WAY TO GO NATALIE!

One of my favorite things to do as a teacher is celebrating the accomplishments of students. Natalie is a champion chess player and she just added another trophy to her growing collection. Over the April the  12-14 weekend, Natalie competed in the All-Girls National Chess Championships. I'm thrilled to announce that Natalie is now the 4th best chess player for girls under 18, in the U.S.A, and she is only 12 years old.  Natalie is not only a champion chess player, but she is also a High Honor Roll student.
Her Dad sent me some information to help explain. "I am very happy to inform that Natalie had a draw in the last round with the player from Alabama. Natalie had a four-way tie for the second place with three other players (4.5 points). However, because of the tie-break system, the final place is 4th place in the United States among girls under18! The funny thing is that all top three places lost one game and Natalie was the only player who didn't lose the game! Natalie had 3 wins and 3 draws. The winner of the section had 5 points out of 6 possible (the winner lost one game) Four other players (including Natalie) had 4.5 points out of 6 possible. However, two girls had a better tie-break and one player had a worse tie-break than Natalie. Natalie is 4th best chess player for Girls under 18 in the USA !!! (please note that Natalie played up 5 years to the higher age section and she was playing with older girls!)"

CONGRATULATIONS NATALIE!!!

I look forward to sharing all the awesome accomplishments of not only my students but all SWS students. Do you have an accomplishment you would like me to share? I would be happy to read about it and post, just send me an email.

Stations

This year, 6th grade has been participating in weekly learning stations. The main focus of the stations has been ELA, or English language arts. There are 4 to 5 stations a week, where students spend 15 minutes on one activity and then rotate until the students have had an opportunity to participate in all the stations. Many times, one station is dedicated to meeting with me in a small group. This gives the students and me a wonderful chance to work together on a specific skill. For this set of 5 stations, students worked in small groups and I monitored and helped students while moving from one station to the next. This gave the students an opportunity to work more independently as we begin to get ready for 7th grade.

Vocabulary Station--Using Scrabble Twist as a learning tool and engaging game to play with other station members.

Technology Station--Students choosing to either use Google Computer Science or Khan Academy, where students learn and practice coding skills.

Novel Study Station--Students used mirrors to draw self-portraits to recreate the original The Giver book cover. Portraits had to be only in pencil, which is part of the novel study experience. Some students used Chromebooks to find examples of how to draw specific facial features.

Novel Study Station--The Giver, students completing an introductory activity for our upcoming novel study. In The Giver, characters are allowed to use and have certain items at specific ages. To give the students the feeling of being part of the novel, their one color world could only be completed with colored pencils and magazines. No scissors were allowed, thus students had to tear the magazines.

Science Station--A mini research project where students chose between a space system to depict and explain via a poster. 

Resurrection Eggs

During religion class, students moved about the room to see what is inside the Resurrection Eggs. A symbol of Lent and Easter was inside each egg. Students were to record the number, the item inside, and explain how the item related to this Holy time of the year. You can see by some of the expressions that some of the symbols were not as easy to identify as the students thought they would be. 

Stations of the Cross

This year, 6th and 8th grade students lead the weekly Stations of the Cross during this Lenten season. Several 3rd and 4th grade students help by participating as altar servers. Thank you for being role models of faith and stepping up to be leaders in our school. All of you did an excellent job!

We Won!!!

A big shout out to the 6th grade families! We are the 1st class to have 100% of the students enrolled for the 2019-2020 school year, which means our class won a pizza party from Mrs. Zver and a sweet treat from me.

Congratulations 6th grade!!

Thank you Mrs. Zver for the fantastic pizza party!