Theme

Today, students learned how to find the theme of a story. Please see the links below for the learning we did in class today, and note that there will be an assessment on Thursday on this skill.

Themes are NOT topics.

TOPIC EXAMPLES	THEME EXAMPLES
love	"Love can get someone through any trial."
family	"Family is the most important thing in life."
never give up	"Perseverance is the key to reaching your dreams."

Theme Lesson (I based my lesson off of this lesson! We had a great time throwing "snowballs"!)
Farmer Will Allen text
Notes:

Letter To Your 8th Grade Self

Each year, Silver Hills 6th graders write letters to themselves. In two years, when you are in 8th grade, we give them to your Language Arts teacher and they pass them back to you. It is one of the highlights of the 8th graders' year! You won't believe how much you've changed!

Today, our 6th graders wrote letters to themselves. See the requirements and some examples below. Students who didn't finish their letters took them home for homework. The latest they should be turned in is Monday, August 29.

Letter Requirements
Example 1
Example 2
Example 3

Success Strategies

As the week comes to a close, I wanted to share with you some of the strategies that we have implemented to help us have success academically, while improving our focus and attention.

1. Brain Breaks

Current research supports the need for students to rejuvenate their brains and bodies by moving in the
classroom.  This week we have played fun games such as "Don't Let Me Down" with beach balls and Cross Body Bean Bag (hand-eye coordination).

Click here for more information that supports brain breaks.

Ask your child how the brain breaks in class have helped them refocus their energy and attention on the day's lesson.

2. Mindful Minute

The students really enjoyed this new activity. By learning how to have mindful bodies and mindful listening, students' focus and attention was impacted for the better. Their challenge was to try a mindful minute outside of school without the use of the classroom chimes.

Additional video resources:
The "WHY" behind a mindful minute - from kids!
Mindful School - this is the video we used to learn about mindful bodies
Mindful Minute tips to practice anywhere.

Growth Mindset

This week in Language Arts, we worked with the idea of a growth mindset, what a growth mindset is, and how to go from a fixed to a growth mindset. We discussed the importance of accepting that failure is a part of life and what to do when things don't go the way we hope/expect.

Have you ever thougth about what it means to fail? Society paints failutre in a negative ligth, but that's only true if we don't learn from our failures and try again.

The purpose of learning about the growth mindset is to show that learning goes beyond the four walls of school and if we don't accept that we fail on a daily basis, we will never be true lifelong learners.

Knowing what to do when we have failed is a large part of the developmental process, and being able to make changes to avoid continuous failures is a skill that we will practice throughout the year.

It is my job as your child's teacher to be their coach, not their critic. It is my promise to help them navigate failures and come out on the other end as a well-rounded individual.

Please take a moment to view these videos about celebrating failure with your child.

Fail Harder
You Failed
Famous Failures

Growth Mindset Blog

Welcome to the 2016-2017 year!

Welcome STORM students! I am very excited for this school year! Bookmark this website so you can keep up to date on everything that is happening in our classroom. It will be a great resource for you to not only know what we are learning, but to find links to important documents, assignment information, and due dates.

Your child is about to embark on some of the most important years of their lives. In middle school, your child will grow socially and create academic habits that will set them up for success in high school.

Through my Language Arts class, I make it my mission to combine learning and growing in literacy with expanding students' social awareness and thinking about things on a global scale. I will work with your students to develop and understand a growth mindset that will encourage them to make mistakes. Through mistakes, we learn and understand how to progress for future learning. We will explore overarching concepts such as maturity, perception, self-awareness, and personal accountability. We will use these concepts to expand ourselves as readers and writers while thinking beyond ourselves.

I encourage you to work with me this year to make it a successful and enjoyable experience for your child. Let's get after it! GO STORM!

Back to School Book Recommendations

All the Answers by Kate Messner
Appropriate for ages 9+

What if your pencil had all the answers? Would you ace every test? Would you know what your teachers were thinking? When Ava Anderson finds a scratched up pencil, she doodles like she would with any other pencil. But when she writes a question in the margin of her math quiz, she hears a clear answer in a voice no one else seems to hear.

Diary of a 6th Grade Ninja (Series) by Marcus Emerson
Appropriate for ages 9+

My name is Chase Cooper, and I'm a 6th grade ninja. It's my first day at a different school and the only person I know is my cousin, Zoe (but she might be a little too cool for me). I was just another scrawny kid until a group of ninjas recruited me into their clan. It was a world of trouble I wasn't prepared for, which is why I kept this diary - to warn other kids about the danger of becoming a ninja.

How to Survive Middle School by Donna Gephart
Appropriate for ages 9+

Eleven-year-old David Greenberg dreams of becoming a YouTube sensation and spends all of his time making hilarious Top 6 1/2 lists and Talk Time videos. But before he can get famous, he has to figure out a way to deal with middle school.

Middle School is Worse Than Meatloaf by Jennifer Holm
Appropriate for ages 10+

Ginny has ten items on her big to-do list for seventh grade. None of them, however, include accidentally turning her hair pink. Or getting sent to detention for throwing frogs in class. Or losing the lead role in the ballet recital to her ex-best friend. Or the thousand other things that can go wrong between September and June. But it looks like it's shaping up to be that kind of year!

The Misfits (Series) by James Howe
Appropriate for ages 10+

Kids who get called the worst names oftentimes find each other. That's how it was with us. Skeezie Tookis, Addie Carle, Joe Bunch, and me. We call ourselves the Gang of Five but there are only four of us. We do it to keep people on their toes. Make 'em wonder. Or maybe we do it because we figure there's one more kid out there who's going to need a gang to be a part of. A misfit, like us.

Spy Factory: My School is a Spy Factory (Series) by Steven Stickler
Appropriate for ages 10+

Sixth-grader Nate Fischer never wanted to be a spy. But when a mysterious phone call lands him at a new school, he realizes that he doesn't have a choice: his new school is a spy factory. He barely has time to learn his locker combination before his first mission plunges him into danger. A sinister organization is trying to destroy his school and take over the world, and Nate has only a few hours to stop the evil plot.

Wonder by R.J. Palacio
Appropriate for ages 11+

I won't describe what I look like. Whatever you're thinking, it's probably worse.

August Pullman was born with a facial difference that, up until now, has prevented him from going to a mainstream school. Starting 5th grade at Beecher Prep, he wants nothing more than to be treated as an ordinary kid -- but his new classmates can't get past Auggie's extraordinary face.