Sixth Grade
NFS Curriculum Update :: January, 2016
ART
Sixth grade artists will spend the month of January exploring printmaking. Students will begin by learning the printing technique for their carved linoleum blocks and will experiment with color application and ink/paper combinations as well as creating a final display. Later students will experiment with other printmaking techniques like monoprinting and serigraphy. It is sure to be an exciting month in the art room!
COMMUNITY SERVICE
6-1
Students will visit Woolman residents at the end of the month for a special lesson on floral arranging with Newtown Floral Company. We will give our creations to Woolman residents.
6-2
Friends will kick off the month playing video games with the proud members of the Pennswood Panthers Wii Sports club! They will return on the 22nd for board games with Woolman residents.
English
Sixth grade students will hit the ground running after break! We will begin by briefly reviewing the structure of a five-paragraph essay, focusing on crafting meaningful and clear thesis statements. We will then explore the concept of theme and learn how to use the Signposts from our close reading unit to identify themes in short stories. After practicing naming different themes, students will use their new knowledge to write their second five-paragraph essay focusing on a theme in a short story of their choice. Mini-lessons will center on transition sentences and analyzing evidence. Towards the end of January students will write their final five paragraph essay, comparing and contrasting two short stories. Their final essay will happen as an in-class assessment over a span of three days. Finally, students will move forward with the next two units in their Sadlier Vocabulary book.
HEALTH
In 6th grade boys health, January begins with our drug and alcohol speaker, Ron Rolon, from the Bucks County IU. He will talk to the class about the dangers of drugs and alcohol and the importance of making responsible decisions. In the following weeks the boys and girls health classes will be combined for lessons, activities and discussions related to tobacco, drugs and alcohol lead by Coach Adam and Nurse Cheryl.
LATIN
This month the sixth grade Latin students will wrap up their work with Lesson III, achieving mastery of present tense verb forms and the direct object construction. We will then move on to Lesson IV, which introduces second declension. This is a new group of primarily masculine nouns with a novel set of endings to memorize. Learning this declension will greatly expand students’ vocabulary options! Students will discover how to apply these nouns in sentence constructions in the same ways they are able to apply first declension nouns.
MATH
We will start the quarter reviewing the algebraic concepts we have covered thus far, including single-step equations, distributive property, combining like terms, and evaluating expressions. We will focus on math vocabulary and the importance of "speaking math." After the review, we will start our unit on rates, ratios, and percents. Students will hark back to their science unit on ratios and we will build on their prior knowledge of percents. We will learn about unit rate and use unit rate to find the best deals in a variety of shopping situations. At the end of the month we will begin our unit on integers.
MUSIC
Sixth grade students are continuing to prepare their show. We will begin to work on the stage and learn choreography! Please look for a calendar that is coming home with your sixth grader. I will be emailing you shortly with details on the show date and one or two after school rehearsals.
P.E.
January begins with the continuation of our basketball unit, as students will participate in a three on three basketball tournament. Each student will be placed on a team based on skill level and teams will compete against the other teams in the class. Standings will be kept as well as playoffs and a championship game. This month the fitness challenge will be the shuttle run. Each class will use the rock wall again this month. We will also start to focus on jump rope in class as we prepare for the fifth annual Jump Rope for Heart event in February.
SCIENCE
Sixth graders will study topographic maps and their uses. Students will be able to read, interpret, and redraw in three dimensions a topographic map. Making a topographic map of the hill from the playground to the basketball court will be the culminating project for this unit. We will then study weathering, soil formation, erosion, and deposition (from rivers, glaciers, waves, and wind) and what role all of these factors play in Earth’s changing surface. In February, the plan is to be ready to study fossils and dinosaurs!
SOCIAL STUDIES
In January the sixth grade social studies students will complete their unit on Quaker belief and practice. The unit will culminate with an FRQ (Free Response Question) Paragraph test. The children will be expected to select three topics from our Quakerism unit and write one paragraph about each. After Quakerism we will move on to our unit on Islam. We will explore the beliefs, practices, and diversity of Islam through a variety of lessons and a simple research project. In January we will also take our first social studies field trip. We will be traveling to New York City to visit Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and Buddhist houses of worship. It is a wonderful hands-on experience for the students. They will surely learn a great deal about different religions and different cultures.
SPANISH
Sixth grade Spanish students will learn to construct interrogative sentences using, question adverbs/pronouns, using intonation, proper placement of parts of speech, and interrogation markings . They will compose dialog proper for interview format and work with partners interviewing each other representing themselves or someone else. They will apply previously learned vocabulary and will learn chore and routine expressions to include what they have to do and what their daily routine is like.
UPPER SCHOOL 101
The beginning of the new year is a great time to revisit goals, check in with progress and reflect on how we have grown since September. That is exactly what we will be doing in US101 this month!
UPCOMING EVENTS
Thursday 1/7 - Bucks County IU Drug and Alcohol Assembly
Thursday 1/14 - 6th Grade Field Trip to NYC
Friday 1/15 - SPICES Day & TASC Laser Tag Friendraiser @ Ultrazone
Monday 1/18 - MLK Jr. Day; School Closed
Tuesday 1/19 - Friday 1/22 - Education Week
Friday 1/22 - End of Second Quarter
Friday 1/29 - Ski Club Trip #1