Learning Previews - 6th Grade - September 2016
Posted on 09/14/2016
6th Grade ELA: Mr. Tobin
After a week of learning classroom procedures and playing team-building games, we launch our reading workshop for the year. We’ll learn how to choose and abandon books, plus how to track our reading. Then we’ll read books! Have your student tell you about his or her book, and give a review. In addition to other ELA homework, students are expected to read two hours a week, completing 15-25 books this year. Big readers should feel free to set a higher reading goals for themselves -- last year, 11 sixth graders reported having read more than 100 books. Our first formal unit will be to read and analyze The Lightning Thief (starring Percy Jackson), figuring out how the story feels fits into the framework of the “Hero’s Journey.” Eventually, students will use what they’ve learned to write their own hero’s journey stories.
6th Grade Math: Ms. Fournier
During the first month of school students will be working with number theory, or the relationships among whole numbers (integers). Specifically we will be looking at factors, multiples, primes, composites, and prime factorization. In addition to number theory, students will learn about the distributive property, exponents, and order of operations. Do you know if 1,089,593,560,325 is divisible by 9 using mental math? Ask your child to teach you a quick trick! Goal-setting will be a focus throughout the year, with an emphasis in September as we all have a fresh start. Ask your child about his/her fall goal. Perhaps you can help him/her succeed in achieving this goal! Expect your child to have homework every night and please encourage him/her to come in for morning homework help as needed!
6th Grade Science: Mr. Nerboso
Science class routines and procedures were being learned by your budding scientist during the first week of school. Our success as a learning community hinges upon the mastery of this foundation. We will focus this week on continuing to practice routines and procedures while we get to know each other better. Students have already begun and will complete an in class mini-project called “All About Me - Index Card Tower.” Ask your student about what they choose to share about themselves. Or which goals they set for themselves for science class this year? The essential questions for these first few weeks are: What will middle school be like? What is a learning community and how do we build one? How can growth mindset help me be a better student? A key focus is on how making mistakes is a natural part of the learning process for students and scientists.
Social Studies: Ms. Saillant
Our 6th grade social studies scholars completed their first week working collaboratively on what it takes to build in a learning community. From building balloon towers to deciding who gets to survive to a new planet, students identified team building strategies like building consensus as essential to their work in our class. Next we will begin our geography unit, which we will study for about 6-7 weeks. The essential questions for the unit are: Why does “where” matter? How does geography help me understand the world? Their homework will consist of weekly news articles accessed on their google where students will identify the central idea of the source, location of news event and how it connects it to them.