Mrs. Hughes' Blog

Hi everyone!
Looking forward to seeing you on Monday.

ABSENCE

Parents or guardians must notify the school before 7:50 a.m. on each day of a student’s absence. This assures the school that the child is safe at home or in school. When the child returns to school, he/she must bring a note to his/her teacher explaining the reason for the absence.

When a student is absent for one or two days, teachers will provide a reasonable extension of time for the student to complete assignments and homework missed during the absence. When the student returns to school, arrangements should be made with the teacher for this accommodation. Ordinarily, daily assignments will not be sent home on the first or second day of an absence.

Parents or guardians reporting an absence should call 773-445-4737 and leave the child’s name, room number and reason for the absence on the school voice mailbox #1.

SIXTH GRADE READING

Welcome to sixth grade reading class!

Please check our weekly blogs for current information and due dates. It will keep you up to date on due dates, test dates, quizzes and homework.

The reading series that we use in sixth grade is from Scott Foresman Company and is titled, The Reading Street. Included in this series is a vocabulary workbook, spelling book, reading workbook and text book. I also ask that they have a notebook for class.
We will use the spelling book when a new story is introduced. The students will take a pretest for spelling. If they pass the pretest with a 100%, then they will not have to complete the spelling workbook assignments for that chapter nor will they have to take the final spelling test for that chapter. On the week that we do not have spelling then the students will work on their vocabulary workbooks. There will be a test at the end of each chapter. After the completion of each story, the students will have a comprehension exam for that story. It is very important that your child will reread the story at home prior to the test. There will also be new vocabulary introduced that is unique for each story. That will also be included in their comprehension test.

Please see the parent handbook for information regarding the grading scale and the late assignment policy at SJF.

Sixth graders are required to complete one book report each month. Information for each report will be given to the student at the beginning of each month and will appear on my blog.
Students will also be required to take two accelerated readers each month. (They cannot carry over their readers to another month.) They may complete more than two for their own accomplishments but I will need to have graded two accelerated readers for each month and each must have a 70% passing rate to count as a test grade.
Accelerated readers will begin in September.

Along with the reading series, we will also be reading novels as a class. More information to follow.

I look forward to a great year. Please email me if you have any questions.
Sherry Hughes
shughes@sjfschool.net

Next week in religion, we will study and appreciate God's gift of creation and recall that God is the creator of all things and that he created human life in his own image. Our projects for the week will use that as a basis of all work. We will also study the Michelangelo painting from the Sistine Chapel and try our best at recreating it. The students will be given a copy of the Apostle Creed. We will practice praying that prayer every day in class and will be tested on it at the end of the month. A different prayer will be selected for the children to learn each month.

This week, we will read the story of OLD YELLER. I ask the students to preview the story on Tuesday evening for homework. They should read it before coming to class on Wednesday. We will then listen to it on the CD as the storyteller recites the story to us. On Thursday, we will discuss the story and try to infer how this story would be different if the setting was in the year 2008. For those taking the spelling test-the test will be on Wednesday. Remember to bring your pretest with you. A reading test for OLD YELLER will be on Friday. The test will be on the story vocabulary and then followed by comprehension questions of the story.
The book report for September will have an animal theme to it. One of the characters of the story should be an animal. More details will be posted next week.