Team 6B
Hazelwood West Middle School

We would like to welcome all of our new 6th grade students to Hazelwood West Middle! Your children have been adjusting wonderfully to the new middle school setting and learning about our Wildcat Ways. While new schools and additional responsibilities can be challenging, we have noticed many students displaying character traits of being positive, safe, responsible, and respectful. Each teacher has been discussing classroom expectations and organizational skills that will help each student be successful throughout their middle school experience. We are all very excited about the upcoming events and activities we are planning for this year. For the second year 6th grade will be able to visit Biz Town. Here students will have the chance to experience every aspect of a real business, and learn how the world works outside our classroom walls. We will also get to enjoy the great outdoors when we go fishing for a Science field trip at the local Missouri Conservation. In addition to field trips we are excited to plan our 4th Annual a Read-A-Thon in December and our 3rd Annual Living Museum in February. Each content area will also plan their own activities during their class to spark student interest throughout the year. We look forward to getting to know you and your children and helping them reach their goals throughout the year.

Communication Skills 6B
Sixth Graders will quite busy in Communication Skills this year. Students will be taking the fall Scholastic Reading Inventory test which will help determine our students reading level. We have taken our first of four district writing prompts, and will begin Edison testing in early September. We have established our classroom procedures and routines. As far as our curriculum, students have begun our reading strategies unit which helps establish good reading habits.  We have established a reader’s notebook and discussed reading strategies, pre-reading, during reading, and summarizing. All of these will be on going throughout the entire school year. Our media center has been made available to us on a bi-weekly basis. We use this time to have students check out books of their choice, interest, and grade level. These books are in turn used for our daily independent reading time. The district has implemented a reading initiative program that requires student to read every night for 30 minutes. Please continue to sign those planners; students are able to turn those signatures in for incentives throughout the trimester.  We look forward to seeing you at Student-led Conference time.

Science 6B
Welcome to 6th grade science @ West Middle! My name is Mrs. Wiggs and I am very excited to work and learn with you and your child this year. We will be conducting three major units of study:  Ecosystems and Populations, Macro to Micro, and Aquatics. During our first unit, Ecosystems and Populations, students will be caring for and maintaining their own mini-ecosystems (terrarium and aquarium). For fun, extra curricular support, please visit our curriculum website at fossweb.com. See our team website for specific log-in instructions. Please contact me with any questions and get ready for a great year of learning!

Math 6B
6th grade is excited to start the Connected Mathematics 2 math series. Connected Mathematics 2 requires the students to work in small groups to investigate the reasoning behind mathematics.  We are currently working with factors and multiples.

Geography 6B
The sixth grade social studies curriculum is an introduction to the major geographic regions of the world.   Students will analyze the cultural, political, economic and geographic aspects of each region of the world.   The student will learn terminology associated with the study of interdependence of the world regions.   We will be using Geography Alive which is an interactive curriculum in which the students will be actively interacting with the material as well with others in the class.