6th Grade 9/2-9/12 2012

Having the same group of students two years in a row is a very unique experience. I enjoy it a lot, I believe the students too.

We finished the water cycle project and we had two great movie, "The Inconvenient Truth" by the ex vice-president Al Gore, and "The day after tomorrow" for the global warming issue. If you combine the two movies together, you will understand more because there is a strong connection between these two movies. Especially when the first one is kinda boring for the kids and then they can have a real good disaster movie, and all the sudden they realize the theory in the second movie was actually metioned by the first one.

Students did a very good job on the project. Basically for me they all got an A on this one. Different style but full of creativity. It also has everything they should have on it. Very proud of them.

Besides the water cycle and global warming. We also talked about water conservation, which is a very improtant topic. Student know that people around the world do not have enough water or even access for it. But they didn't realize that some people in the US without enough income couldn't pay for water either. The fast and best way to let them understand the pain and frsutration without water is to having them experience it. They need to draw a number for a box to get their "Shower water container". Whatever they got, they can only use that much water for a full shower at home. (Everything is from my house and I hand washed it)

Of course it has different size and our lucky girl Ges had a chance to pick first and she got NO.6, the smallest one. Everyone crossed finger to get No.7, it was a fun process. After that they need to write down a 200 words essay about how did they feel and how can they do to conserve the water. It turned out great, I had many great and deep thoughts.

We are done algebra for math and you know what? All the students passed the algebra test and it was not a easy one. Some students didn't do good on the TCAP last year but I watched them doing math everyday and I know how good they are. This year we will work more on the test aking skill. I to be honest don't like it, but somehow that skill is important for students.

We had Solid Figure and Nets as our topic for the past two weeks. Student kept drawing nets, cutting nets for fold it to a solid, and draw 3D structure for things like cube, cuboid, triangle prism and cylinder. After that they need to label how many faces on each different solid.  It was an everday practicing process and it is a good way to let them practice having patient. They were tired of doing it but they all got it in the end.

We actually used those cubes with labeled numbers as the dices to do a traditional Chinese fun gambling. People usally do that during the Chinese New Year. Like myself and my family. Students promised me that they won't gamble with money first then we started it. They use their free outside time as a bet. They win they get more time on that day, they lose and the time will decrease. I ONLY won one time out of 11 students. They were all happy and I was happy too, if they understand everything they learned, what is wrong to let them have more fun and more free time as a break?