Today the students participated in Reader’s Theater with “The Lorax”. They did a great job of adding tone and mood to their different parts! Afterwards, we watched a bit of the original cartoon movie based on the book, and they did some comparing and contrasting between the book and the movie. For their exit ticket, the students were asked to write what they thought the message of “The Lorax” was, and they had some great responses ranging from comments on deforestation to taking care of what you already have. Such a fun class!

Oh, no! My classroom library is looking REALLY sparse! Over 40 books are gone! I have some new books I would love to put out, but I can’t do that until we figure out what happened to these missing books! As we are nearing the end of the school year (believe it or not), these books need to be found and returned immediately. With your student, please check in your home, in their room, in their book bags, etc. to find these books! Also, expect to see citation notices come home for those books that were signed out but never returned. Thank you for helping to keep the classroom library full and available!

Stargirl

The Tapper Twins Go to War

National Geographic Ultimate Weird But True

Absolutely Almost

Goosebumps Revenge of the Lawn Gnomes

Goosebumps Monster Blood

Goosebumps Dead House

Goosebumps Ghost Beach

All Fall Down

Guts and Glory

The Honest Truth

Deep Blue

The Meaning of Maggie

Middle School Just My Rotten Luck

Big Nate Pray for a Fire Drill

Big Nate Makes a Splash

Big Nate Dibs on This Chair

10 True Tales Heroes of Hurricane Katrina

The Book Thief

Dork Diaries #8: Tales from a Not-So-Happily-Ever-After

I Am Malala

I Survived the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906

I Survived the Japanese Tsunami 2011

The Map to Everywhere

Story Thieves

One and Only Ivan

Percy Jackson: The Last Olympian

Road Trip

Space Case

Sunny Side Up

El Deafo

Ungifted

The Woman in the Wall

A Mango-Shaped Space

Boy with the Hidden Name

School for Unusual Girls

Time to Dance

Matilda

Longer Letter Later

Hatchet

Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

Our adverb quiz is on Monday, don’t forget! Here are some resources to help you study.

www.grammarflip.com (use the information I gave you to create an account)

www.youtube.com (see below for some examples, or search for “adverbs”)

http://www.shmoop.com/grammar/adverbs/

https://www.ixl.com/ela/grade-6 (focus on the “Adverbs — JJ.1” and “Adjectives and Adverbs — LL.1 and LL.2”)

http://www.softschools.com/quizzes/grammar/adverb/quiz200.html

http://www.studyzone.org/testprep/ela4/g/useadverbsp1.cfm

http://www.proprofs.com/quiz-school/story.php?title=adverbs-practice-quiz

REMEMBER: You were given a study guide in paper form — use it! You should also have the adverbs practice packet you did in class, and your adverbs scavenger hunt.

Students will be coming home with information for creating an account on GrammarFlip. Many of the videos posted for adjectives came from this website, and it is a great resource for practicing grammar skills! Once the students have created an account with their Google school information (It’s free!) they will be able to watch instructional videos, go through informational slides, and complete grammar exercises and writing prompts in order to apply what they have learned — and they can do it over and over again!

Check it out: www.grammarflip.com

We started adverbs today, and will be working on them all week long; the adverb quiz will be on Monday. I created a timeline with the students for how/what they should be studying throughout the week so that they can spread out their studying and not be trying to cram everything adverb in their brains at 9pm on Sunday night. Below is a link to the studying timeline, so families can see it as well!

Studying Timeline

We talked about characters today, and used “The Paper Bag Princess” as a mentor text. The students quickly recognized Elizabeth as both a round and dynamic character, Prince Ronald as flat and static, and we were able to generate a great discussion concerning the character of the dragon. If you’ve never read it, it’s worth it! The students LOVED the ending!

Don’t forget about the York Academy Global Fair happening on Saturday, 4/2! Check out the doors our sixth graders did to represent Mexico, Thailand, France, and Egypt!

Check out the video below to see a little bit of what the students will be doing in our Marble Maze design project! We have some thin cardboard for them to use to create walls/tubes/chutes etc. but are looking for more! If you have any thin cardboard items in your recycling bin at home (like from cereal boxes or paper towel tubes), send them our way! Also, if you have bigger, thicker cardboard boxes the students would really like those too so they could use them for backing in their vertical chutes. Thanks in advance for your help, support, and recyclables!

We started our new writing unit today — narratives! The kids are excited already and I’m excited, too! Over the next few weeks we’ll be talking about purpose, point of view, character development, plot, dialogue, etc. to give them the tools they need to write a phenomenal narrative. Check out their graffiti wall of what they think a “good” narrative should include (if you click on the image it should make it bigger for you to see):