January 9

Hello Otter Families,

We are now one week into 2011. The kids have done a surprisingly good job of picking up where we left off in December. There were a lot of sleepy kids and it was a little rough on Monday, but the rest of the week went pretty smoothly. Hopefully you all had a relaxing time with family and friends during the holiday.

In previous posts I mentioned that our field trip to the Rosicrucian Museum was scheduled for January 20. As it turns out, I was a week off and our trip will be on January 27th. We will need several chaperones that day. If you are interested in chaperoning, please sign up on our wikispaces page.

In Social Studies we are continuing our study of Egypt. All students should be working on their projects at home at this time. The due date is Wednesday, January 19th, but students who bring in their project on Tuesday, January 18th will earn extra credit. Egypt projects will be a major grade and will be included in the second quarter report card. This week, I will also collect and grade the Social Studies notebooks. This will also be an important grade as there are many homework assignments that have been included in the notebook.

In math, we have just finished the chapter on number concepts (fractions and decimals). Last Friday's quiz covered decimal operations, metric conversion, and algebraic equations with decimals. Current quiz grades are now posted on Powerschool. This week, we will prepare for the second quarter district-wide benchmark exam, which the kids will take at the end of the week.

On Friday, we will be treated to our second Art Vistas lesson. We will study Egyptian art in connection with our Social Studies unit. We could use several adult hands to help us with the hands-on project. If you are available after 1:00, please join us. You can sign up on our wikispaces page.

Don't forget that next Monday is Martin Luther King's birthday. It is a day-off from school.

Egypt Night is scheduled for Tuesday, February 1. This is an open house event, where students will showcase their fabulous Egypt Projects. It is a fun night where you can see what the kids have done as well as an opportunity to socialize with other sixth grade families. We will definitely need volunteers to help with set-up and clean-up. Your child will bring home a flyer soon with more information.

As always, thanks for all of your support.

Mrs. Shimamoto