Grade 6
By Selene Lung
Trimester two has begun, and Winter Break is slowly approaching. The sixth graders, although youngest in the middle school, aren't pulled off track, and stay focused on their lessons. Read on to find out what they are learning and what they have accomplished in their classes: language arts, social studies, math, and science.
Humanities
Taught by Ms. Yeung, humanities is the class where we study both Language Arts and Social Studies. This class links the two classes as one.
Last Trimester
We started with a unit on how to read maps and timelines, an essential skill for future social studies lessons. We also learned about prehistory and Early Man, our first ancestors, the hominids. After that, we studied one of the first civilizations. Instead of reading textbooks and memorizing facts all lesson to learn about Mesopotamia, we created two fun and creative projects in Social Studies: a restaurant menu for Ancient Mesopotamia to learn about the productions of their famous irrigation system used for farming, and a travel brochure to help us learn more about Mesopotamia through our own research.
Social Studies
After Mesopotamia, we studied ancient Egypt, one of the most famous and most ancient civilizations. So far, we have covered pharaohs, their kings, their queens, and what the Ancient Egyptians were most famous for: their myths and religion. We have done research and a reading log on their queens, and are now in the middle of completing a chart on their pharaohs. We watched a movie on the discovery of King Tut's tomb, and a few videos of the mysterious disappearance of Queen Nefertiti.
Language Arts
In Language Arts, we are reading a book called the Egypt Game, a Newberry Honor Award winner, and doing reading logs on it to inspire our reflecting skills. The best part of this is that this enhances our knowledge on Ancient Egypt, linking two classes together. Once a six-day cycle, we have our grammar lessons, learning about punctuation, sentence fluency, and lots more. We also have a vocabulary quiz once every cycle, where you can earn bonus points and smiley stickers if you get all the questions and the bonus question correct.
Math
Our math lessons, taught by Ms. Willey, always begin with our opening task to give either a brief review of what we learned last lesson, or a preview to see what we know about the current lesson.
Fractions
In our fractions unit, we learned how to use a model, or graph, to figure out how to solve fraction addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division problems, a step forward from memorizing the standard algorithms because the charts help us understand how and why they work.
Decimals
The decimals unit is the unit that we have just finished. We have covered decimal addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and estimation. We also learned the names for each decimal place usually used (like the tenths, hundredths, and thousandths, not the place values a million digits away from the decimal).
Powers
Powers were the first unit we had covered in math. We learned how to write them, what they represent, and different ways to say them. For example, five by the second power could also be read as the second power of five. Afterwards, we learned how to solve them and used them to help us in our fractions unit.
Science
Our science lessons, also taught by Ms. Willey, always begin with our opening task to give either a brief review of what we learned last lesson, or a preview to see what we know about the current lesson, just like our math lessons.
Nature of Science
Nature of Science was our first unit. We learned the differences between inferences and observations, and then, to be more precise, we learned the difference between qualitative and quantitative observations. We learned the scientific method, and did a lab experiment with a zophoba, which is a small worm-like bug that grows into a beetle.
Astronomy
Firstly, we learned about the eight planets: their names, surfaces, special features, moons, atmospheres, and all the other basic information about them. We then studied why there are seasons and why there are moon phases. Our assessment was based off of a project: a magazine article competition.
Engineering
We had just started this Engineering unit this year, and so far, we have thought up everyday problems that we would like to solve throughout the next two months.
Eaglenet
For more information, go to the middle and high school website, Eaglenet.