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Ms.

Huys Stellar Sixes


Welcome Back
I hope you all had an enjoyable and restful winter holiday. I very much enjoyed spending time with friends and family over the break and generally relaxing. As we launch into the new year, and the second part of grade 6, your child will need to continue to take on more responsibility for their own learning. They are encouraged to ask questions, seek additional help and complete all assigned tasks both in class and at home. We have been studying Canadas First Nations and their contributions to Canadian culture. Your child should now have a fair bit of general background information to guide them in their research project. The students will be completing a research project, on a native group or individual tribe. They can choose to work individually or with a partner. An outline of this research project has been given to each student, along with deadlines to assist them in organizing their time and ensuring completion of the project. This is an inquiry based project, meaning that the students have been given guidelines to follow but I am open to making accommodations based on individual student interest. Todays kids have a world of infor-

January 2014

Social Studies
mation available at their fingertips. This project will help them to determine what information is relevant, which websites are credible, how to go about researching, how to communicate their learning and opinions, and of course, how to site their sources. It is imperative that kids learn how to locate, evaluate and communicate information. So as you support your child with this project, remember that the research process is just as important as the final project. Most of the work will be done at school, but there will be times when the kids may have to do some work at home to meet the deadlines.

Ma th News
We are launching into a unit on measurement. The kids need to be able to measure accurately (linear, mass, volume) and convert metric measurements (cm to m, l to ml, etc.) They also need to be able to find the area of squares, rectangles, triangles and parallelograms. We will learn how to find the surface area of 3D shapes. Students will be engaged in a variety of problem solving situations to help them develop an understanding of measurement and how it is used in a variety of situations. Many of the planned activities also lend themselves to integrating data management concepts as well as cycling back through place value, fractional sense and patterning throughout this unit.

Speeches
Students will be writing and presenting speeches this month. Speech competition will be in February.

Claymation Movies
We have been working on short Claymation movies of a Creation story. Stay tuned for our Premiere Event of these stellar short films.

Emails
If you havent given me your email please send it to me at huys_bernadette@durham.edu.o n.ca

Class DOJO is an online system that we use in room 205 to acknowledge positive behaviours, and to record negative choices. Each day the kids can earn DOJO points. As a parent you can sign in and see your childs points. As a class, we have decided that if our monthly positives are 92% or more we will have a celebration. We also agreed that if someones positives were less than 50% they would be excluded from the celebration. Up until now, the focus has really been on promoting positive behaviour choices. This will, of course, continue to be my focus, however, negative dojos will also be used more often for repeated negative choices. All students know the expectations and we cannot tolerate choices that disrupt the learning environment. If your child receives a negative dojo, you can be certain that the behaviour occurred more then once that day. Check out the site. If you need a parent code, just email me or put a note in the agenda.

January 7Oshawa General Players visit Attersley January 9Pita Day January 13Miss Drouin from Australia starts her Exchange Year here. Ms. Robertson is off to Australia January 16Pizza Day January 23Pita Day January 26Oshawa Generals GameChoir sings at GM Centre January 30Pizza Day Calendar of Events January 31PA Day February 10 Social Studies Research Project due

Stellar Sixes Website


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Check it out for news. Check it out for tips and links to support your child.

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