January

The New Year of 2010 has gotten off to a great start! In science the students have published their own, very interesting comic strips of a rock's life. The illustrations are very impressive and the story lines are intriguing, we have very creative students.

The sixth graders will be responsible to do a science fair project this year. Since the beginning of the year, we have been getting familiar with the scientific method. The most recent lab students performed was to determine the most absorbant paper towel between three different popular brands.

In science, we continue perfecting basic skills using whole numbers, decimals, and fractions. We have also been learning the differences between our traditional decimal measurment units compared to metric units. The students have been doing hands-on activities becoming familiar with length, mass, and volume. The students learned how to find the volume of regular shaped objects by measuring, in centimeters, the length, width, and height of various regular shaped objects in the classroom. Then they determined the volume of irregular shaped objects, such as, marbles, pennies, and sea shells, using water displacement.



   
December

December was a very busy month. In science, continuing our earth science adventures, we ceated fossils out of paster paris. These fossils were painted festively to become, hopefully, a traditional Christmas decoration. Math and science mix well, creating the paster of paris mix we had to use ratios.

In math we learned about ratios. We also spent alot of time doing geometry, we found the area and the perimeter of squares, rectangles, parallelograms, and triangles. The students created beautiful Christmas trees, the ornaments all had to be certain geometric shapes, polygons, trapezoids, octogons, etc.

The students did a wonderful job at their Christmas Concert, we are all as proud of them as you are!

State Police Trooper Morales continues to comes in on Thurdays presenting the D.A.R.E. program. They watched a very effective video on the results of smoking and engaged in role playing activities to be able to resist the temptations of our society.



   
November

Our sixth grade mathematicians have been mastering decimals. They get a weekly workout with adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing decimals. The students also recieve a weekly word problem solving exercise.

This month they memorized the rounding poem -- Find your number, look right next door. Four or less, just ignore. Five or more, add one more. Any time your children go shopping with you, please have them practice rounding up your total purchases or involve them in estimating your total or even calculate your change. They would have the opportunity to see how what they are learning in school is relevant to our everyday lives.

We also learned about exponents. In the slideshow below, the students used little blocks to prove that four cubed was sixty-four. You needed sixty-four little blocks to create a 4 sided cube.



The monthly science theme is rocks. The students learned the difference between minerals and rocks. We are exploring the three types of rocks, igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic. We grew chemical rocks by dissolving epsom salts in water, then pouring our solution on black construction paper in a petri dish. In a day or two, when most of the water had evaporated, we had new cheimcal rocks.


State Police Trooper Morales comes in every Thurday presenting the D.A.R.E. program. Your students are learning why smoking cigarettes, taking harmful drugs, and drinking alcolhol is bad for their health. They are being empowered to stand up to peer pressure and say no when necessary. Thank you Trooper Morales!