Ali

=__...Ok....6th grade......Here We Go....__=

Lockers. Teachers. Homework. Classes. Detention. Middle School. I was so nervous to go into middle school because I've read so many books or watched so many movies about middle school being the worst years of peoples' lives. I was worried about the teachers being mean and getting too much homework. =__I Feel Bad For All Of The Classes That Don't Have Our Awesome Teachers)__= = -**When** we celebrated Chinese New Year and we did basically nothing but listen to reports all day. It was actually fun and I learned a lot of interesting facts that I wouldn't have learned if we were just reading out of a book. I think my favorite part was when we got to read our compliments that we got. -**When we had the Egyptian Funeral** and we got to parade around the school with our pharoahs and our awesome [|Egyptian Costumes]. My favorite part was when Solitary Confinement played three songs, "Life in Da Nile", "Solitary Confinement", and "Pharoah, Pharoah". My favorite song that they played was "Life in Da Nile" because they each of them had solos (except for Jason). The food was good, especially the coconut. I loved making the mummies because I felt like an actual Egyptian. The wrapping was exciting because it was extremely sticky, but it took a lot of concentration to put the wrappings on without wrinkling it. The Easter hunt was relatively...ummm..........what's the word I'm looking for?......snowy. (and cold) - **GREEK WEEK!!!!** It was so fun! We got to listen to reports once again and I learned that the Greeks are very interesting people. My favorite part was when we all got to go outside and do the "Olympics". Sure, we didn't get a metal or a crown for winning. Instead we got a piece of candy for winning. Instead of doing the javelin throw we did the noodle throw, instead of discus we did frisbee. But it was still fun! I did my report on Mythology Creatures. =

= =__Learning....Usually Not One Of My Favorite Hobbies...But This Year It's More Fun__=
 * Math-** In the beginning of the year we did a review of everything we did in 5th grade. Except this year we did it with a twist. (Seriously) We learned songs (and dances) to go with vocabulary in math. It was a lot easier to remember everything when you had a catchy little tune to remember it by. (Examples: Prime numbers can only be divided by itself and one evenly. Addends, Addends if you want sum, and two addends and get a sum. Exponents are little numbers way up high, they tell you how many times the base gets multiplied.) We then did a whole bunch of lessons to prepare us for the PSSA's (Do you really think I'm going to list all of the lessons? Come on. Seriously.) Ok I guess I'll name a few. (Examples: Prime and Composite Numbers, Area and Circumferes of Circles, Fractions, Exponents, Mean, Median, Mode, Angles, and Polygons. Then the PSSA's came. (dum dum dummmmmmm) (That's my little musical effect!) They were actually pretty easy because of all of the lessons we did beforehand. This year the thing I learned about the most was that learning little tricks can make math problems easier to understand and you can get a better grade on open-ended responses by using all the vocabulary terms. Our last project we have to do is pick something that we are interested in (soccer, basketball, music, ect.) and pick out key concepts and relate it to the activity. I chose soccer as my activity. The key concept I chose were elapsed time of the game, perimeter of the field, area of the feild, mean of goals per game, median of the goals for the season, mode of the goals for the season, a grid of the field, angles of passing, and the cicumference and area of circles on the field.


 * English-** This year we did many different varities of book projects. This broadened my opinions on books. I now like science fiction books more than I used to. We also were encouraged to raise money for the Childs' Advocacy Center by reading at least 36 books in a marking quarter. The books could even be childrens' books! Not only did I raise money for a charity, I remebered all of the books I read when I was younger. I've read a lot of good books this year, here are some of them that are from our school library.[[file:booooooks.doc]] Some of the reading strategies I learned about and developed this year are visualization, asking questions, making connections, making inferences, and summarizing.


 * Science**- We were able to do a whole bunch of experiments and demonstrate our knowledge of the lesson by doing drawing or a skit. My favorite thing that we did in science was making oceanography webpages. We were assigned a subject and make an actual webpage on that topic.[|Mine is about sonar.] We also learned about ecosystems and population, and how everything contributes to our everyday lives.Within our groups, we were to do a project about one specific biome. Each of us were assigned a certain topic within our biome.


 * Social Studies**- This year we did so many fun things in social studies its going to be hard to name them all. But before we learned about a civilization we had to know what makes a civilization. Some things needed to hold a civilization together are religion, government, education, social class, military, professions, and much more. My favorite was when we did the mummies. This is a picture of a canopic jar that hold the organs of the dead. It was hard to make canopic jars because our were really tiny and when they had canopic jars they were HUGE! (I found that out when we went to the Franklin Institute and saw the King Tut Exhibit) That was really fun!

We also learned about the Greeks. I did a project on Greek Mythology. My favorite creature was the centaur. I learned a lot about how each of their mythological creature came to be, what their powers are, and what family they belonged to. My presentation included many different creatures that a lot of people never heard of.




 * Tech Ed-** I learned about animation on Flash. We got to create and animation of the sun rising and clouds coming in. (Whooooohoooo)


 * Music-** I love playing on the keyboards. I learned Fur Elise, This Old Man, Little Drummer Boy, Old Saint Nicholas, and Ode to Joy (Thanks to my keyboard partner) (Gussy)

Gym- We ran. We played basketball, football, and volleyball. We ran some more. YAY!


 * Art-** Drawing. That's it.


 * Computers-** Typing (Can you tell?)

=Flippin' Awesome Field Trips and Other Activities=

- **Adventure Aquarium** was really fun. My favorite creatures that I saw there were the penguins, the seals, the hippos, and the sea horses.

- **Bake Oven Knob** was **__SO__** cold. I loved looking for the birds of prey.(Even though most of the time I couldn't find them because my binoculars were really bad) I thought it was cool how they used different phrases to tell you where they were. I also loved doing the report, especially drawing the bird. Afterwards we had to do a project on a specific bird of prey. I chose an owl. For my project, I made a life-size picture of the owl and put facts about the owl on a poster. - **The Franklin Institue** was the funnest museum I have ever went to. When I heard we were going to a museum, I was dreading it, until I got there. The King Tut Exhibit was cool, except I expected it to have more King Tut artifacts instead of items that belongs to his relatives. The funnest thing there was the skybike. It felt like you were floating in mid-air. IT WAS AWESOME!!!!! -**The Outdoor Program** was nothing like I expected it to be.....it was better! I liked how we did a variety of things that related to many subjects. My favorite activities were the running and jumping activities with Mr.Beyer and going to the Little Lehigh and looking for macroinvertebrates with Mrs.Fuini-Hetten and Mrs.Yurconic.

=__Becoming A Better Writer__= I think I've become a better writer this year, especially with persuasive essays. I have learned about ethos, pathos, logos, and nomos which help persuade readers to beleive in your opinion. I have also become more descriptive when writing about something. I have also become better at organizing my ideas and then putting them in paragraph form. Finally we had our last persuasive essay! We got to choose whether we wanted to write about year-round schooling or video game violence. Of course, I chose year-round schooling becuase the only video game I play is DDR.

=**__In Front Of The Crowd Instead Of In It__**=

I used to be the one who sat way in the back of the crowd and watch the others present their reports. When it would be my turn, I'd be as quiet as a mouse (and if you know me, you know I am NOT quiet). Now, I get up in front of people and present my report, and people can actually hear me! Sure, I still get nervous, but I get through it.

=__Technological Resousres__= This year we used a lot of new techonoly. In library we learned about a whole list of reasources we can use when doing reports. In tech ed. used Flash, a program that allows you to make animations. Our teachers also let us use a variety of new websites, such as, Think.com, CMaps, Gliffy study island, and obviously wikispaces.com.

=__Totally Random Things That Happened This Year__=

- The "You Need To Get Quiet" Song - Standing on Desks To Correct Tests - The Math Songs (and sometimes dances) - Taking Pictures Of Gold Shoes - Savoring the Chocolate - Sweetness! *hits Alan in head* - Zach and Jason being Zach and Jason (enough said) - Bob at Walmart
 * Note* If you don't get the stuff in this list, don't be alarmed, you just weren't there when it happened. (or you're suffering from memory loss) (which, in that case, you should be alarmed)

=__Other Stuff__= Solitary Confinement is a band which consists of Alan, Casey, Zach, Tommy, and Jason. They played at our Egyptian funeral and at open mic night. They ROCK OUT LOUD. During my spare time (ok, maybe I have a little too much spare time)my dad taught me how to use Photoshop and then I made them a logo-like thing.

It's kind of bad quality because its not being opened in Photoshop, which is how I made it. If I were to open in in Photoshop (which I can't because the school doesn't have Photoshop) it would be much clearer and a little brighter. Right now I'm working on another one of the letters SC (as in Solitary Confinement) in a cage.

=I DON'T WANT THE YEAR TO END!!!!= I was so wrong about middle school. It is so much fun and we get a lot more freedom. Now that I think about it, those movies about middle school always end up with a happy ending. Although.. I still have 3 more years here......I wonder what my 7th grade teachers will be like......=)...=(....=0