Our learning units and lessons are guided and pre-determined by the Common Core Learning Standards and Benchmarks. This is what we must accomplish in all subject areas for 5th and 6th grades:
Reading and Writing / Language Arts:
Literature
SG1A - Students who meet the standard can apply word analysis and vocabulary skills to comprehend selections.
Concepts Covered:
- Use prefixes, suffixes, and root words to understand word meanings.
- Apply knowledge of structural analysis to construct meaning of unfamiliar words.
- Determine the meaning of words in context using denotation and connotation strategies.
- Recall multiple meanings of a word in context and select appropriate meaning.
- Identify and interpret idioms, similes, analogies, and metaphors to express implied meanings.
- Identify the effect of literary devices (e.g., figurative language, description, and dialogue) in text.
SG1C - Students who meet the standard can comprehend a broad range of reading materials.
- Use inferences to improve and/or expand knowledge obtained from text and ask open-ended questions to improve critical thinking skills.
- Synthesize key points and supporting details to form conclusion and to apply text information to personal experience.
- Identify story elements, major and secondary themes in text.
- Explain how story elements and themes contribute to the reader's understanding of text.
- Compare themes, topic, and story elements of various selections across content areas.
- Select reading strategies for text appropriate to the reader's purpose.
- Recognize similarities and differences when presented with varying styles or points of view.
- Recognize the influence of media on a reader's point of view concerning the interpretation of fiction or non-fiction materials.
- Recognize how illustrations reflect cultural styles of art and enhance meaning.
- Explain why some points are illustrated.
- Evaluate imagery and figurative language.
- Use text information to interpret tables, maps, visual aids, or charts.
- Apply appropriate reading strategies to fiction and non-fiction texts within and across content areas.
Language Arts
SG3A - Students who meet the standard can use correct grammar, spelling, punctuation, capitalization and structure.
- Develop compositions that include a variety of sentence structures (i.e., simple, compound, complex, compound/complex) and sentence types (i.e., interrogative, exclamatory, imperative, declarative).
- Use transitional words and phrases within and between paragraphs.
- Proofread for correct English conventions.
- Demonstrate appropriate use of the eight parts of speech.
SG4A - Students who meet the standard can listen effectively in formal and informal situations.
- Focus attention on speaker as sender of the message.
- Record appropriate notes and rough outlines while listening.
- Decide factors that will impact the message (e.g., dialect, language styles, setting, word choice).
- Use appropriate words to describe elements such as word choice, pitch, volume, posture, tone, facial expressions, gestures, and proximity.
- Determine meaning from speaker's words, voice, and body.
- Differentiate between a speaker's factual and emotional content by analyzing verbal/nonverbal messages.
- Separate main ideas, facts, and supporting details in oral messages.
- Infer and draw conclusions (i.e., "if this is what you are saying, may I correctly conclude that …").
- Synthesize, analyze, and evaluate information.
- Paraphrase and summarize, in both oral and written form, information in formal/informal presentations.
- Ask and respond to relevant questions.
- Follow a multi-step set of instructions to complete a task.
- Modify, control, block out both internal and external distractions.
Math:
6A - Students who meet the standard can demonstrate knowledge and use of numbers and their many representations in a broad range of theoretical and practical settings. (Representations)
- Represent any large number using scientific notation.
- Show relationships between sets of numbers, including rational numbers, whole numbers, natural numbers, and integers.
6B - Students who meet the standard can investigate, represent, and solve problems using number facts, operations and their properties, algorithms, and relationships. (Operations and properties)
- Write prime factorizations using exponents.
- Describe relationships between prime factorizations and properties of squares, primes, and composites.
- Classify numbers according to the number of whole number factors (e.g., square numbers have an odd number of factors).
- Demonstrate and describe the effects of multiplying or dividing by a fraction less than or greater than one.
- Simplify arithmetic expressions containing exponents using the field properties and the order of operations.
- Justify rules of divisibility for 2, 5, and 10.
- Solve multi-step number sentences and word problems with rational numbers using the four basic operations.
6C - Students who meet the standard can compute and estimate using mental mathematics, paper-and-pencil methods, calculators, and computers. (Choice of method)
- Select, use, and justify appropriate operations, methods, and tools to compute or estimate with integers and familiar rational numbers. **
- Develop, use, and explain strategies to compute exact answers mentally with integers and simple rational numbers using a variety of techniques (e.g., estimate and compensate, halve and double, compatible numbers, decomposition and recomposition using the distributive property).
- Analyze algorithms for computing with rational numbers and develop fluency in their use. **
6D - Students who meet the standard can solve problems using comparison of quantities, ratios, proportions, and percents.
- Work flexibly with fractions, decimals, and percents to solve number sentences and word problems (e.g., 50% of 10 is the same as 1/2 of 10 is the same as 0.5 x 10). **
- Create and explain ratios and proportions that represent quantitative relationships.
- Create and explain a variety of equivalent ratios to represent a given situation.
- Develop, use, analyze, and explain methods for solving numeric or word problems involving proportions. **
Social Studies and U. S. History:
15A - Students who meet the standard understand how different economic systems operate in the exchange, production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services.
- Explain that consumer demand determines what producers will produce in a market economy.
- Identify the productive resources households sell to businesses and the payments received for those resources.
- Identify the goods and services businesses sell to households and the payments received for those goods and services.
- Identify times when students or adults are consumers and when students or adults are producers.
15B - Students who meet the standard understand that scarcity necessitates choices by consumers.
- Explain why people are both consumers and producers.
- Identify markets where buyers and sellers meet face-to-face and markets in which buyers and sellers never meet directly.
- Explain the benefits to consumers of competition among sellers.
- Analyze the impact on prices of competition among buyers.
15C - Students who meet the standard understand that scarcity necessitates choices by producers.
- Analyze how changes in price affect producer behavior.
- Identify non-price incentives to which people respond in the economy.
- Explain why people's response to an incentive may vary because of differing values.
- Predict the impact on supply of a good or service when non-price determinants change (e.g., number of producers; cost of production).
15D - Students who meet the standard understand trade as an exchange of goods or services.
- Identify exports produced in the local community or state.
- Explain why countries benefit when they exchange goods and services.
- Explain how specialization usually increases productivity in an economy.
- Provide examples of how specialization increases interdependence among consumers and producers.
- Explain how technological changes have led to new and improved products.
- Explain how people's incomes reflect choices they have made about education, training, skill development, and careers.
15E - Students who meet the standard understand the impact of government policies and decisions on production and consumption in the economy.
- Identify laws and government policies that protect property rights, enforce contracts, and maintain competition.
- Explain why there is a role for government in the economy.
- Explain how laws and government policies affecting the economy have changed over time.
16A - Students who meet the standard can apply the skills of historical analysis and interpretation.
- Place events from a chronology on multiple tier timelines that are organized according to political, economic, environmental, and social history.
- Organize a series of related historical events for depiction on a periodization chart.
- Describe life during a specific period using multiple tier timelines, periodization charts, graphs, and charts with data organized by category.
- Provide an example of two different interpretations of a significant event.
- Explain how a significant historical event can have many causes.
15A - Students who meet the standard understand how different economic systems operate in the exchange, production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services.
- Explain that consumer demand determines what producers will produce in a market economy.
- Identify the productive resources households sell to businesses and the payments received for those resources.
- Identify the goods and services businesses sell to households and the payments received for those goods and services.
- Identify times when students or adults are consumers and when students or adults are producers.
15B - Students who meet the standard understand that scarcity necessitates choices by consumers.
- Explain why people are both consumers and producers.
- Identify markets where buyers and sellers meet face-to-face and markets in which buyers and sellers never meet directly.
- Explain the benefits to consumers of competition among sellers.
- Analyze the impact on prices of competition among buyers.
15C - Students who meet the standard understand that scarcity necessitates choices by producers.
- Analyze how changes in price affect producer behavior.
- Identify non-price incentives to which people respond in the economy.
- Explain why people's response to an incentive may vary because of differing values.
- Predict the impact on supply of a good or service when non-price determinants change (e.g., number of producers; cost of production).
15D - Students who meet the standard understand trade as an exchange of goods or services.
- Identify exports produced in the local community or state.
- Explain why countries benefit when they exchange goods and services.
- Explain how specialization usually increases productivity in an economy.
- Provide examples of how specialization increases interdependence among consumers and producers.
- Explain how technological changes have led to new and improved products.
- Explain how people's incomes reflect choices they have made about education, training, skill development, and careers.
15E - Students who meet the standard understand the impact of government policies and decisions on production and consumption in the economy.
- Identify laws and government policies that protect property rights, enforce contracts, and maintain competition.
- Explain why there is a role for government in the economy.
- Explain how laws and government policies affecting the economy have changed over time.
16A - Students who meet the standard can apply the skills of historical analysis and interpretation.
- Place events from a chronology on multiple tier timelines that are organized according to political, economic, environmental, and social history.
- Organize a series of related historical events for depiction on a periodization chart.
- Describe life during a specific period using multiple tier timelines, periodization charts, graphs, and charts with data organized by category.
- Provide an example of two different interpretations of a significant event.
- Explain how a significant historical event can have many causes.
17A - Students who meet the standard can locate, describe and explain places, regions and features on Earth.
- Compare sketch maps with atlas maps to determine the accuracy of physical and cultural features (e.g., political/physical maps of Canada, the United States, and Europe).
- Develop maps and flowcharts showing major patterns of movement of people and commodities (e.g., international trade in petroleum, countries that produce and those that consume resources, cartograms, population pyramids).
- Explain the purposes and distinguishing characteristics of selected map projections, globes, aerial photos, and satellite images.
- Demonstrate understanding of the spatial distribution of various phenomena by using latitude and longitude to plot data on a base map of the United States or the world (e.g., location of professional sports teams in the U.S. or the world).
17B - Students who meet the standard can analyze and explain characteristics and interactions of Earth's physical systems.
- Explain how Earth-Sun relationships affect Earth's energy balance (e.g., heating of soil and water at different seasons of the year, differential heating at different latitudes).
- Identify and describe different climates in terms of precipitation and temperature and the types of plants and animals associated with each using pictures, maps, and graphs.
- Analyze maps to determine the relationship among climate, natural vegetation, and natural resources.
- Predict the effects of an extreme weather phenomenon on the physical environment (e.g., a hurricane's impact on a coastal ecosystem).
18A - Students who meet the standard can compare characteristics of culture as reflected in language, literature, the arts, traditions, and institutions.
- Describe what is studied within the field of anthropology.
- Describe how a culture is reflected in its art, music, and/or architecture and institutions.
- Explain how technology and the media have impacted expressive culture.
- Analyze examples of patterns within literature, art, music, and/or architecture being transmitted from place to place.
18C - Students who meet the standard can understand how social systems form and develop over time.
- Define the concept of diversity.
- Assess the impact that commonly held beliefs have had on social groups in the United States over time.
- Describe the contributions of significant individuals and groups to the common belief system of the United States.
- Describe how citizens and government can cooperate or have cooperated to solve an important social problem.
- Predict what social problems will become more pressing in the future.
Science:
Have a working knowledge of the processes of scientific inquiry and technological design to investigate questions, conduct experiments, and solve problems.