Women’s History Awareness

To celebrate Women’s History month (March), some of the students participated in an essay contest sponsored by one of our State Senators. The students had to respond to the following:  “Important Women in Connecticut’s History and How Their Contributions to the State and Nation Affect Me”.  The students picked a woman important to Connecticut- some of the women picked were: Suzanne Collins, Helen Keller, Lindsey Jacobellis, Dorothy Hamill, Dr. Pat Bragdon and Mary Burke. Then the students responded to the prompt.

Below are the essays from the winners for our school:  Michelle-first place and Sarah- runner-up.

 

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Michelle

Notable Women of Connecticut Essay

Remember when it seemed like it was impossible for people who needed a hand to get back up on their feet, or to get an extended hand to pull them up. How about when one person asked for help and everybody turned the other cheek. Well, in 1991, I CAN inc was founded by Dr. Pat Bragdon and Mary Burke. Since 1991 till now at 2015, both Dr.Pat Bragdon and Mary Burke are still helping those in Connecticut who need a hand and a shoulder to lie on at Ann’s Place. At Ann’s Place volunteers are giving their hand to those who fell down.

At Ann’s Place Dr. Pat Bragdon and Mary Burke provide professional counseling, support groups, wellness activities and more at no charge. This helps the community in a big way to comfort those who can’t pay, but are getting the support and guidance that they need. With all the help from Ann’s Place, more people are understanding the need to lend a hand to those who need it. Ann’s Place serves over 800 people, both those with cancer as well as their family members, people of all ages, and with all types of cancer from across Connecticut and Hudson Valley New York. Can you imagine how many people Ann’s place have helped?  These are people that live in the area, your neighbors, colleagues and friends, and they become not only part of our community, but when you get to know a person like at Ann’s place, they start to become part of you.

The people of Connecticut are being supported by people and volunteers at Ann’s Place with the determination of helping others. Many people think that winning a race or beating someone at a game is what a winner is. But at the end of the day when you look back and see how many people you’ve lent a hand to, or even made them smile, that makes you a true winner. At Ann’s Place they are doing that everyday and that truly influences me to want to help others more by donating money to charities and fundraisers, volunteering for community work when I have the time, and the greatest of them all, to listen to those who are in need of someone to hear their story so that anyone can see what they are going through. I want to be making the difference of helping and inspiring others so that little by little we can all make the world a better place.

 

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Sarah

Woman’s History Essay

Helen Keller was 19 months old when her world stopped. In 1884 the young infant dropped to the ground and never heard or saw again. What she was diagnosed with scarlet fever, or commonly known back then as brain fever. Imagine, never being able to see your own mother, listening to the waves of the beach, or even looking at your own reflection. Despite this, Helen was a tremendously quick learner and wouldn’t let her disability get in the way of achieving her dream of being a normal girl. As a result, at the age of 7, Helen had a new found understanding of the world around her with help from her teacher Anne Sullivan. Helen was able to learn 30 words in one single evening. Automatically, Anne knew Helen would be someone special one day, disability or no disability. By the time she was a teenager in 1900, Helen became an undergraduate at Radcliffe College and by 1903 the young disabled women had published her first book “The Story Of My Life” and was a true inspiration to disabled men and women around the world.

Helen Keller inspires me on tremendous levels. Her determination, and persistence pushes be to the best I can each day, and the way she choses to use her disability to help others puts me in awe. That is why Helen Keller is an inspiration to me. Keller worked hard each day with Anne Sullivan to learn as much as a little girl possibly could. She had big and what many thought were impossible dreams, Helen experienced many haters and many disbelievers, but the young girl had a goal in mind and she was determined to meet it. Helen no longer wanted to be mute, she wanted to say what was on her mind. She published two books in the course of five years, one specifically on how she feels about the world. But, besides her great accomplishments, besides trying to please herself and do good for herself she still chose to help others. Keller dedicated most of her to being an active supporter on behalf of the disabled. She received many awards for her dedication and care such as the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964, she was the first women to receive an honorary Doctorate from Harvard, and named one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th Century by Time Magazine according to cwhf.org. Helen has made history not because of famous parents, or from being a sports superstar, but rather her caring for others even when she might have needed it more herself. Not only that but she defied the odds learning to talk and write while being blind and deaf. She was not only an inspiration to all the disabled in America, but myself as well. She has inspired me to be a scientist with medicines, that will hopefully find a cure to help someone just as Helen Keller did.

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   I am so proud of these girls’ achievement! 

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A Simple Talk

The students read IRB’s (Independent Reading Books) throughout the year.  Reading is social, and I am always thinking of ways to incorporate IRB discussion and recommendation into our classroom.  The latest project I assigned is the simple yet powerful book talk.  Students picked a novel to read,, set a goal (filled out calendar for how many pages to read each night) and then picked a date in March that they would present their novel. When finished with the novel, students had to write a summary and recommendation for their novel.  Next, the students had to prepare for their book talk- the expectation, the students would present their novel to the class without reading from their paper.  The students were amazing!  But don’t just take my word-watch some of the presentations!

 

 

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It has been awhile, but I am back……..

It feels like I have not blogged in a long time.  So now I am back with so much to share about the start to a new year.

We started off the new year with building our classroom community and getting to know each other.  In order for students to introduce themselves in a different way, they completed two different task.

The first is one of my favorites- The Six Word Memoir- students needed to describe themselves in six words.  This task was all about the power of words- or like what I like to call “Word Consciousness”.

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The second task introduced students to Animoto- a web based video creation program.  In order to get students acquainted with the program, students created videos about themselves.  Some examples follow-

I look forward to sharing so much more about our learning community!
Once again we have begun to Make Waves in Sixth Grade!

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Surprise Friday Funday

We are all about working hard in sixth grade but every once in awhile having friendly competition is a great way to practice collaboration skills.

Teamwork is a must!  Oh boy, oh boy, we truly worked on our collaboration skills through Jedi Dodgeball.  It was homeroom against homeroom.  Each homeroom got to play at least five times and students took turns being the Jedi- the person with the noodle who tagged teammates who were hit by the ball.  The object of the game:  get out both the Jedi’s on the opposite team.

There was no proclaimed winner- just a lot of friendly competition.

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Busy, Busy, Busy in Reading

We have been very busy these past few weeks.  We are in the middle of our first unit of study- Foundations: Moving Beyond Childhood.  Students are exploring the essential question, How does an author effectively convey the journey from childhood to adulthood?  In reading, we have been working on annotating a piece of text, closely reading a text, learning how to take two column notes, exploring word choice in order to determine author’s tone, and of course keeping up with Independent Reading.

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Students are expected to read 80 minutes a week (20 minutes a night Monday -Thursday).  If students are reading 20 minutes a night, they should be reading about 50 pages a week.  The average novel is 200-300 pages- students should be almost done with at least their first novel by now!  Yay!!  Speaking of reading here are the superstar readers from each of my blocks in terms of the amount of time spent reading.

Block 1:  All students read a total of 2177 minutes

Danielle:  5 hours of reading for the week.

Chrys: 2 hours and 40 minutes

Tyler: 2 hours and 38 minutes

Block 2: All students read a total of 1771 minutes

Matt:  3 hours and 45 minutes of reading for the week.

Nicolette: 2 hours

Kiara: 1 hour and 33 minutes

Block 5:  All students read a total of 2766 minutes

Shivani: 10+ hours of reading for the week.

Ankur:  4 hours and 40 minutes

Sarah:  2 hours 42 minutes

Congratulations to all the students for keeping up with their reading!

 

 

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Pictures of the Week

This week has been busy.  We are filling up the pages in our interactive notebook (pictures in a future post). In reading, we are learning about:  plot mountain (utilizing a diagram to figure out the parts of story), annotating a piece of text, close reading, and answering a reading response, paying attention to the criteria we came up with in class.  In Language Arts, we are getting closer drafting out memorable moment.  We have discussed ideas to write about, adding author’s craft, and creating a snapshot.  In spelling, we finished our unit on the suffix tion, ion, sion. In grammar, we are working on parts of speech.

It is exciting to see the pieces of our academic puzzle coming together!

 

Taking a break from annotating "A Birthday".

Taking a break from annotating “A Birthday”.

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We have started to keep track of the minutes read each week. Students should be reading at least 80 minutes a week.

Congratulations to Shivanni, who read a total of 6 hours and 20 minutes this week!  Keep it up- I am so proud of you!

Each reading block total number of minutes:

Block 1: 1756 minutes

Block 2: 1520 minutes

Block 5:  2072 minutes

For this coming week, let’s see if all classes can up their minutes by 200.

 

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Second Week- We Got It!

We have been busy these past two weeks learning routines, getting to know each other, and making sure we are in the right place at the right time.  I have been busy getting to my new students.  I love learning that Harry Potter is a favorite read, Taylor Swift is a singer of choice for many, the Red Soxs are a fan fav, along with basketball and shopping.  I look forward to learning much more through reading and writing conferences and daily talks.

Through discussion I learned that students want to ………..

  • Create/Perform Readers Theater
  • Create Book Posters
  • Read in Partnerships
  • Research Topics (animals, history, inventors)
  • Post Video Blogs
  • Read at least one book as a class
  • Take pictures an add captions to important class activities
  • Create movies
  • Create Podcasts
  • Play Sparkle (spelling review game)
  • Integrated Projects- cross cluster or reading/la/social studies
  • Video Chatting with Other Schools
  • Writing expository, narrative, or descriptive stories and getting them published

I look forward to implementing some of these ideas and much, much more!!! Stay tuned for a lot more information and creative learning!

Off we go-

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The First Week was a Success

A new start meeting new friends, new schedule and teachers, and so many new possibilities- 2013-2014  school year has begun! The first week of school has past, but the excitement of it all is still lingering.  Students are getting the hang of their schedules, A and B days, the expectations, and of course, opening their lockers.  In reading and LA we started to establish our Learning Community.  We jumped right into it concentrating on COLLABORATION and DISCUSSION.

We opened with the Talking Ball- IMG_1360 ( A ball with questions, statements, or a dare) Students stand in a circle and throw the ball to each other.   They answer the question that their left or right thumb lands on.  I like to give the students choice in case they do not have an answer for one of the questions. This is a get to know more about you activity.

Students worked together to define COLLABORATION and DISCUSSION.

COLLABORATION:  working with a group of classmates, sharing, combining, and building on ideas in order to create something better.  All students are participating and are respectful to each other.

DISCUSSION:  a group of people talking in order to gain an understanding about something,.  They may be stating ideas, combining ideas, or deepen their understanding of a topic.

The students had to answer the following questions on Post Its and work collaboratively in order to figure out the trends- in other words what were the top three answers from their class.  Here are the overall results from my LA classes:

Language Arts/Reading is important because……….

  • it helps us get a job.
  • get through life.
  • stay fluent in reading, writing, and speaking.

My goal for Language Arts/Reading is………….

  • read more than SEVEN books.
  • read a book series.
  • read at a higher level.
  • get good grades.

What will Mrs. Emerick need to do to help you this year?

  • help pick new genres of books.
  • introduce new vocabulary.
  • understand books better.

Our classroom should be…………EVERYDAY!

  • respectful
  • fun
  • clean

What should students in our class be doing to make sure our classroom runs smoothly?

  • be respectful
  • listen
  • follow directions and listen the first time so you are respectful to other people and your teacher

Students learned about the expectations of the class, materials needed, and classroom routine. I will leave you with this:

 

You’re off to great places!

Today is your day!

Your mountain is waiting!

So get on your way!

                       Dr. Seuss

 

I look so forward to all the new places we will go together!

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Welcome to Room 216

I love creating an open and inviting classroom environment.  One that promotes student learning and engagement.  Here is a quick classroom tour of room 216.

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The Word of the Day(s):  When students come in they will have a chance to define the word of the day.

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The Reading Corner:  A place for students to peruse books, work collaboratively, or conference with me.

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Homework of the Day and Habit of the Week- this week’s habit:  Be Pro Active.

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Student Information Center

Students will be able to request a conference, find missing papers. get materials, or pick up missing work when absent.

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The Writing Center

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Today’s Plan and connection to the Common Core State Standards:  students will always be connected to what they are learning and why.

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Wonderful Words to use in writing and speaking: Thinking Deeper when reading, writing, and speaking: Awesome Work Bulletin Board- Making Waves in Sixth Grade.

I look forward to posting pictures of the room as the students fill it up with THEIR IDEAS!

 

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