The Sixth Grade World
By Jeff Symanski

Welcome to the wonderful world of the 6th grade!  It is here where cave paintings decorate the classroom, Legos help to teach science and math, and books come alive through discussion, research, and even debate.  It is also a time when the sixth graders reflect on their elementary school years and prepare for middle school, high school, and the world.  Learning happens within the four walls of our classroom, but we also reach out to other valuable resources to enhance our academics.  Trips to Billings Farm, Montpelier, and even our own back yard have expanded what is being taught and learned.  We also pull information to us from all over the world through the Internet so that we can become better informed and more knowledgeable.

Our class follows the Connections Mathematics program, in which students are encouraged to apply learned math concepts to new ones that are connected to real life situations.   The Connected Math also challenges the students to refine their problem solving skills by analyzing the text and trying to figure out what needs to be solved and how.
Throughout the school year the students learn how to make the reading experience more meaningful during literacy circles where they discuss books that we read together.  Some of these books are Hatchet by Gary Paulson, Island of the Blue Dolphin by Scott O’Dell, The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster and Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle.
The students are encouraged to be creative and informative writers by looking at various author styles of books they are reading.  They are continuing the process of learning how to express themselves on paper by organizing their thoughts and ideas, creating a rough draft, editing and revising the piece, and finally publishing it.

While Science and Social Studies are taught separately from the other subjects, they are often times integrated.  For example, when learning about motors in science, the students created a very basic component of a motor with different sized cogs.  They then applied math lessons on ratios and common factors to figure out when points on the three different sized cogs would meet at the same time.  Check out the following video of some of the sixth graders explaining how the “common multiple machine works”.




Click here to see another way the students figured out the common multiples.

Social Studies begins with discussions on what “social studies” is and why it is important to us.  With this foundation we look back at history of early civilizations such as the Stone Age People, Egyptians, Mesopotamians, and the Greeks.  It is one thing to learn about these early cultures and societies.  The challenge is to apply this knowledge to ourselves, make connections, and see how where we are in the world today is connected to these past civilizations.

In May, the sixth graders travel to Maine to Nature’s Classroom.  There they join other sixth graders from our district for a week-long camp.  It is an opportunity to meet future classmates in the middle school, enjoy team building activities, and explore nature.
And finally, what is learned early in the school year and revisited everyday is that while we are a class of individuals, we also need to learn how to work and play together as one.  Cooperative learning is essential academically and socially, not only for the sixth grade year but for the years to come.