Humanities
Your child will:
- Practice disciplinary literacy skills to strengthen reading, writing, listening, speaking and critical thinking skills
- Purposefully write, read, discuss and react to multiple modes of communication
- Read, interpret and critically analyze informational and literary text to question, examine or dispute the author’s claims or message
- Develop and support arguments with evidence supported by multiple sources and mediums
- Read and discuss literary and informational text to understand human experience
- Read to acquire information
Reading
Your child will:
- Set a purpose for reading and apply prior knowledge about the reading topic
- Adjust speed to suit the purpose, text structure and difficulty of material
- Paraphrase and summarize material orally and in writing
- rRead informational and literary texts
- Interpret an author’s meaning and central ideas
- Judge the accuracy and usefulness of written information
- Select comprehension strategies appropriate to task and purpose
- Use strategies such as note-taking and graphic organizers to access, remember and use information
- Identify and explain implied ideas in text
- Apply reading strategies to a variety of written works
Writing
Your child will:
- Write informational, argumentative, and narrative text
- Establish clear focus that considers purpose, task and audience
- Group ideas into paragraphs in logical order
- Use a variety of supportive detail
- Edit with increasing accuracy; consult resources as needed
- Use technology to compose, revise, edit and publish
- Produce written text based on research from several sources
Speaking and listening
Your child will:
- Prepare and present oral presentations for a variety of audiences and purposes
- Practice effective listening skills in a variety of classroom situations and activities
- Evaluate effectiveness of oral presentations of self and others
- Express and justify arguments on various topics in a variety of contexts
Social studies
Focus: Ancient cultures of Africa, Europe and Asia
Your child will explore the ancient cultures through inquiry and the four lenses of geography, economy, civics or government, and history:
- Examine needs, institutions and experiences common to people of the modern and ancient world
- Identify contributions that early civilizations have made to the modern world
- Explore the impact of landforms, climate and natural resources on cultures
- Examine the political systems of the cultures studied
- Compare and contrast the modern culture in which we live with ancient cultures
- Identify causes of cultural changes
- Develop an awareness of and appreciation for the diversity of people and cultures
- Refine research skills and apply to topics studied
Mathematics
Your child will:
- Evaluate mathematical information, identify relationships, and test reasonableness of answers
- Explain, verbally and in writing, mathematical concepts, procedures and ideas
- Understand ratio concepts and use ratio reasoning to solve problems
- Compute addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division of fractions
- Divide fractions by fractions
- Perform computation with multi-digit numbers and find common factors and multiples
- Understand and apply the use of the rational number system
- Extend prior knowledge of algebraic expressions
- Reason and solve one variable equation and inequality
- Represent and analyze quantitative relationship between dependent and independent variables
- Solve real-world and mathematical problems involving area, surface area and volume
- Develop an understanding of statistical variability
Science
Your child will engage in science and engineering practices to:
- Investigate Earth’s place in the universe, including what makes up our solar system.
- Investigate and model how the motion of Earth explains seasons and eclipses
- Figure out that the Earth and life on Earth have changed over time
- Investigate the movement of tectonic plates and their effect on the surface of Earth
- Analyze how the materials in and on Earth’s crust change over time
- Investigate how water influences weather, circulates in the oceans, and shapes Earth’s surface
- Analyze how factors interact and influence weather and climate
- Determine how natural hazards can be predicted
- Investigate how human activities affect Earth systems
Fitness education
(Meets every-other day all year)
Your child will:
- Understand and apply the components of health-related fitness to achieve and maintain a healthy lifestyle
- Develop and maintain appropriate levels of skill-related fitness
- Develop understandings so that they can adopt healthy and physically active lifestyles
- Develop positive attitudes about physical activity so that they engage in healthy and physically active lifestyles
Music
(Meets every-other day all year)
Your child will select one of the following courses as his or her sixth-grade music experience. Students in chorus and instrumental music will participate in scheduled evening performances.
- Chorus – be exposed to many styles of music and development of two-part harmony
- General music – explore elements of music including rhythm, harmony, melody, movement, timbre, musical style and composition
- Instrumental music – learn music by performing on a traditional band instrument through group lessons and full instrument band
Social and emotional learning
- Growth mindset & goal-setting – students learn how to develop a growth mindset and apply research-based goal-setting strategies to their social and academic lives
- This unit’s content helps create classrooms that are connected and encouraging by helping students set and achieve collective and personal goals and learn from challenges and mistakes
- Emotion management – students learn how to build their emotion vocabularies, practice identifying their own and others’ emotions and recognize the importance of labeling and processing their emotions
- This unit’s content helps students understand and explore how past experiences as well as unique perspectives influence how they feel and respond to situations
- Empathy & kindness – students learn how to recognize kindness and act kindly toward others, and how to develop empathy by learning strategies to take others’ perspectives.
- this unit’s content helps students understand others’ points of view.
- Problem-solving – students learn how to process strong emotions, describe a problem, identify the wants and needs of others, think of and explore the outcomes of potential solutions, and pick the best solution.
- This unit’s content helps students ask, listen and empathize with all parties involved during problem-solving
Nine-week courses
Your child will participate in the following nine-week courses, called Quad Rotations:
Art
Your child will:
- Develop an understanding and appreciation of the elements and principles of design
- Test the natural characteristics of materials and their possibilities and limitations
- Develop personal responsibility for their learning and creative processes
- Express and communicate basic ideas by producing artwork
- Develop and utilize their knowledge, intuition, and personal experiences to develop ideas for artwork
Applied Engineering and Technology
Your child will explore and apply the engineering design process through:
- 3D printing
- coding
- material fabrication
Health and Wellness
Your child will:
- Reflect on and make choices in relation to personal health and wellness
- Learn about, apply concepts, and engage in goal setting around:
- social and emotional health
- financial health
- physical health
Family and Consumer Science
Your child will:
- Look at himself or herself as a member of a family and a school community
- Learn about, apply concepts, and engage in goal setting around:
- interpersonal skills
- nutrition
- personal safety
- cooking