Welcome back students and parents! Although it is a short week, we still have a lot of learning to do. We're jumping right back in. Here is a brief look at what is happening.

Parent Information for the Week of January 5-7
All week we will be continuing to read Bud, Not Buddy. We are focusing our attention on plot, conflict, and themes. In addition, we will be working in new centers. I have designed reading, writing, and conventions (grammar) focus groups that will be a great review. The groups also will cover new material.

Reading Group: This group will be choosing one of two fictional stories to read. They will be graded on their ability to analyze, critique, and respond to the story. The concepts being worked with are genre, type of literature, stages of plot, figurative language, sensory details, imagery, tone, mood, vocabulary, theme, and ability to evaluate the work with personal opinions. They will have a choice of producing a poster, flipbook, or mobile.

Writing Group: This group will produce a persuasive letter/essay based on one of four real-life scenarios. They will be graded on their ability to write with logical ideas (with quantity and quality), organization, and voice.

Conventions Group: This group will practice mulitple grammar concepts using technology in the classroom. Groups will be using the Mimio board and the netbooks to complete various activities. Concepts being covered are dependent and independent clauses, subordinating conjunctions, direct and indirect objects, predicate nouns and predicate adjectives, parts of speech, revision, etc.

VERY IMPORTANT!
According to the Georgia Performance Standards, our students are required to read 25 books or approximately one million words during sixth grade! I have many students who have been reading diligently to meet this goal, but not nearly as many as I would like to see. Please make sure your child is reading daily. It doesn't matter what it is! It could be a magazine, a novel, an internet article, the newspaper, etc. Please provide your child with these opporutunities. The next benchmark date is set for January 28; each student should have 1500 pages read by this date.

Congratulations to our classroom Spelling Bee winners who will represent us in our school competition. The winners are Shelley Hood, Camaren Stroud, and Sandarius Parks. Thanks also to those who participated in the classroom bee. I am so proud of you all!

Our next writing prompt will be on January 21. Students will be writing a persuasive essay and will be graded on ideas, organization, and voice.

Please check back for more information later! Contact me with any questions or concerns at 770-229-3760 or shelley.worley@gscs.org .