Grade 6

Respect

Each student will respect other's personal space, ethnic and/or racial background, gender, school property, and no "put downs".

Responsibility

Each student will work to their potential and tell a teacher/staff member when they or a peer are in need. Approach everything with honesty and integrity.

Preparedness

Each student is expected to bring their charged chromebook to school as well as have a pencil, planner, and class materials.

Effort

Students will put forth their best effort in all things:  class work, homework, hall behavior, extra curricular activities, etc.

New Expectations for Sixth Grade

• Move from writing opinions to writing arguments. Arguments are more formal and objective, and they rely on evidence (like quotations or statistic
• When citing evidence from a text, decide whether to quote the text direc or to paraphrase it (put it in different words).
• Work on longer research projects as well as shorter ones. Be flexible: adjust a project’s
• focus or research question as needed.
• Decide on goals (what needs to be done) and roles (who will be responsible for what)
• when working in a group.

By the End of Sixth Grade, Students Can

• Read a play or poem silently. Then listen to someone reading or performing it aloud.
• Compare the two experiences.
• Describe how a story’s plot develops and how characters change during the story.
• Summarize a text objectively, without personal opinions.
• Understand how different words can have similar meanings (denotations) but very different feelings (connotations): for example, thrifty and stingy.
• Understand what plagiarism is and how to avoid it. 
• Decide whether a speaker is citing enough evidence to support their claims.
• Analyze the impact of a specific word, phrase, sentence, paragraph, or section in a text.
• Use parentheses, commas, and dashes around words that add extra information to a sentence. For example, write The three boys—Joey, Amid, and Juan—went to look for the missing notebook

Focus Areas for Sixth Grade

• Solve word problems with ratios and rates. For example, use ratios to compare how many votes two candidates received in an election.
• Understand and use negative numbers. For example, explain which temperature is colder: -9 degrees or -20 degrees.
• Use variables (like x) and write expressions (like 8x + 7) and equations to solve problems. For example, use a formula to find the volume of a swimming pool.
• Understand and use language related to basic statistics. For example, ask questions like How much water do people use in my town?
• Solve real-world problems related to area, surface area, and volume. For example, find how much paint is needed to paint a room.

By the End of Sixth Grade, Students Can

• Explain the concepts of ratio and unit rate. 
• Solve problems by finding the percentage of a quantity (like 70% of 280).
• Divide fractions by other fractions: for example, 2/3 ÷ 3/4.
• Fluently (quickly and correctly) divide multi-digit numbers (like 684) using the standard algorithm.
• Fluently (quickly and correctly) add, subtract, multiply, and divide multidigit decimal numbers (like 47.06) using the standard algorithms.
• Place negative fractions, positive fractions, and whole numbers on a number line.
• Compare and find the value of algebraic expressions (like y + y + y and 3y).
• Use a grid (graph) to show how two variables (like distance and time) are related.
• Find the median (middle number), mean (average), mode (most common number), and range (distance between the lowest and highest numbers) of a data set.
• Create visual displays of data: for example, dot plots, histograms, and box plots.

Focus Areas for Sixth Grade

• Understand how fossils and rock layers tell us how the Earth has changed over long periods of time.
• Understand that different systems in the human body (like the skeletal and digestive  systems) work together to keep a person alive.
• Understand the concept of density. Explore materials’ differences in density. 
• Understand that a wave has energy and is a repeating pattern with a specific length, frequency, and amplitude.
• Explain how different engineering solutions have different impacts on people and the environment.

By the End of Sixth Grade, Students Can

• Use models to explain eclipses and the phases of the Moon. For example, show the positions of the Sun, Moon, and Earth during a full moon.
• Use maps and other evidence to explain that the Earth’s continents have changed shape and moved great distances over many millions of years.
• Explain that the Earth and its solar system are in the Milky Way galaxy and that there
• are many galaxies in the universe.
• Give evidence that plants and animals are made of cells. Use a model to show how different parts of a cell help with different things, like providing food and energy and
• getting rid of waste.
• Do experiments to show how chemical reactions can give off (release) or take in (absorb) energy.
• Use diagrams and models to explain how sound and light waves can be reflected and absorbed and how they travel through different materials.
• Draw a solution to a design problem. Use scale accurately. For example, make every inch in the drawing represent a foot in the real world.

Focus Areas for Sixth Grade

• Study places and peoples from the perspectives of different social scientists (like geographers and economists).
• Understand how humans first began to form complex societies.
• Explore the peoples and physical environments (geographies) of ancient socie
• Explain how geography and climate affect how people live and work.

By the End of Sixth Grade, Students Can

• Give examples of what work can look like in different social sciences (like political science,  economics, geography, history, and archaeology).
• Make a timeline to show how human society began and developed. 
• Describe ancient societies in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Phoenicia, Israel, the Arab Peninsula, and sub-Saharan Africa.
• Describe the cultures and ways of life of Native Peoples in the Caribbean, Central America, and South America.
• Find important physical features (like rivers) and political features (like cities) on maps of Western Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, Central America, the Caribbean, and South America.
• Explain how aspects of the climate and geography of sub-Saharan Africa (like droughts) have affected where people live and move.
• Explain how early trade in gold, ivory, and enslaved peoples across the Sahara affected the larger world.
• Use information from a variety of  sources to report on a history or social science topic in speech or writing.