6th Grade

Four 7th grade students and teachers wear safety goggles as they complete a scientific lab experiment

In this transitional year, students are expected to be more personally responsible for time management and self-advocacy. They are supported by their teachers who help them move from concrete to abstract thinking.

All sixth graders take Transitions, which teaches and supports sixth graders in all areas leading to student success. They learn how to organize, plan, and prepare their schedules with regard to navigating homework, co-curricular commitments, and the rhythm of the school day.

Building community is a primary focus in the sixth grade. Students are developing critical thinking skills and habits of the mind. Teachers facilitate the growth of each student’s abstract thinking and logical reasoning Skills like empathy, team-building, and inclusion are accomplished through grade level retreats, meetings, and classes. This takes place in all aspects of the sixth grade experience, including cross-curricular projects, field trips, and a whole class trip to Camp Kiwanilong.

Sixth Grade Curriculum

The Arts

Sixth graders rotate through woodshop, drama, studio art, media arts, and music during the academic year so that they can gain a wide appreciation for the different art forms.

Some essential questions for sixth grade art students include:

How can I manipulate sound, vibration, and silence?
How does my body respond to music, sound, and silence?
Why do people tell and listen to stories?
How do we use physicality (bodies and facial expressions) to communicate a character?
How do art/artists make artifacts that best reflect cultural values?

Drama: This class is a dynamic and playful exploration of theatrical storytelling and welcomes students at all levels of experience and interests. Students study basic acting and theater skills, including improvisation, puppetry, mask work, and mime. The work culminates in students writing an original play and performing it for an audience.

Media Arts: students dive into digital arts and photography, starting with Procreate. They learn composition and design, then head outdoors to capture the world's beauty through a lens. Back in class, they master photo editing with Snapseed, crafting stunning artworks. In visual storytelling, they create captivating tales using words and images, igniting a passion for self-expression and endless artistic exploration.

Music: Students apply elemental form to melodic and rhythmic concepts, and explore these concepts through percussion instruments, ukuleles, and garage band composition on iPads. In terms of movement, they define levels and body leading to help them understand the body as an artistic musical instrument and to increase their comfort level with movement. To build ensemble skills, students work on pentatonic-based pieces. Students discuss musicological concepts, such as lyrical text painting, tempo, and form so that they can be applied to music experiences outside the classroom.

Studio Art: The focus is "problem solving" using different mediums, including A4 printer paper, colored construction paper, green foam, and clay. Students learn how to use tools, such as Exacto knives, rubber cement, scissors, drawing pencils, erasers, and carving tools to create original art in the studio. Students engage in beginning, middle, and final critiques, as well as artist statements for each completed original artwork. Students also document their artwork for future reference.

Woodshop: Students use hand and power tools to construct and finish wooden boxes with rabbet joints. Along with joinery, students learn shop etiquette and safety, practice measuring and layout, and develop basic skills in finishing techniques and using essential hand tools. Later in the year, students carve spoons or other small objects with a knife and gouge, introducing students to tools and techniques that can be easily replicated at home without a specialized work space or expensive equipment.

English

Understanding their identity, applying advocacy, and learning to be an upstanding citizen are important parts of the sixth grade. The annual developmental theme revolves around the question of who is silenced in society, and the curriculum features expository texts, plays, and narrative texts.

Students use these lenses to answer essential guiding questions that include:

Who has voice? Who is muted?
What are contributing factors to having voice or being voiceless?
How do you give voice to those without it? Is it the role of those who are heard to help those who are not?
Do people have an obligation to help give voice to all communities? Does giving voice to others diminish the power of those who have it?

Students read three major texts in various genres and three texts in the literature circle format, meaning that students in small groups choose their own reading materials, set their own reading calendars, engage in small group discussions, and present a group project.

As writers, students produce a TED Talk, memoir, and essays, taking all major pieces through the writing workshop process: pre-writing, drafting, peer responding, revising, proofreading, and publishing.

Students’ experiential learning includes:

Creating and delivering a TedTalk
Creating a group presentation to act out a Shakesperian play

Humanities

Our Ancient Civilizations class employs inquiry and project-based learning within an interdependent classroom culture, guiding students through the fundamentals of history and the role of historians.

The curriculum encompasses geography, providing a spatial context for ancient civilizations, and explores the lives of ancient humans, emphasizing their innovations and societal structures through the visual narrative of Harari’s Sapiens: A Graphic History. As students engage with this interdisciplinary approach, they will be encouraged to critically analyze the ways in which geographical factors influenced the development of ancient societies and shaped the course of human history.

Students then delve into the defining characteristics of civilizations, leveraging this understanding in the culminating year-end project: a dynamic simulation that challenges them to craft and bring to life their own civilization. This immersive approach not only imparts a comprehensive understanding of ancient cultures but also fosters critical thinking, collaboration, and creativity, laying the foundation for a lifelong appreciation of history and its relevance to the present and future.

Life Skills

The transition from 5th grade to Middle School is an ideal time for students to learn about managing stress. The developmental theme is “changes,” and the curricular feature is independent learning.

Students use these lenses to answer essential guiding questions, including:

What am I doing to stay well?
How do I take care of my changing body?
How do I make healthy choices around substances?

There are two primary objectives: developing strategies and resources for wellness and understanding the impact of media, including the dangers of social media and inaccurate information, as this is a time when student use of technology increases.

Students will learn about media balance by evaluating their digital footprint and digital citizenship. Topics covered include media impacts on our brains, extensive data sharing, privacy, cyberbullying, and responding to hate speech online. Through activities, demos, videos, and group/class discussions, students will explore how these concepts and philosophies apply to their own life. Students will be encouraged to think and act from a place of thoughtful interactions and decision making through understanding the effect it can make on their lives.

Students also focus on better understanding themselves and others. This includes taking care of changing bodies, learning about the impact of dopamine on the brain, recognizing nicotine products and their impact on the systems of the body, understanding reproduction, conceptualizing gender differences, LGBTQ orientation, and gender fluidity. These topics provide a starting point for discussion about bullying and teasing, and recognizing discrimination and harassment.

Mathematics

Most students take the Sixth Grade Math course, which is designed to integrate a prior foundation of number sense and basic operations with more complex calculations and problem-solving.

Sixth Grade Math includes these concepts:

Introductory statistics and probability
Understanding of and operations with integers
Order of operations including exponents and integers
Integration and application of fractions, decimals, and percent
Understanding of ratios and proportional reasoning
The use of basic algebraic expressions and equations
Factoring

Modern Languages

Students gain proficiency in listening, speaking, reading, and writing in the language they selected to study in Middle School—French, Mandarin, or Spanish.

The developmental theme regardless of language chosen is “increasing students’ independence in accessing resources and identifying strategies for linguistic growth.” The curricular feature is the influence of culture and/or religion in a language.

Students use these lenses to answer essential guiding questions that include:

Who will I become as a learner?
How do I develop self-awareness?
How do I build language proficiency?
How can knowledge of language and culture influence my life goals?

The focus is on learning the structure of the language and practical vocabulary words that are relevant and meaningful to personal and school life. As much of the instruction as possible is in the target language. Teachers partner with students to instruct in best learning strategies, then experiment and refine them.

By the end of the year students will be skilled at using rote memorization and formulaic expressions to communicate and will have increased their understanding of linguistic comparison.

Science

In sixth grade, students examine the natural phenomena that shape both their inner and outer worlds. Through inquisitive and lab-based learning, students engage content from three major scientific disciplines: chemistry, biology, and geology. The purpose of this course is to introduce new scientific content and practices, as well as reconfirm and deepen existing conceptual knowledge.

To begin, students learn that weather is more than checking an application on their phones. Students grapple with ideas about how atoms and molecules interact, matter changes of state, and energy transfers before they launch into bigger ideas involving moving air masses, different types of weather fronts, convection cells forming winds, and the development of severe weather.

Next, students explore how organ systems interact to support each and every cell in the body. Life is a series of complex interactions. Students will use case studies to investigate these interactions in order to understand how bodily systems respond and adjust to change.

Students end the year by examining Earth as an object in space. Students learn how to determine the kind and number of objects in the cosmos by observing their individual motions and interactions with one another. Furthermore, students endeavor to anchor their sense of place by looking at the planetary history of Earth.

Wellness

Sixth graders are exposed to the basic skills and strategies needed to thrive during games and activities. This allows them to achieve greater success and self-confidence while exploring a variety of movements. Wellness supports and encourages students to take healthy risks and to learn by doing.

Students are able to apply what they have learned by answering essential guiding questions that include:

What does it mean to be physically active?
How does my participation impact my success in a variety of activities and sports?
How does my frequency of physical activity affect my mental health?

All aspects of Wellness are experiential, as it involves kinesthetic learning (or learning by doing). The curriculum not only teaches to the whole child but also focuses on the relationship between physical, social, and mental/emotional health. Several examples of physical activities that we provide include dancing, jogging, running, jumping, throwing, catching, and walking. We emphasize proper body positioning such as athletic stance to show preparedness for a variety of movements.