6th Grade Newsletter

December 5-9

Semester Exams: The countdown is on for the Semester Exams. The 6th Grade team is finishing up with the curriculum for the 2nd Nine Weeks and the information we are teaching this week, will be on the exams.

READING: Students will finish their unit on Expository Literature analyzing different types of expository text.

MATH: Students will continue their unit on Statistics, Graphing and Measures of Central Tendencies. This week students will create a Bar Graph It! Project for a Major Grade. Projects will be completed in class and are due Wednesday. Students will have a quiz over Mean, Median, Mode and Range this Wednesday. The quiz will be one of the last daily grades for the semester. Students will begin working on their math review in class this Wednesday.

SCIENCE: Students will complete their unit on Earth’s Structure and Processes and The Rock Cycle. A test will be given over Plate Tectonics and the Rock Cycle this Friday.

SOCIAL STUDIES: Students will continue to apply the 5 themes of Social Studies to North America and Canada. Some of this unit will carry over into the 3rd nine weeks.

WRITING: Students will complete their final drafts for their Literary Response papers. Papers are due this Friday for a Major Grade.

TUTORIALS WILL BE HELD THIS WEEK. SEMESTER EXAM REVIEW’S WILL BE HANDED OUT BETWEEN WEDNESDAY AND FRIDAY OF THIS WEEK.

Science Test Coming Up

There will be a test Chemical and Physical Changes, Density, Mixtures, Solutions, & Compounds next Monday, October 31. I am covering Physical and Chemical Changes tomorrow, and everything else this week will be a review for Monday's test.

I have also updated the blog with some of the pictures from our weekly Science Labs with explanations. I am sorry that I have been unable to keep my blog updated until now. Thank you for your understanding.

Lab: Scientific Process

While studying scientific process and Properties of Matter I brought in two different color eggs. I had students do a simple egg drop and make a hypothesis as to whether color effects the the rate at which an egg breaks.

Changes in Our Grade Level

You have probably heard by now that we lost one of our sixth grade teachers. Ms. Leibert was reassigned to teach second grade due to an influx in students in the lower grades. I am now teaching three 85 minute blocks of Social Studies.

Lab: Measurement Tools

We conducted a lab to show the difference between how to weigh an object using a Spring Scale and how to find the mass of an object using the Triple Beam Balance. This is a concept that is somewhat confusing to students, but I wanted to make it clear to the students by bringing in something that they would not forgot. To show that weight is really the force of gravity bearing down on an object I brought in a whole fish. Students used a Spring Scale to find the weight of the fish.

Students also used a variety of measurement tools to find different temperature values. One beaker contained room temperature water. We added ice to the same water to see how much the temperature of the water changed.

Penny Lab

While studying the Scientific Method we looked at the miniscus on the surface of a penny when we added liquid to it. We wanted to discover how many drops of liquid could sit on the surface without overflowing. The variable was water, and then we added liquid detergent to the water to see if it changed the number of drops that could be added to the penny. Just ask one of our sixth graders to see wwhat the results of this experiment were.

Science Labs

We had our first Science Lab last Friday and I was somewhat concerned when I graded the lab sheets this weekend that students did not take full advantage of the time that they were given during lab to complete the assignment and respond according to the directions in their lab sheet. This was a graded assignment that several students did not do very well on. Had the students taken the time needed to complete it during lab, rather than "play around" this would have been an easy grade for them. I will be talking to students about this lab and hopefully they will take this Thursday's lab seriously. We will be measuring how many drops of water can fit on the surface of a penny.

Progress Reports go home sometime next week. We are waiting to hear what day.