Merrill Middle School Teachers

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Denver Public Schools

1551 S Monroe St
Denver, CO 80210
720-424-0600

Attendance:
720-424-0627

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Pilkington's TEAM NEWS

We all welcome you from the Christmas holidays and to our team news, updates, and information which would help your family to plan for upcoming events.

PLANNERS We all want to encourage students to use their daily planners to write assignments into and keep track of what their work is on a cumulative basis. These would also be a good source of notes to study from for upcoming tests. Students who use planners are more successful.

PROGRESS REPORTS all teachers send these home on the dates which follow. Please look for your student to be bringing them home so that you can see an up to date account of your students work. Please sign these progress reports, and return them so that your teachers can give you their grade for turning this in. Dates for progress reports are posted here. January 21, February 11, 3rd 9 week grades on March 4. Please mark your calendars and be looking forward to receiving these every three weeks. It is common that a few students would like to hide their progress report so we want to let you know in advance. Teachers need to see these with the parent signatures so that we know that this communication is getting home every three weeks. Please remind your student to show you their progress report every 3 weeks. Most of us credit your student 10 points to help their grades when they show us your signatures. We do not need to keep these, but just to verify the signature for credit.

PARENT TEACHER CONFERENCES: We had a tremendously successful turn out as more than 60 families attended, and we thank you for your participation. Mr. Pilkington's main page

THIS WILL BE PUBLISHED IN THE MERRILL NEWSLETTER FOR DECEMBER so you get to read this in advance in case you are looking here. We wish you all to have happy holidays from all of your 6th grade teachers at Merrill. This has been a challenging first semester. We have seen a lot of growth, maturity, and learning taking place, and we have high hopes for that to continue into the second semester. Here is a quick summary of our 6th grade teachers’ curriculum and recent work. We encourage you to visit all of our websites for updates and details, and to use our e-mail messaging to contact us in the future. Our sixth grade social studies students are learning the states of the United States in 4 specific regions. The North East, South, Mid-West, and West regions are being researched, and students are writing My Book of __ this region so that students are learning specific facts that make each region different. Students should be studying the locations of all 50 states, and writing their state fact sheets for homework, which is due on December 10th. I look forward to some excellent research, and neat state pages that your student will be proud of. Our class will be learning about the provinces of Canada next. Canada is divided into 3 specific regions, Quebec, the Plains, and Western British Columbia. Students will research Canadian regional differences and memorize the locations of provinces and major cities. In Ms. Marcus’s class, we have completed our study of fractions in the Bits & Pieces 1 book. Students had an opportunity to get extra credit by using their newly gained knowledge and go "catalog shopping." We culminated the fraction study with an auction using fractions as money. Students bid against one another and quickly learned that 1/3 is more than 1/4 even though 4 is more than 3. The auction provided students with gifts for family and friends as well as providing a concrete way to utilize their knowledge about fractions. We've just begun the Shapes & Designs book which will allow us to learn more about geometry. We'll expand our knowledge about polygons as we explore both area and perimeter. This unit also provides the opportunity for students to learn to measure and make angles. Please be sure your child has a protractor and compass. In Dr. Kirschbaum's Studio Classes, we are working hard to take responsibility for our learning. As a class, we came up with some ways we can learn better. Some of these ideas are to come on time, come prepared, stay on task, and don't talk when someone else is talking. We get a group grade, which is a grade that everyone earns when every class member turns in assignments on the due date. We are continuing our Magazine Unit and would benefit from some Feature articles, Letters to the Editor, Profiles of People and Interviews. In Ms. Keefe's Studio class, the students are learning how to analyze magazine articles and will soon be applying for a journalist position in our classroom magazine. They are learning about peasant life in California in the 1930's through our book, Esperanza Rising. STUDENTS MUST READ EACH WEEK NIGHT AND FILL OUT THEIR READING LOGS! Reading Logs are due on Mondays with your signature. In Mrs. Edgar’s studio class, we are working on our magazine unit and preparing to put together a class magazine. Each student will contribute their own well written article to make the class magazine complete. Students need to work harder on homework such as spelling and reading logs. In Mr. Thompson’s math class, being ardent Mathematicians, we are pushing forward to the next book: Shapes & Designs, with much enthusiasm. This text features geometry and we will use it as our resource until January 19th. In Mr. Thompson’s science class, “Cells” have been our chief focus though we will launch into a study of “Sound and Light” shortly after the holiday break.