WELCOME TO 6TH GRADE LANGUAGE ARTS!!!!

Hello students and parents,

My name is Ms. Mattaliano. I am a graduate of East Tennessee State University. I have a passion to teach, therefore I am very appreciateive of the opportunity to be teaching your student. In my spare time I like to read, travel, and play volleyball.

OVERVIEW OF MY SUBJECT AREA

LANGUAGE ARTS: Sixth grade language arts consist of grammar, reading skills, writing skills, our Latin/Greek based vocabulary program called AH-HA,and our individualized accelerated reader program. Throughout the year, we apply our language arts skills through unit studies of books such as TANGERINE and various short stories from our literature book.

PARENTS, it is so important that we keep lines of communication open throughout the year. Please contact me at school (610-6000) or through email (mattalianod@jcschools.org) any time you have questions or just want to check up on your student's progress. Another valuable tool we use at ITMS is the time tracker. Students use this to write each day's assignments and additional information that they need to make note of. Please check this periodically to see what we're doing in the sujbect areas. This is truly a great communication tool!!

I have listed websites that will reinforce the language arts skills we study during the year. I will add additional sites during the year, so keep visiting!!

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENTS:

Field Trip permission forms and money are due NO LATER than Thursday, January 10, 2013. The Field Trip is Friday, January 11, 2013.

Report Cards will be sent home Wednesday, January 16, 2013. They will be located in your student's Yellow Communication Folder. PLEASE SIGN AND RETURN by Friday, January 18, 2013.

The Third Nine Weeks will focus on the following:

Weeks 1 & 2: Continue with Quotes, commas, sentence combining, conjunctions, etc. in DOL; Letters (business and friendly); Colon Usage; Adjectives

Weeks 3 & 4: Genre; Figurative Language; Adverbs

Weeks 5 & 6: Literary Terms (plot, types of conflict, foreshadowing); Theme (Stated and Implied)

Weeks 7 & 8: Common Assessment; Prepositions; Troublesome words

Week 9: Review skills; Benchmark

***This schedule is subject to change***

Accelerated Reader will continue to be a part of your student's grade. Please be aware that your students will be graded on completion of the goal and their accuracy on quizzes. Your child is expected to be reading at least 20 minutes a night. They have a variety of resources to use in order to meet their AR goal. Students are welcome to read from Big Universe at home, but will have to take quizzes at school. Please remind your student that they need to make use of the library if they choose not to read from Big Universe. Also, students are not encouraged to read books lower than the level that they are assigned. They must get approval from the teacher first (this also goes for books that are higher than their AR level).

**HOMEWORK: RECORDED ONE WEEK AT A TIME**

01/21/2013: No School

01/22/2013: Study AH HA; 12 sentences using colons

01/23/2013: Personal Pronouns (2 sides); signed papers