We had so much fun representing Italy at Woodbury's Jog-A-Thon on Wednesday. Thank you to all of our amazing parent volunteers, cheerleaders, and donators! If you haven't donated yet, but would like to, please go to www.woodburyjogathon.com!
As we head off for our 3-week Spring Break, I wish you all safe travels and a lot of rest! I cannot believe that we will be in our last quarter of the year when we return. There is a lot of fun to come so keep your eyes open for updates coming your way! See you all on Monday, April 4! Announcements/Important Dates:
Monday, November 23, 2015: 6th grade awards ceremony at 8:15 a.m. in the MPR Tuesday, November 24, 2015: Unit Math Test Wednesday, November 25-Friday, November 27, 2015: Thanksgiving Break Monday, November 30, 2015: Back to school! Curriculum Updates: Reading: In RTI, students are reading various novels depending on their teacher, using the same reading comprehension and vocabulary skills. Depending on your child's RTI teacher, they might also be studying for WordMasters in early December. Math: We are studying ratios, rates, and unit rates. There is a unit test on Tuesday, 11/24/15. Students should be practicing each night through homework and other review activities. Examples and practice problems are posted on Google Classroom so that parents can get a glimpse of what we are doing in class. Social Studies: We are finishing our study of Ancient Egypt with the embalming of chicken legs. Students should be working on their Ancient Egypt Big Book pieces a little bit at a time each night. They will be compiled on Tuesday, 11/24/15 in class. Science: We finished our chs. 4-5 unit last week and have begun our chapter 6 unit on earthquakes this week. The next test will only cover information on earthquakes, but there will be no notecards permitted for use on the test. Encourage your child to read the lessons throughout the week, a little bit at a time, rather than "cramming" just before the test. Writing: We are working on Egypt research reports. This week, we'll focus on our thesis statements, introductions, and conclusions. Grammar/Spelling: We are continuing to review all that we've already studied in grammar and spelling, and have begun our unit on irregular verbs. Other: It is extremely important for students in sixth grade to take initiative in their work, and to ask questions! Additionally, please don't forget that each Thursday, students have an assignment called their "conduit confirmation" that they submit through Google Classroom. I highly recommend that parents sit with their child to go over their work in their conduit as they reflect on their week at school. It is an effective way to see what and how your child is doing in school, and gives you a great way to begin a conversation! A note from Miss Dimitruk: It's been a great pleasure to be your child's teacher thus far, and in the spirit of Thanksgiving, thank you for all of the work that you do at home with each of your children. It's a tireless job, and I am grateful for the opportunity I have to spend my days with these incredible students. It truly is one of my greatest honors. I wish you all a lovely Thanksgiving next week, and hope that it is well spent with family and friends and delicious meals! We are excited for our annual "Fall Fun Day" parade coming up on Friday, October 30th. As you prepare for the parade, please remember our Woodbury guidelines for this day:
A week of inspirational math:We started our "week of inspirational math" this morning, and we had so much fun coming up with ways to get the numbers 1-20 using only four 4s, along with any mathematical operation! Students have an optional extra credit challenge this week (due Friday 10/16) to find a way to get the number 14 and the number 18 using their four 4s. Updates!You will notice a slight change to the homework on our website. It will allow me to make changes no matter where I am after school, if need be! :) The color coding of assignments will still be the same. I hope that it makes for a more stream-lined process. The link to the math textbook & helpful videos organized by skill will also be linked on the homework each night.
Each week, a team of students will work to update our blog. Stay tuned for more details so that you know when to check it out!
I'm so glad to be back with you all, and hope that your breaks were amazing! Let's work hard and have some fun this quarter. L.E.A.D. On, Miss Dimitruk Dear Parents and Students, It has been another busy and fun week in 6th grade, and there is a lot of information to share with you! Please check our blog frequently, but I will send an email with updates when I add to it. Pretty soon, our very own 6th graders will be blog contributors as well! Updates: Blog: In lieu of sending a newsletter, I will be updating parents through this blog. It's something new, but it's a little easier to manage and will allow you to easily search information you may have missed, or want to see again. Very soon, students will be writing blog posts about what we are doing in class, and we will certainly include pictures and activities to give you a glimpse into our daily life in 6th grade! Conduit Confirmation: Students practiced doing their weekly conduit confirmation form online. It is best if parents sit with their child on Thursdays to review their child's assignments and behavior for the week. I will be able to see if there are questions that students have on areas in which they'd like to improve. Theses forms will be posted each Thursday on our Google Classroom. The students can type in their scores, their comments, and turn it in within a few minutes! Parent Volunteers: If you have filled out the parent volunteer form, thank you! I am so excited to have your help this year. If you haven't heard from me yet, please know that I'm still working on the schedule and will contact you soon. If you have not filled out the form but still want to volunteer, please click here to submit it before this weekend! ACE Classes: These are now open for registration! Click here to read about the various classes and sign up! Woodbury Software: We have amazing software resources at Woodbury! Click here to read all about them, the ways that they can be used at home, and for help with log-in information! Important Upcoming Dates: Monday, August 10th: School Picture Day! Thursday, August 20th: 6th grade field trip to the La Brea Tar Pits! Friday, August 21st: PTA Ice Cream Social & Movie Night August 27th - September 4th: Fall Parent-Student-Teacher Conferences (more info coming soon!) The Fun We've Had This Week: We work really hard, we promise! But, we also have a lot of fun while learning. This week, we started the D.A.R.E. program with Officer Aragon, took our first math test, started on our Ancient Civilizations Big Books, and most recently, played the first annual round of The Hunter Games. It was a social studies lesson turned P.E. that is going to continue tomorrow! We joined together with Mr. Gray's 6th grade class on the treacherous field of Woodbury. Students were positioned at "villages" as their starting places and had to compete to get water from our "flowing river," "food" after they expended enough energy, and eventually create shelters. Tomorrow, we'll continue the fun with more complexities that will tie into our study of the start of early civilizations. Check out a sneak peak video & additional photos below: Throughout the year, we'll have blog entries by the real 6th grade experts: The Sixth Graders, themselves. Here's our first post from one of our very own!
The first few weeks of sixth grade have been a blast! We have done so many things, because of Miss Dimitruk’s great time management. It is true, it is like she can predict the future. When she says we will finish math at 9:45 we finish at 9:45. Also for a while we have been working on our broken pots. We painted pots with caveman paintings and patterns, but the next week we came back from lunch, and they were all broken. Now we are going through the journey of putting them back together. One of our first homework assignments were to make and color the pieces of our dodecahedrons, then the next day we put them together in class. Now they are hanging from the ceiling and many of them are lopsided. We just started DARE this week, and so far we have seen some gross pictures, but have also learned some disappointing news. We found out that we are not allowed to ride any motorized scooters or skateboards until we get a driver's license. It brought up so many questions for our officer. This week we went through part one and two of The Hunter Games. In part one we would pretend that we were in the early times and we had to go find food and water, plus build our own miniature shelter out of paper and toothpicks. Then part two we would work together with our table groups and find food and water, but much larger portions so we could feed everyone. After we found our food and water we had to take turns each drawing a line, and building a model of our house on paper. It was hard, because everyone had different ideas so it looked nothing like a house. Also the people who cooperated the best got upgrades. For example, instead of using a spoon to get water, you could use a cup. It was such a fun experience. These first few weeks of sixth grade have been amazing, and we have already learned so much. We can’t wait to see what else we will be doing the rest of this year! ~L. What an incredible group of students!
We had so much fun already today, and the day flew right by us. These 6th graders are ready to take on the world, and I can't wait to watch their success. We got ourselves organized with our supplies this morning, did a classroom tour, built towers out of marshmallows and spaghetti noodles, did some text book scavenger hunts, and reviewed the 6th grade standards for success. We began to talk about our value of the year which is having a Positive Mental Attitude (PMA) at all times. It's amazing what we can accomplish together, and how much fun we will have when we keep this in mind along with our 6 other values: perseverance, compassion, cooperation, initiative, integrity, and respect. 6th graders, I hope you know how much I love being your teacher already and I can't wait for you to come back tomorrow! See you in the morning! ~Miss Dimitruk When you do the right thing, even when no one is looking, you can change the world. It's a lesson that I repeat every year, to all 300+ students that I've taught thus far, and I still believe that it's true. This past year, this simple truth became a reality to my 33 sixth graders and me in a way that I could have never imagined. In April this year (2015), I heard a story on the news about a Seattle-based CEO named Dan Price who was concerned about his employees' well-being, so he decided to do something about it. He lowered his own salary in order to implement a minimum $70,000 salary for each person at his company. I happened to be working on lesson plans when I came across the story, and noticed that it was time that students would be learning to write business letters. I was also very thankful to have such a positive current event to share with my students. When I shared the story about Mr. Price, and told the students that I thought it'd be fun to send him letters, they all agreed! We were impressed with his selfless decision, and thought his generosity was a perfect example of the values that we try to instill in our students here at Woodbury. In my wildest dreams, I thought it would have been the coolest to get a letter back from Mr. Price, or maybe even have him Skype in to chat with the kids for a few minutes. A few weeks later, Mr. Battenfield alerted me that NBC Nightly News had heard about our letters and wanted to interview us. When he told me, my initial reaction was, "Why??" I didn't really think we had done anything out of the ordinary, and I certainly didn't have a clue what was coming! On Monday, May 18th, we received quite the surprise. After the NBC crew had filmed for a while, they asked me to go to the front of the room so that they could get some wide angle shots. Not realizing that it was a ploy to get me up front, I obliged, began a quick grammar review, and just moments later, Dan Price walked in and introduced himself! He spent the next hour or so talking to the students, inspiring them to do the right thing, and to take risks and work hard. He gave them T-Shirts from his company, Gravity Payments, and then told them that if they continue to write to him once each year, he's going to set aside a $1,000 scholarship for college for each student. Though it's been a couple of months since his visit, the reality of this surprise is still sinking in for me. I can't thank Dan Price enough for the gifts that he gave to us all. We are so thankful that we got to meet him, and that he would come all the way down to Orange County to spend time with us at Woodbury. Dan, you definitely have fans in Irvine! If you haven't had the chance to see the NBC story, you can watch it here. |
AuthorsMiss Dimitruk & her 6th Graders Archives
March 2016
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