Welcome to 6th Grade



ENGLISH GRAMMAR: Grammar centers on parts of speech and sentences. Students learn about sentences - including compound and complex sentences - punctuations and capitalization.

 

ENGLISH WRITING: The Writing Workshop trains students in crafting vivid and lucid essays. To broaden their skills, students are assigned to write a range of essays - including personal narratives, descriptive, persuasive, expository, and argumentative essays. In addition, students discover their talents in creative writing and literary analysis. 

 

ENGLISH LITERATURE: Literature introduces students to classic as well as contemporary novels. Students read short stories as well as a selected biography, and selected poems. They are also introduced to figures of speech, and other literary terms and devices. After lively discussion of each literary work in class, students are required to write essays on characters and themes that are central to the story. 

 

MATH: Students can complete all operations with fractions, mixed numbers, integers and decimals.  Students begin elementary algebra and solve equations.   Students learn how to interpret percentages, ratios proportions and rates.  In addition to the textbook and workbook students also make use of IXL.com to help facilitate mastery of these concepts. 

 

SCIENCE: Students have a dynamic understanding of basic scientific principles. This includes an introduction to life chemistry, evolution, and thermodynamics. 

 

SOCIAL STUDIES: Students study the foundations of European and Middle Eastern civilizations: Ancient Near East (Mesopotamia, Egypt, Israel), Ancient Greece (Golden Age & Alexander the Great), Rome (Kingdom, Republic, Empire, Christianity, Byzantine Empire), Islam, &c.

 

FRENCH: In this bi-weekly class students are introduced to the basic French grammar and conjugation. They discover the numbers, the colors, nouns, verbs and adjectives. Telling time, travelling, describing the weather and playing sports are also included in the curriculum.

 

ITALIAN: Students learn introductory Italian grammar and vocabulary. Grammar topics may include grammatical number and gender, essere, personal pronouns, definite and indefinite articles, and -are verbs. Vocabulary topics may include numbers, months, adjectives, classroom words, verbs.

 

SPANISH: Beginning Spanish is introduced through a gradual presentation of grammatical structures (present tense of -AR, -ER, -IR verbs), brief and fun narratives to reinforce vocabulary, and cultural sections to acquaint students to life in the Spanish speaking countries.

 

RUSSIAN: This class is open to 6 through 12 grades depending on their ability.  This course, taught by a Russian native speaker, is designed for beginners and for students who have already learned the fundamentals of Russian language. 

 

TECHNOLOGY: Students are taught introduction to Artificial Intelligence (AI), and computer hardware & software. This includes the following: Hardware components necessary to understand and build a computer - Major Operating Systems such as Windows, Mac OS and Linux - Google Application Suite such as Docs, Sheets, etc. - Introduction to Cloud Technology - IP addressing, Binary and Hexadecimal numbers - Different type of hackers such as Ethical, Black-Hat and Gray-Hat - Introduction to the World Wide Web.

 

MUSIC: General studies become more focused as we listen and learn about the history of American Music, including extensive study of Black and Women composers and artists. Students also learn to create music digitally through the use of the program Logic Pro X, and they can post their works to the TD Soundcloud account.

 

ART: Guided watercolor paintings, crayon/watercolor resist paintings, mixed media watercolor and acrylic, "melted" magic marker painting, simple palette knife technique in acrylic painting, mixed media watercolor and pen work, model magic sculpting, more advanced origami folding techniques.