Sixth graders are heading towards adolescence. They show more self-assertion and curiosity. They are socially expansive and aware.
Reading: Our goal is to continue their interest in reading and improve comprehension strategies. Students build fluency while they are introduced to many different kinds of literature. They continue to use comprehension strategies: compare and contrast elements, fact and opinion, make text connections, find making the author's purpose, cause and effect. They are expected to make inferences and evaluate the text. They learn to use context clues to expand their vocabulary.
Writing: Students have opportunities for different forms of writing: narrative, descriptive, expository, and persuasive. They use stages of the writing process; organizing, drafting, revising, and editing. Students are assessed on organization of ideas, sentence fluency, word choice, voice, conventions and presentation. They are encouraged to define good writing and to identify the strengths and weaknesses in their own writing and that of others. Students work on writing portfolios that contain files of children's past writing, recently completed works, and writing in progress. Viewing this work over time is important to a child's self-evaluation and growth. Students are encouraged to record questions and insights about the various subjects they study as well as personal reflections.
Grammar and Spelling: Children will continue to learn how to use common writing conventions, including punctuation marks, paragraphing, and verb tenses.
Public Speaking: Students are given many opportunities to speak in a variety of contexts: telling and retelling stories, participating in focused discussions about particular topics, sharing information with other children, giving speeches, assuming the roles of historical figures to gain greater understanding of the lives of others, and reading published poems or their own writings aloud.
Math: Sixth grade children are encouraged to think out ways to solve problems. The emphasis is on the ability to apply concepts. There is a great attempt to make math relevant to their daily surroundings. They learn to understand and perform all operations for rational numbers. They write, simplify, and manipulate expressions and equations in all areas of problem solving -including ratios, proportions, geometry, statistics, and probability.
Social Studies: Students will learn how archaeologists and historians have pieced together accounts of life in early civilizations; the role of geography
played; types and how civil governments were formed; how various peoples interacted and cultures grew; and the role of religion in ancient civilizations.
Science: Inquiry - an open-ended approach to the study of science - has a large role in the sixth grade. Students are engaged in the process of inquiry, experimenting with ways of finding answers. Students are scientists.They define a problem and then figure out how to solve it.
Ms. Suzanne Mazak
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Ms. Christina Anderson
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