Good morning! Happy Sunday! I hope everyone is enjoying a wonderful day! This is the last week of the St. Lucy Food Pantry collection and Rm. 9 has one donation so far. Please send in boxed cereal/oatmeal (6th grade) this week to support the food drive.  7th grade is assigned plastic jars of fruit, such as mandarin oranges, pears, peaches, or mixed fruit. 

 

 

Computer Use: Lent this year in Rm. 9, and others, will be an opportunity for a reset in kindness and a focus in doing the best we can to be forthright and honest people, and doing the right thing because it is the right thing to do. Several people in the class received yellow behavior slips for using their computers for non-academic activities during school hours.  I am asking that you help remind your children that unless a teacher tells you that you can play a computer game on your school computer on the school network, you can't.  Unless a teacher directs you to a specific website, you can't go to random other websites. Students are creating unkind documents about people or activities and sharing the docs with others - all on a (loaned) school computer on a school network during school time.  It is regrettable that many students know to quickly wipe their histories when they know we have had poor choices reported to us and now have to check the history. It's also regrettable that students report "boredom" as the reason why they choose to do the wrong thing. That makes me worry. It's something we need to fix that bright and lively kids are turning to random internet sites for entertainment. Please let's put a stop to this. The first offense is a yellow behavior slip, the next offense will be having the computer taken away for an unspecified time (Mrs. Davis has suggested a month). With your help, we will be able to educate our 6th graders on becoming more responsible and accountable for their actions -- which will serve them well in the future as well as in the 6th grade.  If you have any questions, please let me know.

 

Academic News: LA 6 will take the Part 3 Verbs quiz 4.10-4.16 on Thursday. For extra credit, the Verb Challenge on pg. 114 may be submitted. Students are writing a parental persuasion piece and with computer usage restrictions (from me) this will be completed at home, along with the Advertisements project. I wish that we were able to work on these assignments in class, but it's really difficult to monitor 24 screens and teach at the same time. We will plan the work on paper/graphic organizers to expedite the process at home. Reading 6 will begin the second half of our Jackie Robinson book. Here is a short summary of the book for conversation starters with your 6th grader: Shirley Temple Wong sails from China to America with a heart full of dreams. Her new home is Brooklyn, New York. America is indeed a land full of wonders, but Shirley doesn't know any English, so it's hard to make friends. Then a miracle happens: baseball! It's 1947, and Jackie Robinson, star of the Brooklyn Dodgers, is a superstar. Suddenly Shirley is playing stickball with her class and following Jackie as he leads the Brooklyn Dodgers to victory after victory.

With her hero smashing assumptions and records on the ball field, Shirley begins to feel that America is truly the land of opportunity—and perhaps has also become her real home. Mrs. Davis generously funded an extraordinary purchase of $1200 of books for 6th and 7th grade, and each student has their own school copy of the book, so we are all set with some great things to read for the rest of the year and into 7th grade! Vocabulary in Action: We will also be taking a break from Vocab in Action for all but a few students, and moving to individualized word study on Wednesdays and Fridays. Thursdays we will continue with Blessed Reading Time. Religion 6 the students will take home their Chapter 12 Study Guide on Tuesday and we will take the test on Thursday.

Reading 7 will have time in class this week to write and edit their expository article on Perry's demands on Japan and begin reading Zero Tolerance by Claudia Mills. Summary from Google Books for conversation starters: Seventh-grader Sierra Shepard has always been the perfect student, so when she sees that she accidentally brought her mother's lunch bag to school, including a paring knife, she immediately turns in the knife at the school office. Much to her surprise, her beloved principal places her in in-school suspension and sets a hearing for her expulsion, citing the school's ironclad no weapons policy. While there, Sierra spends time with Luke, a boy who's known as a troublemaker, and discovers that he's not the person she assumed he would be--and that the lines between good and bad aren't as clear as she once thought. Claudia Mills brings another compelling school story to life with Zero Tolerance. https://youtu.be/elOSav5HJfs   is a fun book trailer to preview the book. 

We will read this book between now and March 11, and complete a great autobiography picture book project from Talkin' About Bessie by Nikki Grimes. https://www.nikkigrimes.com/books/bktalk.html from her website.  Then will will begin The Bronze Bow by Elizabeth George Speare until April 13th. Bronze Bow is a longer read, and there is a free YouTube audiobook

https://youtu.be/jgQkjTAmTfw for The Bronze Bow.

 

Best wishes for a calm and prayerful week as we begin the Lenten season. 

 

Mrs. Morgan