sentences are to be finished as homework if they are not completed in class.

Last week, students worked on a revision chart to help them recognize problems with their sentence beginnings, sentence lengths, and weak verbs in their memoir drafts. We spent two days in the computer lab to begin typing the second draft of their memoir with revisions.

This week, we will continue typing in the computer lab on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday in order to print out the second draft. We will return to the classroom on Thursday where students will peer conference and evaluate their memoir for a score before I do. There is no school on Friday.

On Monday, students completed their seven paragraphs of memories. Each paragraph is to tell the story of that memory and how it shows their special relationship with the subject of their memoir. On Tuesday, students composed the introduction and conclusion of their memoirs. Their introduction should show why the subject of their memoir is special and important to them. The conclusion should show their feelings and reflection upon this relationship today. We have scheduled computer lab time next week for students to type their memoirs after completing a Sentence Make-Over activity to revise their pieces.

The rest of this week will be spent examining reading passages containing a variety of vocabulary words for students to learn. As a class we will come up with a brief definition based upon how the word is used in the passage, then students will record a dictionary definition for each word. A multiple choice quiz over the featured vocabulary words will follow.