Sixth Grade Curriculum
English-Language Arts
READING
Word Analysis, Fluency, and Systematic Vocabulary Development
Students:
- Use their knowledge of word origins and word relationships, as well as historical and literary context clues, to determine the meaning of specialized vocabulary.
- Understand the precise meaning of grade-level-appropriate words.
Reading Comprehension (Focus on Informational Materials)
Students:
- Read and understand grade-level-appropriate material.
- Describe and connect the essential ideas, arguments, and perspectives of the text by using their knowledge of text structure, organization, and purpose.
- Continue to make progress toward the goal of by grade eight annually reading one million words on their own, including a wide range of grade level appropriate narrative and expository text.
Literary Response and Analysis
Students:
- Read and respond to historically or culturally significant words of literature that reflect and enhance their studies of history and social science.
- Clarify ideas and connect them to other literary works.
WRITING
Writing Strategies
Students:
- Write clear, coherent, and focused essays that contain formal introductions, supporting evidence and conclusions.
- Exhibit an awareness of the audience and purpose
- Progress through the stages of the writing process as needed.
Writing Applications (Genres and Their Characteristics)
Students:
- Write narrative, expository, persuasive, and descriptive texts of at least 500 to 700 words in each genre.
- Demonstrate a command of standard American English and the research, organizational, and drafting strategies outlined in the writing standards.
WRITTEN AND ORAL ENGLISH LANGUAGE CONVENTIONS
- Students write and speak with a command of Standard English conventions appropriate to this grade level.
LISTENING AND SPEAKING
Listening and Speaking Strategies
Students:
- Deliver focused, coherent presentations that convey ideas clearly and relate to the background and interests of the audience.
- Evaluate the content of oral communication.
Speaking Applications (Genres and Their Characteristics)
Students:
- Deliver well-organized formal presentations employing traditional rhetorical strategies (e.g., narration, exposition, persuasion, description).
- Demonstrate a command of standard American English and the organizational and delivery strategies outlined in Listening and standards.
Mathematics
By the end of grade six, students have mastered the four arithmetic operation with whole numbers, positive fractions, positive decimals, and positive and negative integers; they accurately compute and solve problems. They apply their knowledge to statistics and probability. Students understand the concepts of mean, median, and mode of data sets and how to calculate the range. They analyze data and sampling process for possible bias and misleading conclusions; they use addition and multiplication of fractions routinely to calculate the probabilities for compound events. Students conceptually understand and work with ratios and proportions; they compute percentages (e.g., tax, tips, interest). Students know about π and the formulas for the circumference and area of a circle. They use letters for numbers in formulas involving geometric shapes and in ratios to represent an unknown part of an expression. They solve one-step linear equations.
NUMBER SENSE
Students:
- Compare and order positive and negative fractions, decimals, and mixed numbers and solve problems involving fractions, ratios, proportions, and percentages.
- Calculate and solve problems involving addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.
ALGEBRA AND FUNCTIONS
Students:
- Write verbal expressions and sentences s algebraic expressions and equations.
- Evaluate algebraic expressions, solves simple linear equations, and graph and interpret their results.
- Analyze and use tables, graphs, and rules to solve problems involving rates and proportions.
- Investigate geometric patterns and describe them algebraically.
MEASUREMENT AND GEOMETRY
Students:
- Deepen their understanding of measurement of plane and solid shapes and use this understanding to solve problems.
- Identify and describe the properties of two-dimensional figures.
STATISTICS, DATE ANALYSIS, AND PROBABILITY
Students:
- Compute and analyze statistical measurements for data sets.
- Use data samples of a population and describe the characteristics and limitations of the samples.
- Determine theoretical and experimental probabilities and use these to make predictions about events.
MATHEMATICAL REASONING
Students:
- Make decisions about how to approach problems.
- Use strategies, skills, and concepts in finding solutions.
- Move beyond a particular problem by generalizing to other situations.
History-Social Science
World History and Geography: Ancient Civilizations
Students in grade six expand their understanding of history by studying the people and events that ushered in the dawn of the major Western and non-Western ancient civilizations. Geography is of special significance in the development of the human story. Continued emphasis is placed on the everyday lives, problems, and accomplishments of people, their role in developing social, economic, and political structures, as well as in establishing and spreading ideas that helped transform the world forever. Students develop higher levels of critical thinking by considering why civilizations developed, where and when they did, why they became dominate, and why they declined. Students analyze the interactions among the various cultures, emphasizing their enduring contributions and the link, despite time, between the contemporary and ancient worlds.
Students:
- Describe what is known through archeological studies of the early physical and cultural development of mankind from the Paleolithic Era to the agricultural revolution.
- Analyze the geographic, political, economic, religious, and social structures of the early civilizations of Mesopotamia , Egypt and Kush .
- Analyze the geographic, political, economic, religious, and social structures of the early civilization of Ancient Greece.
- Analyze the geographic, political, economic, religious, and social structures of the early civilizations of India .
- Analyze the geographic, political, economic, religious, and social structures of the early civilizations of China .
- Analyze the geographic, police, economic, religious, and social structures in the development of Rome .
CHRONOLOGICAL AND SPATIAL THINKING
Students:
- Explain how major events are related to each other in time.
- Construct various time lines of key events, people, and periods of the historical era they are studying.
- Use a variety of maps and documents to identify physical and cultural features of neighborhoods, cities, states and countries and to explain the historical migration of people, expansion and disintegration of empires, and the growth of economic systems.
RESEARCH, EVIDENCE, AND POINT OF VIEW
Students:
- Frame questions that can be answered by historical study and research.
- Distinguish fact from opinion in historical narratives and stories.
- Distinguish relevant from irrelevant information, essential from incidental information, and verifiable from unverifiable information in historical narratives
- Detect the different historical points of view on historical events and determine the context in which the historical statements were made (the questions asked, sources used, author’s perspectives).
HISTORICAL INTERPRETATION
Students:
- Explain the central issues and problems of the past, placing people and events in a matrix of time and place.
- Understand and distinguish cause, effect, sequence, and correlation in historical events, including the long-and-short-term causal relations.
- Explain the sources of historical continuity and how the combination of ideas and events explains the emergence of new patterns.
- Recognize the role of chance, oversight, and error in history.
- Recognize that interpretations of history are subject to change as new information is uncovered.
- Interpret basic indicators of economic performance and conduct cost/benefit analyses of economic and political issues.
Science
FOCUS ON EARTH SCIENCE
Plate Tectonics and Earth’s Structure
- Students understand that plate tectonics explains important features of Earth’s surface and major geologic events.
Shaping of the Earth’s Surface
- Students understand that topography is reshaped by weathering of rock and soil and by the transportation and deposition of sediment.
Heat (Thermal Energy) (Physical Science)
- Students understand that heat moves in a predictable flow from warmer objects to cooler objects until all objects are at the same temperature.
Energy in the Earth System
- Students understand that many phenomena on Earth’s surface are affected by the transfer of energy through radiation and convection currents.
Ecology (Life Science)
- Students understand that organisms in ecosystems exchange energy and nutrients among themselves and with the environment.
Resources
- Students understand that sources of energy and materials differ in amounts, distribution, usefulness, and the time required for their formation.
Investigation and Experimentation
- Students understand that scientific progress is made by asking meaningful questions and conducting careful investigations.
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