COURSE
DESCRIPTION - GRADE 6
In sixth grade Language Arts, students engage in skill lessons that focus on writing conventions and vocabulary building. Students read several Newberry Book Award winners use the writing process to write several papers including a research paper. Students also develop and present a variety of speeches. Emphasis is placed on recognizing and using literary elements and techniques.
Sixth grade math students analyze the steps in standard and non-standard algorithms for computing with fractions and decimals. They use a variety of strategies, including proportional reasoning, to estimate, compute, solve and explain solutions to problem solving. Students work with two-dimensional shapes and explain what happens when the measurements of a shape are changed. They predict and describe results of transformations of two-dimensional figures and draw similar figures that model proportional relationships. They address algebraic expressions, linear equations and use technology to analyze change. They predict, using data in tables, graphs and experiments to test probability.
The sixth-grade Social Studies curriculum focuses on the study of world regions. The concentration is geographic rather than historic. Students study some of the earliest people who lived in each region in order to understand how humans interacted with the environmental conditions at that time. Connections are made to present-day world regions including characteristics of governments and economic interactions.
In Science, students in grade six continue to conduct investigations and begin to apply mathematical skills in evaluating and analyzing variables of data. They identify basic skills of the scientific inquiry process, including how thinking scientifically is helpful in daily life and how technological advances affect the quality of life. Students research how men and women of other countries and cultures contribute to science. They identify rocks, their distinct properties and formation and characteristic properties of the minerals that form them. Student learn to recognize that a cell continually divides to create new cells, reproduction of cells occur, similar cells have special functions, and characteristics of an organism are a result of inherited traits. Students acquire knowledge of the uses, properties and chemical processes of the small particles that compose matter.
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