August 18 - 22

Welcome to Glades Middle and to the start of the 2008/2009 academic year. I look forward to a productive year filled with exciting knowledge and challenges. This first week will be spent primarily going over class and team expectations, rules and procedures. Because sixth grade students are new to middle school, it takes some time to have them become accustomed to the new environment and what is expected of them as middle school students at Glades.

We will also spend some time getting to know one another, and as a teacher, I will begin to try to assess the students' current level of knowledge in the various aspects of Langauge Arts: grammar, writing, literature.

I will be working this year to begin the preparations for successful writing so that all Team 6D students will sail through the FCAT Writing with a passing score when they reach eighth grade.

I intend to challenge the students so that they can achieve beyond, perhaps, what they ever dreamed possible. As a school community of teachers, parents and students, let us all work together to achieve success in all we do this year!

Students will be bringing forms from the team and individual teachers home for parents to fill out and/or sign. Prompt return of these forma will earn homework points for the students.

Mr. Slivinski



August 25 - 29

The first week of school went very smoothly. Students were on time to class, have been in unified dress code, and are becoming familiar with class, team, and school policies and procedures.

This week we will spend some time assessing where the students currently are in their writing, language, and grammar capabilities at the beginning of Grade 6. The students will be writing an in-class essay on a prompt selected by the Language Arts department chair. They will be taking a short grammar test as well. This well let them and me see where we all stand as we delve into the curriculum.

Textbooks will be distributed next week.

Please remember Open House is this Thursday evening, August 28, from 6:00PM until 8:00PM. I look forward to meeting you on that night


September 1 - 5

This week students will bringing their Language Arts textbooks home--one on Thursday and one on Friday. Students will also receive information concerning school pictures which will be taken next Wednesday, September 10, during Language Arts class.

We are working to improve the level of word choice in writing by creating lists of option for commonly used words. I am also assessing the students basic understanding of parts of speech, parts of a sentence, capitalization, and punctuation this week.

SURF takes place in Language Arts class on Wednesday, September 3. Each student must have a novel of his/her choice and be reading it in order to earn 100% classwork grade that day.

September 8 - 12

Sixth grade will have fall pictures taken on Wednesday, 9/10, during Language Arts class. A price list was sent home with students last week. All money MUST be paid on the day that pictures are taken.

This week we will focus on a review of the elements of fiction. The students will apply the elements to a "story song" that we listen to and analyze in class as a way of better understanding the elements before we move into reading our first short story.

Students will receive their Interactive Readers in class this week. This book is a collection of some of the stories and poems that are contained in the literature text. It offers guided reading practice and activities for each selection to help the students become better and more aware readers. These books remain in the classroom and are not taken home.

September 15 -19

We will continue to read the short story "Eleven" in the Interactive Reader. We will focus on character analysis after we finish reading, and this will culminate in a creative writing assignment. In reading class, the students have a long-term book report assignment that is to be completed in newspaper format. To help with this project in Mrs. Zaret's class, we will be writing our character analysis in news story style format.

Much of the brainstorming, pre-writing, organizing, and rough draft writing for this assignment will be done in class so that I can help the students and answer their questions.

We will also continue a quick review of nouns this week.

Part of our job as 6th grade teachers on TEAM 6D is to teach our young people responsibility. Middle school is different from elementary school in that it requires each student to be more responsible for his or her own assignments, due dates, and homework. Many students last week did not follow through on having their agendas signed by parents. This results in a zero homework grade for the agenda check.This may be a tough lesson to learn, but students must learn responsibility. They know that agendas must be signed on Thursday for a Friday agenda check. Hopefully, the teachers on Team 6D will see more responibility and fewer zeroes next week. Please help us teach this very valuable lesson.