Math
Ms. Alexandra Spencer,
[email protected]
During the month of November students will use proportional reasoning as they begin to learn about ratios and rates. Learning about ratios is like learning a new language, ask your student to share a ratio description of some items you have lying around the house! They are all around us: cooking, painting, shopping, etc. You could also take out your family’s favorite recipe and test out making a different number of batches! Students will be tasked with the math practice standard of making sense of problems and modeling with mathematics in their quest to draw models that represent real-life scenarios. Later on in this unit students will participate in their first mini project and get a chance to examine how ratios are all around us!
Social Studies
Ms. Gisel Saillant,
[email protected]
Our social studies scholars wrapped their Geography unit by taking virtual tours of countries the border conflicts they researched. Stay tuned for an end of the unit social studies newsletter that compiles student work. This week students begin the Early humans unit by learning about the work of social scientists and will hypothesize and analyze primary sources from Paleolithic times! Our essential questions for this unit are the following: What does it mean to survive in an environment? (to thrive?) How do we know what happened so long ago? What do we owe to early humans?
ELA
Dan Tobin, aka Mr. Tobin,
[email protected]
We are finishing up our argument essay unit by making a claim about a book and then proving it with evidence. From there, we’ll start our first whole-class novel, Seedfolks, about a community coming together to start a garden. We’ll be firming up thoughts on elements of fiction, like character qualities, theme, and point of view. We’ll also refine our skill sin writing about our reading. Speaking of which, make sure your student is reading the assigned pages and if they finish early, read an independent reading book until they hit 30 minutes. This year’s sixth grade are shaping up to be bigtime readers, let’s keep it going!
Science
Mr. Phil Nerboso
[email protected]
Students are diving deep into the fascinating world of cells. In the last few weeks we gathered evidence to support the idea that all living things are made of cells. Students collected data by recording their observations of cells while looking through a microscope. We also created our own smartwatches using Micro:bit micro-computers and Scratch coding to learn new ways to collect data about our bodies. Ask your child about the type of movement (jumping, steps, situps) they measured with their smartwatch. Next week students will be learning more about cell organelles (nucleus, vacuole, cell wall, cell membrane, chloroplast, and mitochondria). We will also complete a Cell Analogy Project. Ask your child about what analogy they chose for cells and their parts.