Mrs. Knoedler’s 6th
Grade Classroom Newsletter
December 4, 2015
Dear Families,
Wow!
The room is filled with stunning Ancient Egypt projects. I am very impressed with everyone’s
creativity. Students presented their projects
to other classrooms this afternoon. They
became the teachers. This is an
excellent introduction to our information
writing genre that we will begin next week.
Next week we will have the pre-assessment on Thursday and Friday, if
needed. Students are researching
information for their pre-assessment and may bookmark internet sites or take
notes on Google docs, but students should not begin writing their piece.
In Literacy we are continuing to
read Touching Spirit Bear by
Ben Mikaelsen. Students are assigned
chapters to read and questions to answer.
Some questions ask students to think deeply about their reading, give
their opinion and support their opinion with evidence from the text. Often it takes several sentences to
thoughtfully answer the questions.
In math, we are working on finding
fractions, creating decimals by dividing the numerator by the denominator, and
then multiplying the decimal to determine the percent. We are also working of determining “how many”
a percent equals. For example, if I have
532 M+M’s, how many is 60%? First I
convert the percent to a decimal by dividing it by 100. That gives me .60. Next I multiply .60 by 532. I do this because 532 is my whole or total or
my denominator. The unknown is the
numerator. The unknown divided by 532
equals .60 If I know the quotient and
the divisor, I can multiply them to determine the unknown or the numerator or
the dividend because multiplication checks division. While students may do some of this problem
solving mentally, they still need to be able to explain their thinking. 532
X .60 = 319.2. 319.2 M + M’s.
There is a Math POW that is due
Wednesday December 9th, called More Fraction, Decimal, and % Work
(Clifford and the Civil War).
Have a great weekend. Ellen
