Message sent 11/22/15 to families and students whose email addresses are in Synergy.
Hello sixth grade families,
Happy Thanksgiving week! A note about absences, grades, fractions, and after school help...
ABSENCES: If a student is traveling or otherwise gone this week (or for ANY planned absence), PLEASE let Sheli in the office know ahead of time ([email protected] or 503-916-5356). It is really difficult and time-consuming for her to call families to find out what is going on to make sure students are safe. It is not sufficient to have a kid tell teachers or even for a parent to email teachers.
GRADES: Math grades are up to date, but at the moment they only really tell you about effort, particularly on homework. EVERY score in there so far was graded for effort, so the grade has been entirely under each student's control. Anything less than 100% indicates missing work. If you click on "Grade Book" in Synergy (aka ParentVue/StudentVue) and select Math 6 and then Assignment View, you can see what is missing (anything with a 0 score; "absent" means it's OK that it's missing, although it's certainly nice if they do it anyway). Please do look, and if your child has a 100%, please congratulate them and let them know you appreciate their organization, responsibility, and effort! If they do NOT have 100%, maybe it's time for some problem-solving around one of these areas. Math homework is usually pretty short, so please help students keep up with it even on days they have other assignments due, or at the very least, help them remember to catch up as soon as possible.
FRACTIONS: If you've been helping with homework, you know we're working on fractions. According to our state standards, everything about fractions and mixed numbers except for division of fractions by fractions is actually elementary school work, so we can't spend too much time on equivalent fractions, adding, subtracting, and multiplying. Realistically, though, lots of students needed more time in sixth grade reviewing or learning these. After lots of classwork and homework, students have now taken two "feedback quizzes" to get comments on how they are understanding fraction and mixed number addition, subtraction, and multiplication. These have problems that are similar to those they can expect on a unit test in December. The addition/subtraction one was returned to them last week and they revised in class, if necessary. They will get the multiplication one back with comments on Monday or Tuesday this week, but revisions on that will be homework. If a student loses a printout of either of these, they (or an adult) can ask me for another copy by email. http://juliewright.weebly.com/class-activities-blog/fractions-online-activities has some online activities that might help at home or after school. Definitely the most common problem students have with multiplication is with mixed numbers: for instance, 1 1/2 x 2 3/4 would have to be changed into 3/2 x 11/4 if one wants to get the whole product by multiplying numerators and denominators. (The correct answer is 33/8, or 4 1/8.)
AFTER SCHOOL HELP: I am really hoping to see lots of kids in my room on Monday right after school!!! We can make so much progress! Hopefully you all saw the information about after school help which was in the Scroll email. Students should definitely know all about it too, since the information's been in the morning Bulletin for many days, and is also posted outside multiple classrooms, including mine; also, I often remind them in class. I updated my website information too, and changed the Math 6 "Homework" page to be titled "Homework and Support", so it's easier to find.
I hope that was helpful. As usual, please let me know if you have other questions or concerns.
Julie Wright
Hello sixth grade families,
Happy Thanksgiving week! A note about absences, grades, fractions, and after school help...
ABSENCES: If a student is traveling or otherwise gone this week (or for ANY planned absence), PLEASE let Sheli in the office know ahead of time ([email protected] or 503-916-5356). It is really difficult and time-consuming for her to call families to find out what is going on to make sure students are safe. It is not sufficient to have a kid tell teachers or even for a parent to email teachers.
GRADES: Math grades are up to date, but at the moment they only really tell you about effort, particularly on homework. EVERY score in there so far was graded for effort, so the grade has been entirely under each student's control. Anything less than 100% indicates missing work. If you click on "Grade Book" in Synergy (aka ParentVue/StudentVue) and select Math 6 and then Assignment View, you can see what is missing (anything with a 0 score; "absent" means it's OK that it's missing, although it's certainly nice if they do it anyway). Please do look, and if your child has a 100%, please congratulate them and let them know you appreciate their organization, responsibility, and effort! If they do NOT have 100%, maybe it's time for some problem-solving around one of these areas. Math homework is usually pretty short, so please help students keep up with it even on days they have other assignments due, or at the very least, help them remember to catch up as soon as possible.
FRACTIONS: If you've been helping with homework, you know we're working on fractions. According to our state standards, everything about fractions and mixed numbers except for division of fractions by fractions is actually elementary school work, so we can't spend too much time on equivalent fractions, adding, subtracting, and multiplying. Realistically, though, lots of students needed more time in sixth grade reviewing or learning these. After lots of classwork and homework, students have now taken two "feedback quizzes" to get comments on how they are understanding fraction and mixed number addition, subtraction, and multiplication. These have problems that are similar to those they can expect on a unit test in December. The addition/subtraction one was returned to them last week and they revised in class, if necessary. They will get the multiplication one back with comments on Monday or Tuesday this week, but revisions on that will be homework. If a student loses a printout of either of these, they (or an adult) can ask me for another copy by email. http://juliewright.weebly.com/class-activities-blog/fractions-online-activities has some online activities that might help at home or after school. Definitely the most common problem students have with multiplication is with mixed numbers: for instance, 1 1/2 x 2 3/4 would have to be changed into 3/2 x 11/4 if one wants to get the whole product by multiplying numerators and denominators. (The correct answer is 33/8, or 4 1/8.)
AFTER SCHOOL HELP: I am really hoping to see lots of kids in my room on Monday right after school!!! We can make so much progress! Hopefully you all saw the information about after school help which was in the Scroll email. Students should definitely know all about it too, since the information's been in the morning Bulletin for many days, and is also posted outside multiple classrooms, including mine; also, I often remind them in class. I updated my website information too, and changed the Math 6 "Homework" page to be titled "Homework and Support", so it's easier to find.
I hope that was helpful. As usual, please let me know if you have other questions or concerns.
Julie Wright