6th Grade Newsletter
Autrey Mill Lions
Second Semester Reminders!
-There is absolutely NO GUM allowed in 6th grade!
-Charge your iPad every night (no charging allowed at school)
-Check your school supplies to see if you need to restock (pencils, colored pencils, etc.)!
-Come prepared to help sessions (pencil/pen/charged iPad/questions)!
-Hoods on jackets and sweatshirts should be down/off your head at all times during school!
The best way to keep up to date on class content and 6th grade news!
Important Upcoming Dates:
March 11- Professional Development Day (No school for students)
April 1 to April 5- Spring Break
Academic Information
Reading:
Our next unit in Reading, Transfer of Skills, will focus on putting together all the reading strategies we have learned in class and being able to apply them to assessments across all content areas and on our state-wide assessments. Our first mini-unit: Reading Stories will focus on Fiction, Fables, Folktales and Memoirs. Mini-lessons will focus on specific strategies such as simple road-mapping, answering part-to-whole questions in passages, reading for point of view and perspective, discerning character traits from small details, noticing how the setting affects other story elements and making the most of foreshadowing. Students should continue to read high interest books at school and at home in order to maintain reading stamina.
Math:
6 On Level Math
When we return after the teacher workday, 6th grade math will be discussing graphing, distance between points on a graph and reflecting points on a graph. Students will have their Unit 6 test on Tuesday, March 19th. This will cover the above topics, as well as integers and their opposites, absolute values, and comparing/ordering rational numbers. There will be a study guide given to students Thursday, March 14th for this test. We will also be celebrating Pi Day on March 14th. Please keep an eye out for an email from your student’s Math teacher for details on this celebration!
6A Math
Next week in Math we will be celebrating Pi day on Tuesday. Then we will review surface area and have a quiz on 3/14 that will cover surface area of prisms and pyramids. Then we will find volume of prisms and pyramids. The test is scheduled for 3/21. Then we will do cross sections of 3D shapes.
7A Math
We are finishing finding volume of prisms and pyramids. Our Unit 5 Geometry test has been moved to Thursday, 3/14. Students received their study guide and it is due on Monday, 3/11.
To celebrate pi day, we are doing a breakout lesson on Friday, 3/15 since our test is on Thursday. Thank you to all parents who have signed up to donate a pie, supplies or their time. It isn’t too late to send in something or volunteer to come in and help. Look for our pi day email with directions and the link for the Google Doc sign up.
Unit 6 Inferences is a shorter unit. We will be learning about different types of samples, using samples to make inferences about a population, and differentiating between biased and non-biased surveys. There will be a quiz on Thursday, 3/21. Students will find the mean, median, mode, range and mean absolute deviation of a given data set.
Science:
Our study of astronomy is in full swing! So far we have studied, seasons, the origin of the universe, galaxies, and gravity. Out unit will continue with focusing on the solar system how our understanding of the solar system has changed over time. In addition to what we cover in class and insert into our ISN, these topics are covered by Unit 1 Lessons 1, 3, 4, 5 and 6 in the textbook.
Astronomy is such an exciting unit! In the catalog, students can download the app “Star Walk 2 Sky Map”. With this app, they can hold their iPads up to the sky and it will label everything there! Check out https://earthsky.org/tonight to see what will be visible in the night sky in March.
Our Astronomy Unit Test will be Thursday, March 28th – the Thursday before Spring Break. They will receive their study guide one week prior to the test and we will go over it in class the day before the test. If your student will be absent on the day of the test, please email their science teacher to arrange a time to take the test.
Social Studies:
We are currently studying the major influences of Latin American Culture and the history of Latin America. We are approximately halfway through our unit, having finished looking at the Ancient Cultures of Latin America and the arrival of Europeans to the Americas.
We will start studying Cuba specifically on March 12. We will study through the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Bay of Pigs. The following week, March 18, we will dive into studying Latin American Immigration, the War on Drugs, and Poverty in Latin America. We will also conduct a review this week for the Unit Test, March 22. The test will be split into two periods: short answer and essay on March 22 and multiple choice on March 25. We have study sessions available on Mondays after school or Thursdays before school for students who would like extra help reviewing for their test.
ELA:
In ELA, students are continuing to explore Unit 4: Persuasion and Rhetoric. On March 13th, we will be having a quiz on Connotation, Denotation, Diction and Author’s Perspective. After our quiz, we will continue with our unit by looking at claims in a provided text that our supported by reasons versus those that are not. Students will be supporting these arguments by providing textual evidence from the text that they have read.
Our Unit 4 test will be held on March 22. Topics will include: diction, understanding the difference between connotation and denotation, determining word meanings through use of context, and recognizing an author’s perspective in a text. Students are also expected to be able to determine which claims are supported in a given text, and should be able to provide the textual evidence that most strongly supports a given claim. Details including information about the study guide will be emailed by your child’s individual ELA teacher.
Home Access Center Information
6th Grade Weekly Help Sessions Schedule
Academic Help Sessions
Connections Help Sessions
Other Help Session Info
- Help sessions provide an opportunity for students to gain extra practice in a particular subject area.
- Teachers rotate who leads each subject's help session each week. Therefore, students may go to any teacher's help session, even if they don't have that teacher.
- Students must come to sessions with questions, a pen/pencil, and paper.
- For the morning sessions, students will wait in the cafeteria until they are picked up by the teacher leading that session at 8:00 a.m. Students must be on time, and they must be attentive so that they can hear when their session is called. Late students will not be admitted down the hallway.
- For the afternoon sessions, students go directly to the teacher hosting the help session after the dismissal bell rings. Students must be picked up on time at 4:40 p.m. in front of the school.