And Bella Cleans Up!

For history today we learned about the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah. After we read about the temple in Jerusalem in our history chapter, and the fact that once the Jews returned the oil lasted eight days in menorah, we learned the four Hebrew letters for nun, gimel, hey, and shin. The letters put in order mean: "A great miracle happened there". We enjoyed learning the rules of the game based on the letters on the dreidel and gave it a spin. Bella quickly threw a gimel and cleaned up the entire pot, candy, toys and all! She loves this game!

We have a scheduled Latin Test on Monday and I am going to move it to Tuesday. Our history test scheduled for Tuesday will move to a week from Monday, while I am away.

Thursday night is the Forensics Tournament hosted by GFA. I suggest scholars bring their dress clothing to school and change after school for the tournament. There will be concessions available after the first round, pizza, drinks, and snacks. Scholars should bring some money for dinner if they don't want to pack a second lunch.

We are hoping to start the first round by 4:30, 4:45. We hope to be complete with the tournament by 8:30. All students are competing in Impromptu Speech. Some are also competing in Prose/Poetry, Duo, and Original Oratory. It will be an exciting evening.

Onward to the Second Term!

Thank you parents for taking the time out to come and meet with your scholar one on one and see some of what is happening here in the suite. I know many of you follow the blog and get updates regularly, but it is a special time for your scholar to be able to present his/her portfolio to you and share some favorite highlights of the year so far.

We will finish conferences up today and dive in headlong next week as we prepare for our tournament on Thursday evening. Please see your email as to ways you can help make our tournament a success. This is a required event. After this tournament your scholar will not be required to participate in any others, but our speech tournament is mandatory and scholars will earn a grade for their preparation, manifestation of the foundation stones to our guest schools, and their actual performance before the judge.

I will be leaving for NY a week from today, and honestly I have trouble focusing on what I need to do here because I am so excited about being there, nonetheless, I will prepare all of the work for the scholars and they will be in great hands as Mrs. Lori Cardinal comes in to sub. She will also be here next Tuesday as I attend a conference for the day in Salt Lake City.

Thank you for your cooperation as we move through the end of November. Before we know it we will be in 2013!

The Votes are Cast....

The Sixth Grade Sedulous Scholars voted for their representatives this morning. The Republicans won the popular vote, but once the electors cast their votes, the election swung over to the Democrats. Jonah Tauraa and Jared Marshall will be our sixth grade representatives. They will be responsible for bringing proposed legislation to the Headmaster/Board in the future!

Tomorrow we will review the election. Students should be coloring in their electoral maps as we go this evening.

We also have a math test for chapter five tomorrow......
back to the election for the teacher!

voting

voting

ready to stuff the box!

practicing their right to vote

time to count.....no chads here!

Final numbers of popular and electoral votes

Debating the Issues

Yesterday found our scholars listening and generating questions for our candidates running the Republican and Democrat tickets. The questioning was excellent and the candidates had put in some time and effort to learn the platforms that they were representing.

This morning the scholars will cast their votes and then the Electoral College will meet and determine who the 6th grade President will be.

Contending

 

Learning about the system

Democratic party

Republican Party

Sixth Grade Sedulous Scholars ROCK!

What can we say? The assembly today was a huge success! We were able to collect over 2000 cans of food for the Open Hand Ministry and actually moved it all across the street in record time! Thank you to all of the scholars for their hard work, organization skills to get the assembly complete, and willingness to work hard and get it all moved! YOU ROCK!!!

A HUGE THANK YOU  also to MRS. BLOKER and MRS. POPE who manned the Forensics table for us today and sold $72 worth of Applebee's cards. That and the proceeds brought in from the scholars today has us up to $125....keep up the good work!!!! :) Thank you to two marvelous women who are incredible servants!

Khylee Betancourt received the self-control award today. Great work Khylee!

Schedule for November:

Please note that this is tentative....and subject to change!

5 - Presidential debate
6 - 6th grade election
7 - Math Unit 5 test
8 - 1:00 dismiss/conferences
9 - spelling/vocab/1:00 dismiss/conferences
12 - Latin Test
13 - History Test
15 - Mandatory Forensics Tournament, students stay after school, bring dress clothes and second lunch to be eaten at dinner time.
16 - spelling/vocab
20 - Science Test
21-25 GIVING THANKS FOR MY SPLENDID STUDENTS AND FAMILIES
27 - Latin Test
29 - Book Report Project due
30 - Number the Stars Projects due/Spelling/Vocab/Essay

Jonah welcoming the student body

each class took part

sharing CITIZENSHIP ROCKS!

stacking all the canned goods

building the mountain of citizenship

A blessing!

Congratulations McKenna and Khylee!

And the Candidates ARE.......

Congratulations to our Republican ticket candidates, McKenna Tracy and Garrett Krizek! Congratulations to our Democratic ticket candidates, Jonah Tauraa and Jared Maxwell! Everyone who put time and effort into their speeches today performed well, and we all look forward to Monday's speeches and debate. Tuesday morning we will be voting. Great work scholars!

Tomorrow morning is our 6th grade assembly. We will be culminating our citizenship project that has been taking place for the entire month. We will encourage the student body to reach out to the community and practice citizenship as a part of their own moral code. We hope you can join us!

Over the weekend scholars need to be working on their oratories if they are going to compete in our tournament on the 15th for oratory. We have a number of well done speeches, we are excited to compete. Keep in mind that scholars need dress clothes for that evening. Boys especially will need pants, dress down shirt, and a tie at least. We will be sure to get a class picture that evening also! :)

Next week we will be focusing on Impromptu speeches, oratories, and humerus interpretation. We will also be writing our second quarter goals.

Tomorrow scholars have their final congress bills due, a vocab and spelling test, and a few math problems to work. They should be done with homework by now!

Have a wonderful weekend, and I will be sure to post pictures of our assembly for those who cannot join us tomorrow.

getting ready for speeches

Garrett

Alexsis

McKenna

Isaac

Ian

Addie

Khylee

And the Winner is...........!

Wednesday was the culmination of our Homer unit for the Odyssey. All four Lit Circle groups developed games to play as a reflection on the piece. All of the games were unique and well done, but the students voted on their top two favorites to be showcased at our Parent University this month that will focus on Core Knowledge.

THE WINNERS ARE: First place went to DEATH OF THE GODS, a card game that allows each player to be a god and to attack others and earn points. Second place went to THE ADVENTURES OF ODYSSEUS, a board game with a spinner that had various events from the poem highlighted along the way of Odysseus' long voyage. Congratulations to all the scholars and their efforts!

Today we will be hearing each scholar's 1 - 3 minute speech as to why the 6th grade should choose him or her to be our Republican or Democratic representative for President. We will hear those speeches at 1:00 and parents are invited to join us. After hearing the speeches we will vote for representatives.

The November calendar will be up sometime today. We are going to try and hold to the schedule, but it is quite tentative as I will be away for a couple weeks this month to welcome my new grandson to our family in New York. Mrs. Lori Cardinal will be my sub for those days.

Forensics: Club will meet today and students will be finalizing their pieces for the tournament. If your scholar is working on a duo/ HI/DI or Oratory I would like them to stay after school next Monday for at least an hour to concrete their lines, work with me on choreography, and get memorizing. We only have 14 days till our competition!

Saturday we will be meeting at Ogden High School, out front at 8:00 a.m. Please arrange for your scholar to be dropped off and picked up at noon if they are wanting to see any of the rounds. We will discuss it today at club.

Thank you for working with me to see your scholar's successes be multiplied!

The Path of the Dead

The Adventures of Odysseus

Odyssey: The Game

Death of the Gods