Sixth Grade Sapient Scholars: Let's COOPERATE!

The third quarter is up and running and scholars are working feverishly to master skills from the first half of the year and wrap their minds around new information on a daily basis. They are currently working in "cohorts" of three as we move into a team building/cooperating phase. These scholars will need to be able to work as teams and cooperate with others when they move into 7th grade, in less than 8 months. We will be preparing them this quarter with plenty of teamwork and opportunities to learn tolerance and patience.

During our character time we have allowed students to work together to show how they can communicate and cooperate in order to get the job done. We have spent time playing Kingdoms with historical figures and novel characters. We have also walked blindfolded students down the stairs, around the building, and back up the stairs with only giving verbal directions. Success was the word of the day as scholars lead their friends through the hallways!

Today scholars cooperated with each other in groups as they were required to figure out logic puzzles with Popsicle sticks (math in disguise). They worked together well, and are showing great improvement in their skills!

We took the mid year math test today and all scholars put forth effort to complete as much of the test as they could. I am sure they have renewed many of the skills that have been a bit rusty. We will continue to work on those as we move forward into our inequality unit in math.

We are moving right along in Astronomy. The night sky has been cooperating in a lovely way this past week. Students are drawing the moon phases each night and this morning's waning crescent was just fabulous! The winter sky is the best sky to view the stars. We learned about the life cycle of stars today and will be graphing some constellations this week. Tomorrow we will enjoy an exciting experiment building our own lifelike comet and playing with it outside!

The Scarlet Pimpernel is coming to a close and we will view some of the video on Friday as a treat for finishing the novel. Scholars will have a quiz on the novel tomorrow, and we will continue reading Tale of Two Cities. At the same time we have begun our study of Call of the Wild by Jack London. We will be reading this novel while participating in the Yukon Quest race that starts on Saturday. Your scholar can watch the race and track his or her musher by going to the website:

www.yukonquest.com

Enjoy watching the race!

Stop back tomorrow for photos of our comet experience!