Mr. Conte's Grade 6 Class: Wednesday, September 18th

Good afternoon everyone!

I hope you are all enjoying this gorgeous weather! I wish it had been this nice on the weekend instead of all that rain.

The workload in Grade 6 is beginning to pick up. Students will have homework every day in math and now in novel study as well. We will do our best to complete work during school, but where it is not possible, it will go home.

A few quick reminders:

· Tomorrow is a Day 6 (students will need their gym clothes as they have gym).

· For anyone who ordered Hot Lunch, payments were due on the 13^thof September.

· Science Fair money ($15) due this last Monday (letter must be signed, and shoeboxes brought in).

· The hot lunch site is open for the month of October and will close on Wednesday, September 25^that 3:00 p.m. The special for October will be pancakes with vanilla cream and syrup (optional).

· Fall Fundraiser forms were due today for those participating in the events next week. Each event is $2.

· Forms were sent home for our golf trip coming up on October 2^ndand are due back this Friday (this fee is covered by the athletic fees paid).

Inquiry into Math – We started the day by taking up our math homework from yesterday and reviewing the concepts of squares and square roots. For example, the square root of 49 is 7 since 7 x 7 is 49. But for a number like the square root of 56, how do we find it? We know that 7²is 49 and 8²is 64. Therefore, the square root of 56 is between 7 & 8!

Inquiry into Language – Then, we started talking about idioms. An idiom is a literary device that uses figurative language to express meaning (not direct). For example, raining cats and dogs. It does not refer to actual cats and dogs, but more the meaning behind this (i.e. raining really hard).

Music – Then, we had music with Mr. Oliver, which you can read about on his blog (https://mrolivermusicclass.blogspot.com).

French – Right after music, we had French with Mme. Stella, which you can read about on her blog (https://stjudesfrench-stella.blogspot.com).

Inquiry into Energy – Today, we looked at troubleshooting electrical issues. There are many reasons why electrical appliances may not work. For example, if both wires are not connected back to the battery, the circuit is broken and cannot work. Many issues in electricity will occur when the energy is not given a proper path to flow in. Students were given 6 problems to solve and discover why they were not working. After this, they had to solve one last issue and write a letter explaining why there was a problem with the lamp and how to go about resolving it.

Inquiry into Language – We started by reviewing the differences between sentences and phrases. A sentence expresses a complete thought while a phrase does not. A sentence has a subject and a predicate while a phrase has either one or neither. A subject is the who or what of a sentence, but the predicate is what the subject is doing or what the subject is. After we did this, we moved on to novel study.

This afternoon, students worked on their first literature circle role for chapter 1. We will be sitting with our groups discussing the first chapter tomorrow.

The roles are: discussion director, literary luminary, connector, illustrator/mapper, and word wizard.

1. The discussion director comes up with insightful questions that will fuel discussion in the group.

2. The literary luminary chooses important passages for the group to read and discuss.

3. The connector makes connections between their own lives and the book (i.e. movies, other books they’ve read, real events, the current UOI, etc.)

4. The illustrator/mapper creates an illustration (i.e. comic, picture, mind map, etc.) based on what they felt during the chapter for the group to discuss.

5. The word wizard chooses 3 words that were interesting or new for everyone to discuss as a group.

Once students were finished their role, they were beginning to read chapter 2.

Inquiry into Math – To review from yesterday…

We then reviewed a few terms: dividend– the number being divided, divisor– the number we divide by, and quotient– the final answer.

When the divisor and quotient are the same, the original dividend is a square number. This means that the number is multiplied by itself to receive an answer: 5 x 5 = 5²= 25

We can show this by drawing a square. The side lengths are equal and when multiplying the numbers, we receive an answer in square units (___ squared).

As with all operations, squaring numbers has an inverse operation. The opposite is taking the square root. That is when we ask the question, “What number multiplied by itself is equal to this number?”

Today, we played a matching activity to match square roots and squares as a group and then another individual activity. After this, students were given time to work on their homework.