Pobre Ana & Patricia va a California

Sixth grade students began the year by reading one of two novels by Blaine Ray. One group is reading Pobre Ana and the other group is reading Patricia va a California. Both are short novels written in the present tense which also include the cultures of Mexico and Guatemala. We are reading the novels together in class, acting out scenes in the chapter and conducting chapter chats. By doing so, it helps reinforce the grammatical structures and vocabulary learned in each chapter. Below are some pictures of the students acting out scenes from Patricia va a California as well as learning to dance la cumbia, which is something Ana learns how to do in the novel, Pobre Ana. 

Restaurant Reviews

This week the students began working on writing restaurant reviews. They started by reading several restaurant reviews and breaking them down into the categories they felt most important to this writing process. They identified important topics such as service, atmosphere, and quality of food. Next, they created adjective "word walls" for each category to help expand their vocabulary for the reviews. Finally, they worked collectively to create a set of minimum requirements for their reviews. Tomorrow they will do a taste-test activity and begin outlining. 

Egypt Unit

Before the break, the students were hard at work creating 3D maps of the Nile river. Since returning, they presented their maps to their classmates. They were required to demonstrate their knowledge of Egyptian geography, as well as label several man-made sites and monuments. Also during this period, students had the opportunity to experience what it felt like to be a scribe in ancient Egypt by recording dictations from their oppointed "nobles" using their own forms of hieroglyphs. 

Students experiencing how a day in the life of a scribe may have felt. Because of their elevated status in society, "nobles" sat above their scribes. 

Biomes of Africa Laboratory Experiment

Continuing on with our study of ecosystems and biomes, the students first made travel brochures for the  six land biomes and two aquatic biomes in our world. We decided to specifically look at the land biomes you find in Africa to determine what plants would grow best in the three types of biomes you find there - grassland, rainforest, and desert. We decided to "mimic" these biomes as best we could by monitoring the amount of sunlight, water and type of soil each of the three biomes receive. We planted three different types of seeds in each biome to determine which type of seed would grow the best in each of the three. The seeds we grew were California poppy, Cat grass and green beans. Below are some pictures of the 6th graders observing and recording the growth of their plants. After almost a full month of growing, we collected our final results and compiling full scientific lab reports. Some of the results we got were drastically different than what we had originally hypothesized! Check it out!