Dear Families,
We’ve been busy learning and having fun in sixth grade these past two weeks, ending in a great afternoon of kayaking with the Outing Club on Spofford Lake Friday afternoon. Read on to hear about what’s going on in sixth grade and get some ideas for questions to ask your child! We all know it’s sometimes hard to find out details about your child’s day by asking “How was your day?” so I’ll give you some ideas for questions to ask.
Class Behavior:
Overall this year’s sixth grade is a very respectful and independent group. For the most part I observe students being kind and helpful and able to transition to quiet choice if they finish early without disrupting others. Each year’s class, however, presents a different dynamic and different strengths and challenges. The challenge I am finding with this group is there is a pattern of attention getting behavior by a few students that is fueled by the reactions of others. This results in class disruptions and distractions that take up learning time. Instead of science class Friday afternoon, I chose to address this head on. It’s still early in the year and I want to establish new patterns. We had a direct conversation about this with the whole class (without using student names) last Friday. The tone of the conversation was serious and respectful. After establishing that every student in the class knew what I was referring to when I said attention getting behaviors and the responses that encourage them, we shared thoughts on:
Reading:
We are now at least a quarter of the way through our read aloud of Wonder. Ask your child to tell you about the story. We are using this book to teach a variety of reading and writing skills, such as reviewing parts of speech and dialogue, vocabulary and analysis of characters. Perhaps more importantly, the book is a vehicle to discuss kindness and how our actions- or inaction- even when they are small can affect others. This past week a good friend of mine and former elementary teacher, Lauren Ashley, joined our reading class to do read aloud and talk with the class about her own disability: having only one arm. There are many parallels between her experiences and that of the character, Auggie, in Wonder. We look forward to having Lauren return on a regular basis to help deepen our understanding of the book and how to interact with people with differences. Ask your sixth grader to share more about Lauren’s visit!
Math:
We have wrapped up our fraction review (though we will be working with fractions all year long) and also finished a review of factors, multiples, prime and composite numbers. Students had a mini-quiz on these vocabulary words on Friday. A bunch of students will need to re-quiz as it is very easy to mix up factors and multiples. I have kids retake this quiz until they pass with a solid score, as these concepts are the foundation for many things we do in sixth grade math. Working with fractions and understanding with ratios depends on a solid grasp of factors and multiples (as well as multiplication facts!). We have also reviewed area and perimeter. We will use area models to picture multiplication of fractions and decimals so students need to have this concept. Ask your child to explain these terms to you: area, perimeter, prime number, factor, multiple. You could also ask them to teach you the factor multiple game.
Writing:
This past week we reviewed how to write a “Constructed response” which is basically how to answer a question or statement that requires a paragraph answer- something they will be asked to do across the subject areas on into college (and in real life, such as on a job application). We reviewed and practiced skills such as topic sentence, details and strong conclusions. We will wrap up this mini-unit next week and begin a more intensive unit on narrative writing in which students will focus on realistic fiction. To get a benchmark for where their skills are now, to compare to the end of the unit, students also had 45 minute to write their best narrative (in this case a personal narrative since that’s easier to in a short time frame- but the writing skills are the same).
Science:
We started the year with a review of the 8 scientific practices (see the science curriculum page for a list of these). I think it is important for students to be aware of what they are doing and the ways they are thinking that are characteristic of science. Then we launched into a unit on Light. I like this because there are a lot of hands on activities kids can do with light which makes it a fun first science unit. In addition what they learn in this unit they will be able to apply and build on later in the year when we study energy and energy transformations (light is one form of energy) and climate change (which is fueled by the balance between the gain of energy (light energy from the sun)on earth and the rate of loss of that energy). Understanding reflection and absorption of light on the basic level we study it in sixth grade will help them understand the basic foundation of climate science later in the year. This week we integrated math and science. During math students learned/reviewed angles and how to measure them with protractors. Then they used this skill to determine the law of reflection (angle of incidence equals angle of reflection) using laser pointers and mirrors. Ask your child to tell you about some of the investigations they have done with light.
Social Studies:
We will be launching a geography unit soon. Stay tuned!
Please be in touch if you have any questions.
Sincerely,
Laura White
We’ve been busy learning and having fun in sixth grade these past two weeks, ending in a great afternoon of kayaking with the Outing Club on Spofford Lake Friday afternoon. Read on to hear about what’s going on in sixth grade and get some ideas for questions to ask your child! We all know it’s sometimes hard to find out details about your child’s day by asking “How was your day?” so I’ll give you some ideas for questions to ask.
Class Behavior:
Overall this year’s sixth grade is a very respectful and independent group. For the most part I observe students being kind and helpful and able to transition to quiet choice if they finish early without disrupting others. Each year’s class, however, presents a different dynamic and different strengths and challenges. The challenge I am finding with this group is there is a pattern of attention getting behavior by a few students that is fueled by the reactions of others. This results in class disruptions and distractions that take up learning time. Instead of science class Friday afternoon, I chose to address this head on. It’s still early in the year and I want to establish new patterns. We had a direct conversation about this with the whole class (without using student names) last Friday. The tone of the conversation was serious and respectful. After establishing that every student in the class knew what I was referring to when I said attention getting behaviors and the responses that encourage them, we shared thoughts on:
- What kinds of behaviors are attention getting? Can you give examples?
- What ways do other kids encourage these behaviors?
- How does it make you feel when these behaviors happen in class?
- How do these behaviors affect others?
- What will our year be like together if these behaviors continue?
- What ways can kids discourage these behaviors?
- How should teachers deal with these behaviors?
- What should the consequences be?
- Why might a student choose to do attention getting behaviors?
- How can we make sure to include and support kids who seek attention in inappropriate ways so they can make changes and not be excluded?
- What role(s) have you played this year so far (attention-getter, instigator, encourager, positive helper). Explain.
- What will you do to help improve this situation in the future? Explain.
Reading:
We are now at least a quarter of the way through our read aloud of Wonder. Ask your child to tell you about the story. We are using this book to teach a variety of reading and writing skills, such as reviewing parts of speech and dialogue, vocabulary and analysis of characters. Perhaps more importantly, the book is a vehicle to discuss kindness and how our actions- or inaction- even when they are small can affect others. This past week a good friend of mine and former elementary teacher, Lauren Ashley, joined our reading class to do read aloud and talk with the class about her own disability: having only one arm. There are many parallels between her experiences and that of the character, Auggie, in Wonder. We look forward to having Lauren return on a regular basis to help deepen our understanding of the book and how to interact with people with differences. Ask your sixth grader to share more about Lauren’s visit!
Math:
We have wrapped up our fraction review (though we will be working with fractions all year long) and also finished a review of factors, multiples, prime and composite numbers. Students had a mini-quiz on these vocabulary words on Friday. A bunch of students will need to re-quiz as it is very easy to mix up factors and multiples. I have kids retake this quiz until they pass with a solid score, as these concepts are the foundation for many things we do in sixth grade math. Working with fractions and understanding with ratios depends on a solid grasp of factors and multiples (as well as multiplication facts!). We have also reviewed area and perimeter. We will use area models to picture multiplication of fractions and decimals so students need to have this concept. Ask your child to explain these terms to you: area, perimeter, prime number, factor, multiple. You could also ask them to teach you the factor multiple game.
Writing:
This past week we reviewed how to write a “Constructed response” which is basically how to answer a question or statement that requires a paragraph answer- something they will be asked to do across the subject areas on into college (and in real life, such as on a job application). We reviewed and practiced skills such as topic sentence, details and strong conclusions. We will wrap up this mini-unit next week and begin a more intensive unit on narrative writing in which students will focus on realistic fiction. To get a benchmark for where their skills are now, to compare to the end of the unit, students also had 45 minute to write their best narrative (in this case a personal narrative since that’s easier to in a short time frame- but the writing skills are the same).
Science:
We started the year with a review of the 8 scientific practices (see the science curriculum page for a list of these). I think it is important for students to be aware of what they are doing and the ways they are thinking that are characteristic of science. Then we launched into a unit on Light. I like this because there are a lot of hands on activities kids can do with light which makes it a fun first science unit. In addition what they learn in this unit they will be able to apply and build on later in the year when we study energy and energy transformations (light is one form of energy) and climate change (which is fueled by the balance between the gain of energy (light energy from the sun)on earth and the rate of loss of that energy). Understanding reflection and absorption of light on the basic level we study it in sixth grade will help them understand the basic foundation of climate science later in the year. This week we integrated math and science. During math students learned/reviewed angles and how to measure them with protractors. Then they used this skill to determine the law of reflection (angle of incidence equals angle of reflection) using laser pointers and mirrors. Ask your child to tell you about some of the investigations they have done with light.
Social Studies:
We will be launching a geography unit soon. Stay tuned!
Please be in touch if you have any questions.
Sincerely,
Laura White