Good Afternoon Dynamic Team!
Upcoming Events: Hixson Adult Trivia Night – January 26th
Incoming Hixson Parent Orientation – February 5th, 7 – 9 p.m.
Explo Two and Term Four ends February 14th
Important Information: The Hixson Adult Trivia night is coming up. Attached you will find a registration form: https://docs.google.com/a/wgcloud.org/file/d/0B47t0_AnyTUhd2Y4S3I5cF9jUkU/edit.
English –
On Monday, students visited the library to browse and check out/in books. Students also participated in a reading self-assessment—Words Per Minutes. Overall, most students, and even Ms. Artkras, noticed a drop in the WPM scores. We speculated that the three day weekend may have influenced the scores. Students turned in their salmon reading log and received a purple log for the next two weeks. Please help your student set and pursue appropriate reading goals.
Voting continues with the Poetry Wars. “Dress Code (lyrics)” was defeated by “Death of Santa Clause” and “Caged Bird” defeated “Sympathy.”
On Tuesday, students took a reading comprehension and key term quiz over the recent poems.
For writing, students are and will continue to work on writing explanatory and persuasive papers, including: summaries, position papers and how to.
On Thursday, in response to the presidential inauguration, students read, annotated and discussed the poem “One Today” by Richard Blanco, who is only the fifth inaugural poet. On Friday, students will write an expository paper in response to the poem.
Ms. Artkras has been encouraging students to join and participate more often on Edmodo. Assignments, updated, reminders and even enrichment opportunities are being posted there for students and parents.
Next week, we will be reading non-fiction texts and responding in writing.
Math –
Wilma Slaughter – slaughter.wilma@wgmail.org
Next week we will review the Stretching & Shrinking unit, then the students will be assessed over this unit. The next unit is (Comparing & Scaling) which will cover Ratio, Proportion, and Percent.
Science –
In Dynamic Science this week the students completed for the second time the Weather Unit formative quiz. This is a Quia online quiz (www.quia.com/web) which covers the concepts of the entire weather unit. They will take the quiz in class about once a week so they can see how they are doing with their understanding of the concepts. This quiz will be posted on the portal but does not calculate into the student's semester grade. As they better understand the weather concepts they will see their scores for the quiz go up! Please ask your student how they improved on the QUIA quiz today. The students may log in anytime they want to take the quiz as often as they want to check themselves. As you check the portal, remember Weather Unit Formative Quiz is just a road sign to help students check their understanding of the major concepts of the unit and do not figure into their semester grade.
This week the students explored air pressure, wind direction, interpreting weather station symbols and data, warm fronts, cold fronts, and stationary fronts.
Right now the portal reflects how they started the unit on the 3 weather unit goals. Since most students are at a 2/4, see below on the standards based grading; it shows up on the portal as a 50%. Please know a 2/4 is in the “C” range and considering we have about 2 weeks left in the weather unit before their unit test, they are on track. A better indication would be how they improved on the Quia quiz from last week compared to this week.
Standards based grading (please see bulleted list below) has been very beneficial for student learning and achievement! I have been delighted about the students’ increased focus on learning!
<!--[if !supportLists]-->1. <!--[endif]-->Can perform skill only with help. (D)
<!--[if !supportLists]-->2. <!--[endif]-->Can perform some or most the skill independently. (C)
<!--[if !supportLists]-->3. <!--[endif]-->Can perform all important aspects of the skill independently. (B)
<!--[if !supportLists]-->4. <!--[endif]-->Can transfer the skill to a new situation or set of circumstances never seen before, or make a prediction about something which has not been tested. (A)
Weather Unit Outline:
The links for the course websites are listed below.
Course Websites:
If you have any questions or comments please let me know
314-918-4603
Social Studies –
This week, students have worked on their Greek Myth Books. Students chose a myth, retold it in their own words, and illustrated the story. It has been wonderful to see them exploring mythology and allowing their creativity to run free. The booklets were due at the beginning of class on Friday. On Friday, we began looking at the Golden Age of Athens. We will continue with this next week.
I am available for after school help every Thursday until 4:00 p.m.
The links for the course websites are listed below.
Course Websites:
314-918-4602
| Please visit the following links for more information: Hixson home page - http://schools.webster.k12.mo.us/education/components/scrapbook/default.php?sectionid=7 Dr. Heisserer's blog - http://hixsonprincipal.wordpress.com/ |
