We have only three school days left! Today we finished up human sexuality, and we played bench ball in gym. We also did some more preparation for the Grade 6 Farewell, which is Tuesday afternoon from 1:30-2:30.

Grade 6's: On Tuesday, if you would like to wear some dressier type clothes, please do! If you are not planning on wearing anything special for the farewell, please just wear your normal school uniform.

Mr. Stanley will be away on Monday.

Tomorrow is our last PAT! To celebrate, we are having a class pizza party. Mr. Stanley will provide cheese, pepperoni, and Hawaiian pizza, as well as gluten and lactose free options for students with dietary restrictions. Please still bring other food - snacks, drinks, etc. - as Mr. Stanley is only providing pizza.

For the Social Studies PAT tomorrow, be sure to know Canadian's rights and freedoms, and remember that the Mohawk announced decisions at the Grand Council, and the Onondaga started each meeting.

Get a good sleep grade 6's! One to go!

Today the Grade 6's wrote their Science PAT in the morning. Mr. Baustad and Ms. Jacobi marked it, and it went fantastic. We are now done 2 PAT's and have three to go: ELA tomorrow, Math on Monday, and Social Studies on Tuesday. Grade 6's: get a good sleep tonight, and eat a good breakfast tomorrow.

Please remember, if you haven't already, Health letters are due signed back to Mr. Stanley tomorrow, as are IPP's.

Today we did a practice PAT for ELA Part B. Overall, we feel like it went pretty well. One tip that we've learned after doing two practice PAT's is that you have to read the questions and answers closely, and you should go over your test at least once before handing. When we've been feeling stressed during PAT practice, we've found it useful to take a deep breath. This afternoon, Mr. Stanley asked the Grade 6's to make sure that they knew every right and freedom listed on the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Today, some students created a video in IRIS for their next-year teacher. The students who didn't complete that today will do it tomorrow with Mr. Stanley.

Mr. Vanderlinden was gone today, so for gym, we had two choices: Ultimate Frisbee, or Jackpot with Mr. Stanley.

Tomorrow, be prepared to write a practice math PAT.

Today the Grade 6's practiced for the Social Studies PAT - we looked at the Iroquois Confederacy, and it went really well! We reviewed La Grande Paix de Montreal, which was a treaty signed by First Nations groups and the French and acted similarly to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms now. In science, we looked at graphology, which is the study of handwriting and typing. We attempted to identify who had written a ransom note in our class, and discovered that it was one of the students in grade 5. During gym, we had a lockdown that turned out to be practice. Also, yesterday we started to read a novel together called Ender's Game. There was a movie made several years out of it. It is about a boy named Ender, and there appears to be some sort of alien invasion of Earth going on - but we're not sure yet!

​Tomorrow we will be doing a PAT practice test for science. This is a multiple choice test, but if you want to do some review on Quest A+ tonight, awesome.

This week, we have started a new morning routine in order to help prepare the Grade 6's for PAT's. From 8:30-9:00, Mr. Vanderlinden is taking the Grade 5's to work on leadership activities while the Grade 6's stay with Mr. Stanley to look at past PAT's and discuss strategies and review previously learned topics. As a reminder to parents, the CBE's PAT schedule is listed below:

June 14th: Science
June 15th: ELA Part B (we wrote Part A in May)
June 18th: Math Part A & B
June 19th: Social Studies

All PAT's begin promptly at 9:00 AM and go until 10:00 with the exception of math which goes until 10:15 AM. Student's have an additional 30 minutes to complete the test if they require.

At-home practice and review would be beneficial at this point. Quest A+ has released PAT's that students can access and practice on digitally. Additionally, we will be doing practice PAT's in class on the following dates:

June 7th: Science
June 11th: ELA
June 12th: Math
June 13th: Science

Please do your best to ensure that your Grade 6 student is present and on-time for all of the above dates. We want our boys to feel comfortable and confident heading into what can be a very stressful time of the year for them.

Today, we extended the due date for our social studies project until Monday. This is the absolute last day that Mr. Stanley can take these, because we're running out of time in the school year! In our assembly today, Mr. Vanderlinden handed out Spartan Race medals - including two to students in our class! One of our students also won an entry to a summer Spartan Race, and another student was given a Humboldt Broncos wristband for the resiliency that he showed during the race yesterday. Yet another student was also awarded a bracelet for the resiliency he has shown throughout the year.

In gym, Mr. Vanderlinden rewarded us for being so resilient yesterday by letting us play "hockeyball," which is like hockey combined with dodgeball minus sticks. In science, we started a science experiment where we tested the effects of the length of shroud lines on a parachute. We did one trial today and couldn't reach a consensus on the effect of shroud line lengths. We will repeat the experiment next week to see if we can come to a conclusion.

Today in science, we constructed parachutes made out of garbage bags, yarn, and a weight. We will be testing the parachutes on Friday. We learned about three different types of variables in science experiments: manipulated variables that we control and change, responding variables, which change based on the manipulated variable, and controlled variables, which we control, but always keep the same. In social studies, we continued working on Iroquois Confederacy projects - the due date for those is Friday, so make sure it's finished. In math, we revisited order of operations (brackets, multiplication and division, and then addition and subtraction).

Tomorrow is the Knights Bravery Course. Students need to bring sunscreen, a hat, water bottles, sunglasses, snacks, and NO main lunch item. The school is providing hotdogs (and vegetarian hotdogs) for everyone! If you don't like hotdogs, feel free to bring your own food. Extra clothes would be a good idea, as there will be mud under some of the obstacles.

This morning, the Grade 6's wrote their ELA written PAT. They had to write a story based on a picture prompt. The picture was of a man who appeared hesitant to feed a parrot a cracker, and the newspaper article was about Alex Decoteau - a first nations person who competed in the 1912 Olympics, was the first Canadian aboriginal police officer, and he served in World War I. He died during the Battle of Passchendaele in 1917, and was buried overseas. In 1985, he was given a Cree burial service in order to bring his spirit back home.

As the Grade 6's were writing their PAT, the Grade 5's did some math work with Mr. Fong's class. Mr. Stanley did a packing demonstration for us to get ready for Camp Chief Hector. If you are in need of any necessary equipment, please notify Mr. Stanley immediately and he can attempt to acquire the gear for you. A good tip for packing hoodies is to fold the arms in, then roll it up from the bottom to just before the arms, then take the two sides and fold them in to the middle, and then put the hood over the entire thing. Try to roll other objects in order to make them cylinders and easy to pack. PLEASE DO NOT BRING ANY FOOD TO CAMP CHIEF HECTOR. Mr. Stanley will be checking bags at some point, and any items that should not be brought will be confiscated. 

Today was the last day for Grade 6's to prepare for PAT's. We spent time talking about what we should include in our writing tomorrow, and how to prepare for the exam. We concluded that it was important to have a really good sleep tonight, and to eat well tonight and tomorrow morning. The Grade 6's are also bringing home a final review sheet to go over tonight.

ELA exams that we have looked at in the past are available at this link: ​education.alberta.ca/english-language-arts-k-6/provincial-achievement-test-pat/everyone/achievement-documents/. We have gone over the released materials already, but it may be useful to re-read the "Exemplary" writing samples one last time.

​Best of luck in the morning grade 6's!