6th Grade News

Students begin the topic by associating ratios with multiplicative comparisons, contrasting them with additive comparisons. Students use their initial understandings of ratio to model and determine equivalent ratios. To generate and display equivalent ratios in real-world and mathematical problems, they use tape diagrams, double number lines, scaling up and down, tables, and graphs. Students are expected to reason about why these strategies are valid.

Students’ knowledge of equivalent fractions from elementary school provides the foundation for their developing understanding of equivalent ratios.

We are very excited to start a new curriculum this school year, titled “My Perspectives”. Students will be working on developing their Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening skills. Our first Unit of study is Childhood. Students will be reading stories that will help them answer the Essential Question “What are some of the challenges and triumphs of growing up?”. We have started off with some interesting discussions about what they looked forward to in adulthood, and what they think they will miss about being a child. The culminating activity will be a Performance-Based Assessment of writing a nonfiction narrative and an oral presentation.

In science, we have covered lab safety rules where students and parents signed a contract agreeing to the rules. Students who still have not turned in signed lab safety contracts will not be permitted to participate in labs.

This week we have started learning about the 8 science process skills: observing, classifying, measuring, communicating, inferring, predicting, controlling variables, representing data, and experimenting.

We have also been discussing careers in science as well as how science is in everything!

In social studies, sixth graders have been learning about the lives of early people. In the coming week, we will continue looking at early farming villages. The rest of September will focus on Ancient Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq). Near the end of the month and into October your child might come home talking about Hammurabi and his laws. Hammurabi was a powerful king in Mesopotamia, and students will be preparing to write an essay about whether or not his laws were just. We always have some great conversations about justice and fair punishment with this unit.