Let the creativity flow!

Team Saratoga has been quite busy taking what we have been learning in class and applying it in creative ways.

After studying continental drift and plate tectonics, we predicted what the Earth would look like in 250 million years. We wrote original stories about our predictions, as well as designed what a map of the world might look like so far into the future. Our review of the writing process and 6+1 Traits of writing really helped everyone with the details of their stories. We are concentrating on 'showing' not 'telling' our stories, and the students are working hard to do this.

Rocks, rocks, and more rocks! We became geologists this week and examined igneous and metamorphic rocks. "Now we know that metamorphic rocks can be made up of both sedimentary and igneous rocks," informed Draven B. Also, Jared shared, "Igneous rocks are formed with extreme heat and pressure." Next week, time to analyze sand!

Monster Math came to Team Saratoga. After evaluating and renaming expressions, students took their answers and created a 'monster' from the mystery numbers. We are starting to wonder what other 'spooky' operations await us in Math class--variables and distributive property.

Finally a Full Week!

Thank you to all the parents and families that made it to last week's Open House.  We really enjoyed meeting the authors of our first homework assignment "Million Words or Less".

In Language Arts students are have tackled their first story prompt for "Tony and the Snark" and continue to 'sail' through our Daily Edits.  We have begun to analyze types of sentences and practice our prewriting techniques.  Next week the creativity will begin to flow as we craft our first creative writing assignment.

Reviewing basic numeration items at the start of the year is a comfortable way to ease back in to math.  Now that we're wrapping that up, the classes will be moving on to variables, expressions, and equations.  You will probably notice a bit more practice work in the upcoming weeks.

Turbulent times abound in science with the study of plate tectonics, convergent boundaries, divergent boundaries, and transform faults.  This has some of our students shaking as the classes are introduced to many new vocabulary words and an abundance of new concepts.  Many of your children have been enthusiastically sharing rock adventures and layer sightings, as well as information they already know from the Science Channels! Next week watch for some extra credit work coming home in the way of a volcano project!

As adults, we all have stressors in our lives, but sometimes forget that our children do too.  A good discussion in Wellness led us to a fairly comprehensive list of those stressors.  Now we're working on a plan to work through them.  Two interesting points: The number one stressor on Team Saratoga is too many activities during the week.  Secondly, the students had no problem generating a list of thirty negative feelings; they did, however, have a hard time coming up with ten good feelings.

What a Week!

It is official!  The school year has truly begun.  After the holiday weekend, students were ready to roll up their sleeves and really get to work.  In Language Arts we have organized our binders, been introduced to the first reading skill from the anthology, reviewed and discussed the writing process, and taken our first spelling test.  In Social Studies  we plunged into map skills by reviewing cardinal directions and then creating original compass roses highlighting something unique about each of the students.  We also took some time to commemorate the 10th anniversary of 9-11 by discussing the many freedoms that our country has to offer and then wrote original poems  highlighting what we hold important to each of us.

This week in Math students explored differences between the place and the value of a digit.  We found it is not so easy to express math thoughts in words ~ that will  our goal all year!  We also practiced a variety of problem-solving strategies and learned how to explain what we did.  Math and Wellness were combined when we evaluated 'how we are smart' by first completing a survey and then graphing the results.  Look forward to seeing these at Open House.

Let the Year Begin!

Welcome back!  We hope everyone has enjoyed their summer and is ready to get to work in 6th grade. The walls may have been bare on the first day, but soon will be filled with the getting-to-know-you activities we have been using to help us to get to know each other---from interest surveys to poetry to graphs.  These activities have also helped us get back into the 'swing of things' by practicing procedures and getting used to the organization of the classroom.   Please check out the first video highlighting the busy students of Team Saratoga.

Please watch the blog for a weekly update of classroom happenings.  We are so excited to spend the year with our new 6th graders as they continue to discover their potential.