10/24/2025

    Announcements - 

Ms. Alma tries to keep certain books out of reach due to content or reading level. If your student would like to be able to look at and check books out from another section, please email Ms. Alma Nieves directly and she will gladly let them visit during free times to pick out a book.

Ship Ahoy! We have our dates set for our adventure on the Denis Sullivan! Mark your calendars that your child will have an adjusted schedule the week of Feb 2-6. We will spend the afternoons on the ship (Tues-Fri), so they will need to be picked up by you at Gallows Bay.

• 10/24  Parent-Teacher Conferences 
• 10/31  Halloween Ghost Walk (costume parade) and Boo Bash/Trunk-or-treat (I don't plan to have a "party" in class, as I know the sweet treats are flowing over several days for some of your children, but if a parent wished to send in a healthy afternoon snack that would be fine.)
• 11/3 - No School Bull and Bread
• 11/24-28 - No School - Fall Break starts

 - Ask Your Child About - 

• Morning Meeting, wellness/personal growth
• GHCDS practiced an earthquake and a tsunami drill
• Our class played a version of The Floor is Lava to practice teamwork and communication

• Math
• Continued Algebra work: expanding brackets, distributive property, substitution property, collecting like terms

• English
• Latin root: -scrib-, -script- (scribble, subscribe, transcript, described)
• Editing adventure stories
• Publishing Party to celebrate each others stories! 

• Science
• Matter: Elements, compounds

• Social Studies/Global Perspectives
• One day challenge! Groups had to research how to do something and create a way to teach it to us (all chose slide shows)
• Students reflected on their own group work and gave feedback to each other about how their information was communicated ("glows and grows")

PHOTOS:

10/17/25

   Announcements - 

• 10/24  Parent-Teacher Conferences 
• 10/31  Halloween Ghost Walk (costume parade) and Boo Bash/Trunk-or-treat (I don't plan to have a "party" in class, as I know the sweet treats are flowing over several days for some of your children, but if a parent wished to send in a healthy afternoon snack that would be fine.)

 - Ask Your Child About - 

• Morning Meeting, wellness/personal growth
• Visit from Ms. Bird! Ask your student about the project they completed about the brain
• Discussed/shared thoughts about bullying, individual student thoughts on how they would define it and their experience with it 
• Assigned new "leaders" for the classroom jobs, discussed each job duty and received helpful feedback from individuals who were previously assigned

• Math
• Continued Algebra work: making and evaluating expressions and equations, vocabulary (coefficient, variable, constant, term)
• Multi-digit multiplication review

• English
• Adventure stories! Revising and editing
• Sentence Stalking: evaluating mentor sentences

• Science
• Discussed the properties of the elements they researched
• Diagrams of the water cycle
• Review of Matter concept so far: particle theory, changes of state

• Social Studies/Global Perspectives
• Continued lessons on research and communication: using websites for research, identifying good and bad resources, what makes for good communication
• Read about 2 Hispanic astronauts and answered questions about the articles

PHOTOS:

10/10/25

  Announcements - 

* This coming Wed afternoon through Monday, I will be off island. Ms. Marlow will be my substitute. If you need anything, please contact the school. I will be available in case of emergencies via text/email.

• Fun Run points that your child earned should be available online. Follow the link from their page to the booster store and use them up :)

• Now - 10/15 - Can Food Drive for World Food Day (6th Grade is hosting!) 

            BRING IN THOSE CANS!!!

• 10/13  No School - VI PR Friendship Day
• 10/24  Parent-Teacher Conferences (staff are scheduling sibbling conferences, then I can let you know your exact time. If you need to schedule for another day, just let me know.)
• 10/31  Halloween Ghost Walk (costume parade) and Boo Bash/Trunk-or-treat (I don't plan to have a "party" in class, as I know the sweet treats are flowing over several days for some of your children, but if a parent wished to send in a healthy afternoon snack that would be fine.)

 - Ask Your Child About - 

• Morning Meeting, wellness/personal growth
• We reviewed appropriate use of school computers at home. This week they've had Adventure Stories and a Spanish essay that they were working on. Students are allowed to take the computers home to work on assignments if they wish, but only for school use. They can also access their schoolwork from their Google account on any computer at home.
• Ayla, Makonnen, and Caitlin have been in charge of our Can Drive project and they are doing a great job! Groups were created to visit each lower school classroom to get them excited about donating. Cans collected will be weighed during an island competition next Thursday at UVI. Let's go GHCDS!!
• Ms. Bird continued her very informative lessons about the brain, the class has been engaged with the concepts and tasks
• Coach Jacob gave kudos to some of our class members for working so well together in designing a synchronized swim routine!

• Math
• Math test - students did quite well overall
• Review Order of Operations
• Intro to Algebra (ex: There are an unknown amount of items in a bag and you add 5 more of those items. How many items are in the bag?  x + 5)
• Equation vs expression

• English
• Adventure stories! Outlining, designing "grabber" openers, listening to mentor texts and discussing

• Science
• New Unit! Atoms, elements, and the periodic table
• We learned about the periodic table and investigated different elements
• Students researched an element and created an info cube

• Social Studies/Global Perspectives
• completed Neolithic newspapers and shared with the class
• Test review: peer study, Kahoot game, verbal pop quiz style, discussion of how to answer test questions based on what it's asking (ex: list, describe, explain)
• Final test on prehistory humans
• BEGAN Global Perspectives unit highlighting the skills of Research and Communication

PHOTOS:

10/3/25

   Announcements - 

* MONDAY (10/6) we will celebrate their Fun Run rewards of Movie and Pajama Day!

The students showed interest in Jumanji: The next level and Spiderman: Into the Spider-verse. We will watch one of these tomorrow morning. Please let me know if you are not comfortable with your child seeing either of these movies.

* Math test on Tuesday (positive and negative integers, square and cubed roots, lowest common multiple and greatest common factor)

* Social Studies quiz on Thursday (Early humans, first farming)

• Now - 10/15 - Can Food Drive for World Food Day (6th Grade is hosting!)
• 10/10  No School - Teacher In-service day
• 10/13  No School - VI PR Friendship Day
• 10/24  Parent-Teacher Conferences
• 10/31  Halloween Ghost Walk (costume parade) and Boo Bash/Trunk-or-treat
• Just to let you know, I will be out of school 10/16-20.

 - Ask Your Child About - 

• Morning Meeting, wellness/personal growth
• Morning Meeting topics: Fun Run support videos, World Food Day Can food drive, classroom "jobs" (they are really taking responsibility of these new roles, we will switch out every 2 weeks or so)
• FUN RUN!!  Thank you for ALL of your support :)

• Math
• Square and cube roots, integers, lots of review, and taking a deeper look at using these skills to solve more intricate equations
• Made flash cards to help them review the rules for integers
• Mash Up Math brain challenge

• English
• Latin root words: -tract- (attract, extract, contract, retracting)
• Reading groups - Identifying setting, what effect does the setting have on the character(s) and their behaviors and actions
• Elements of adventure stories, identifying verbs in a passage and the effect they can have
• Outlining and starting their own adventure stories!

• Science
• Lab! - changes in states of matter, graphing results of water temperature readings as it comes to a boil
• Identifying particle models as gas, liquid, or solid
• Water cycle

• Social Studies/Global Perspectives
• working on Neolithic time period newspapers (and partnership practice!)

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENTS:

The class earned a lot of rewards for their Fun Run participation. We will have movie/pajama day on Monday, then fit in the other rewards throughout the week (including game time, recess period, "yes" period, and twin day). Their special lunch will be at a later date (probably pizza on a Friday).

GHCDS Can Food Drive: our 6th Grade is very proud to host the World Food Day can donation drive for our school. Please start to send in canned goods to help support hungry people in our community. Thank you!

PHOTOS: