Eshleman Families, 

This year, I will be using google calendars for conference sign-ups. The district has established a conferencing window on November 21st from 1:45 to 8:00 and November 22nd from 1:45-3:45. If this window does not work for your family, please let me know and I will gladly provide a family/conference on a different date and time that works best for your family. Conference scheduling will be done on a first-come, first-serve basis.  

The school district has set the expectation of one conference per child.  It is important that blended families coordinate their schedules in advance and sign-up for one conference slot.  

You may choose to have an in-person, virtual through Google Meet, or phone conference.

Here is a quick Youtube video to explain how to sign-up for our parent-teacher conferences.

Below is the link to my google appointment calendar:  

If you utilize your student’s Gmail account to sign up for a conference slot, you will receive the confirmation and link to the conference via the student’s Gmail account.  Below is a link for additional instructions on how to check your student’s Gmail account to obtain the necessary information.  

How Students Check Their Email 

If you are unable to sign up for a conference by following the tutorial provided, please contact our building secretary, Mrs. Rohrer and she can provide additional assistance.

Please make every effort to sign up for a conference no later than November 3rd. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me at richard.bodde@pennmanor.net

I wanted to share with you a brief look at this week.

Monday, students received back their unit 1 quiz. Attached to the quiz was a slip of paper helping the student identify the specific skills from the quiz and how they did on each of them. An example slip is shown below:

A skill that shows mastery was answered with 100% accuracy on the quiz. A skill that shows proficiency means the student scored a 75% or greater on that particular skill. Finally, a skill labeled as developing means the student scored less than a 75% on that particular skill. Now, there were limited questions/points for each skill so the ratings should be taken with a grain of salt, however, it is my attempt at showing your child that they are not “good” or “bad at math but instead have specific skills that they have mastered or specific skills that still need some work. A student can earn 70% on the quiz and still have mastered a majority of the skills on the quiz.

I am offering a quiz retake for students on Wednesday. Students have the opportunity to earn full credit back. I emphasize to the student that I am not interested in points or grades but instead in their developing mastery of the skills for each of our units. Learning is the focus in my classroom… not grades.

We will be taking our unit 1 math assessment on Friday. I have provided a list of practice sets students can complete on Khan Academy. Below is a screenshot from Khan Academy of the example assignments that correspond to the skills identified on the quiz.

Your child also has access to all of their practice pages from class https://student.desmos.com/ . They will need to log in with their student Google account to access the practice pages.

This week, students again have a spelling and vocabulary assessment on Friday along with their second coding project being due. Students are able to work on their scratch projects at the start of the school day as well as when they finish assignments early. Students likely will also need to be working on their projects at home. They can reach out to me at any time for help both in class and via email at home. Last week I recorded 14 different videos for students after school to help them troubleshoot specific problems they were having with their projects. I am here to help your child when they ask but it is important that they ask.

Finally, your child will be taking an online standardized assessment this week and next week referred to as the CDTs. This week it is a reading test and next week will be the math equivalent. These assessments are not graded but are instead used to monitor the current status of your student’s abilities in math and reading. Unfortunately, depending on the student, these can be lengthy assessments. Please understand that these assessments are a district requirement.

If you have any questions or concerns, as always, you can reach me at richard.bodde@pennmanor.net

As we head into our second week, I wanted to provide you with a snapshot of what your child can expect this week.

In science, we are continuing with our meteorology unit as we investigate the tools meteorologists use to gather data on the weather including making our own sling psychrometer to measure the humidity, we will answer the question “Where does the wind come from?” and we will learn how to effectively use If-Then lines of code to create conditionals in our coding projects. Just a reminder that your child’s first coding project is due on Friday. I have set time aside in our schedule on Wednesday to allow students to have their questions answered and to help troubleshoot any problems the students might be having.

In reading, we are continuing with our class book Because of Mr. Terupt. Our focus is on identifying how the author uses the conflicts in the story to affect change in the characters. The text also provides a great medium for our class discussions on “what makes a great teacher?” and “what makes for a great school year?”

Additionally in reading, it is the expectation that students are spending at least 20 minutes each evening reading a book of their choosing. Your child has set a reading goal for the week and they will need to set at least 20 minutes aside each evening to help them reach their reading goal. The MOST important homework your child will ever have each evening is spending time reading.

In writing, our students are working on crafting a personal narrative. This piece of writing will provide the benchmark for me to determine what are your child’s greatest needs as a writer so I can support each student where they are. This piece of writing will also help me better know your child as a person and their life experiences.

In math, we are continuing our work with rates, ratios, and proportions. We will be having a quiz this Friday to see where each child is in their understanding of the unit. For a snapshot of the kinds of questions your child will need to be able to answer, check out these two links to Khan Academy for Basic Ratios and Ratio Quiz. As a reminder, I always provide retakes for quizzes in an effort to send the message that my focus is on making sure your child has learned the content, not just putting a grade in the gradebook.

Finally, please note that your child has their first spelling and vocabulary test this Friday. You can find your child’s spelling and vocabulary terms here. We will be testing list 1 for both spelling and vocabulary. The site should provide ample resources for helping your child master both their spelling and vocabulary terms by Friday.

As always, if you have any questions or concerns, do not hesitate to reach out at richard.bodde@pennmanor.net .

Thank you families for sharing your children with us here at Eshleman. We’ve had a successful start to our school year as we slowly begin introducing each of the new procedures, routines, and expectations for our 6th grade classroom. There are a few key details I want to share with you as we come to the end of our first week.

First, today your child came home with a letter explaining how I am handling our classroom library this year. If you haven’t seen a copy of the letter come home, here is a link to the letter. Please decide what you would like to do with regards to your child choosing books from our classroom library and return the form so that I can better meet your expectations for your child’s reading choices.

Second, your child should come home today with the first 15 spelling and vocabulary lists for the school year as well as the date for every spelling and vocabulary test this year. Included is a letter explaining how I handle spelling and vocabulary tests. Additionally, all of the year’s spelling and vocabulary lists can be found at this link or on my blog. By providing both a physical and digital copy of the lists, your child should always have access to their words for the week.

Finally, a letter should have come home sharing the websites I plan to use with your child this year. This is my effort to better inform you about what your child will be accessing and using both at school and at home. If you have any concerns about any of the websites, please reach out. The letter can be found here.

Please know that our year is just getting started. There are still many opportunities and activities that I have not yet shared with my students to both support struggling learners and provide enrichment opportunities for students who quickly learn what we are covering in class. My goal this week is simply to establish a firm foundation for us to build on as we head into our 2022/2023 school year. As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please reach out at richard.bodde@pennmanor.net. Thank you again.

Penn Manor Families,

With back-to-school savings already beginning, I wanted to share the school supplies that will be listed on the back-to-school letter later this month. I work to keep the list as short as possible, especially considering the increasing prices.

• Box of Pencils (these will be your child’s for the year).
• Spiral Bound Notebook (this will be used to record notes and examples during math class.
• Headphones for their laptop. (At times students may be completing an assignment on their computer that requires headphones. Headphones will allow each student to complete their assignment at their own pace. The student’s laptop has both a headphone jack as well as Bluetooth capabilities. If possible I would like if students were able to keep their headphones in their backpack to be brought back and forth to school each day.)

If you have any questions, please reach out at richard.bodde@pennmanor.net.

As mentioned in the letter that students received on the last day of school, I’ve put together a summer reading challenge where students can read one non-fiction article each day. I will be continuing to post new articles all summer long (only on weekdays). I will also be posting a question that goes along with each article. I encourage you to ask your child about what they read each day. This challenge is certainly not required nor do I have a way of checking who has and who hasn’t completed the challenge. It is just to help encourage reading all summer long. Here’s to a summer of reading!

Summer Reading Challenge Link

Thank you parents for taking the time to complete the parent survey. Everything you share will help me as I plan for our upcoming school year.

Here is the link to the survey: https://forms.gle/jvSzdX9REboiQwNC6