Welcome to Grade 6!

It is my pleasure to be teaching your child this year! I look forward to working closely with you and getting to know your child. You are your child's first teacher, and together we can help your child meet the provincial expectations for this year. We will be starting the year by getting to know each other, our individual strengths, interests and needs. The emphasis with students is that effort is more important than ability in achieving success and that a student's "job" is to work hard and try their best.

Please encourage your child to discuss what has gone on at school each day. Set aside 40-50 minutes for homework every night. Most students will have some reading and literature circle work, Prodigy math and some math fact practice. Homework will be written in their agenda books on Mondays. Homework will generally be due on Mondays, so that students have a weekend to complete it if necessary. This homework routine is very important. Homework will be posted on this blog under the "Homework" sidebar on the right, so you may check here if your child has misplaced his/her agenda.

We will be starting the year with a number of "Getting to Know You" activities. In language we will be writing letters to ourselves, learning about using self-monitoring strategies to assist us in understanding what we read, and beginning our spelling program. In math, we will begin the year by investigating number patterns, some basic algebra and integers.

In the afternoon class, we will be learning about biodiversity in science and practising following directions and basic movement, strength and flexibility skills in Phys-Ed. In the arts we will begin the year studying visual art.

This year, the Grade 6's will be using a few websites to help facilitate learning. We will be using Google Apps, Kidblog, Xtramath, Prodigy and a number of other applications to demonstrate our learning. More information and permission forms will be sent home as we begin to use these programs. For now, please follow our class Twitter account at @MrPouliot. We will be tweeting regularly to update everyone on our learning journey.

Finally, I would like to invite any parent who is interested in getting involved in our class to contact me at the school The more the merrier, and extra hands are ALWAYS welcome!