Grade 6 Online Learning

Synchronous lessons are held four days a week with one optional drop-in class per week via Google Meet. Students also use Google Classroom to access assignments and learning resources including videos and articles.

As a culmination of their work around the formation of ancient civilizations and utopias and dystopias, students synthesized their ideas to create their own ideal civilizations complete with a system of government, laws, religion, and economy. This project included making 3-D replicas of parts of their civilization (i.e. an important building, a topographic map, or an artifact), maps, flags, currency, and written materials. In lieu of making a trifold and holding an in-class expo at School, students are using Book Creator to develop an e-book comprised of all the elements of their projects that they will virtually present.

In their book groups, students read Bad Boy, a memoir about growing up in Harlem in the 1940’s and 50’s, written by the New York Times bestselling author, Walter Dean Myers. The start of the book has provided a springboard into a short study of the many black artists who not only achieved fame during the Harlem Renaissance, but broke new ground in the arts as well. Students have been exploring different forms of poetry, reading the works of a wide variety of poets, including Langston Hughes, Billy Collins, Mary Oliver, and Nikki Grimes, and have written their own poems. Students are finishing their final poetry unit by choosing one of their poems to revise as the class explores cutting to the bone, creating imagery, and playing with line breaks to create powerful poetry.

Sixth-grade students attend Google Meets three times per week with an optional drop-in class once a week. Using a rigorous, differentiated, research-based curriculum, GO MATH!®, as the foundation of the course, students access assignments in Google Classroom. Students are on track to complete their final units including Equations and Inequalities and Relationships in Geometry.

At the end of their unit on Equations and Inequalities, students completed and presented a project representing the top sustained speed of an animal of their choice. Their projects included:

• A table giving y, the distance the animal could travel in x hours, for x = 0, 1, 2,
  3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10. 
• An equation showing the relationship between y and x
• A graph showing the relationship between y andx
• An estimation, based on their graph, of how far their animal would run in
  7 hours, 20 minutes, assuming top speed

This project allowed students to show what they had learned in the unit in an engaging way while working with real world data.

In sixth-grade science, students join Google Meet for synchronous learning three times a week and access Google Classroom for class assignments and other resources including articles, videos, and diagrams. Students have been exploring evolution, adaptation, and taxonomy. Utilizing an online NOVA lab, students learned about phylogenetic trees and how to show the relation between different species in a scientific way. Observing creatures outside their windows, students also completed their Creature Report projects covering taxonomic categorization, geographic range, habitat, and physical characteristics that they believed to be adaptations.

In their final unit, students are learning about human body systems and pulling together concepts on cells, genetics, and evolution to understand the interconnectivity of human body systems and how the complexity of each system has uniquely evolved to sustain life. Using an online activity called Body Control Center, students worked to help a person’s body stay in homeostasis by manipulating their blood delivery, oxygen need, blood pressure, body temperature, perspiration, and blood sugar level. While challenging, the students came to understand how the different body systems depend on one another, and what these body systems are doing or need when one is exercising, resting, or fighting sickness and disease. 

Students access assignments with instructions and resources posted in Google Classroom, and join a Zoom meeting once a week. Students were mailed kits to ensure each student had access to the necessary materials for their projects. Concepts tackled during remote learning include shading to create an optical illusion, observational drawing or painting, making an abstract composition by rearranging text, and examining the abstract color field paintings of Alma Thomas. These projects were easier to do at home, while still helping students to sharpen their fine motor skills, hone-in on their problem-solving and planning abilities, and continue to build student’s confidence in their own abilities. Responding to student interests, optional assignments including sewing do-it-yourself safety masks, homemade salt-dough clay, and making paper beads have been shared to encourage ongoing creativity. 

Students have been accessing age-appropriate exercise videos and suggested activities via Google Classroom, in addition to attending a Google Meet once per week. Online learning provides students with resources to promote independence, remain active, and maintain overall health and wellness during this challenging transition. Home fitness routines, agility activities, yoga, dance, backyard games, jump rope, shadow boxing, and wellness videos encourage students to think creatively about movement and wellness options during this time. Weekly check-ins provide invaluable opportunities to work-out toether and engage with students to gauge coping skills during this challenging experience.  Students also share alternative ways that they remain active with their families.

Sixth-graders attend drama via Google Meet twice a week. Exploring Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, students have engaged in discussion, reading and translation, played around with the mechanicals, and explored characters. Typically performing “Imagination Extravaganza,” a night of vignettes based on well-known children’s stories, in the spring, students will instead be putting on a mini-play that will be performed virtually amongst their class.

Students attend Spanish class via Google Meet once per week for a more robust and immersive experience. Students continue to review basic structures, while adopting new vocabulary and grammar that serves to broaden speaking, reading, listening, and writing of Spanish. Integrating online tools for a more engaging experience, students use various apps such as Word Reference, Nearpod, Kahoot, Mentimeter, and Gimkit, while also accessing assignments in Google Classroom.

Sixth grade has been reviewing the articles “el, la, los, and las,” as well as the verbs “ser, estar, and tener,” the special verbs “gustar, encantar, and aburrir,” telling time, how to say dates (day, month, year), and numbers from 0 to 10,000. Students have also learned and/or review weather, colors, animals, fruits and vegetables, Spanish speaking countries and their capitals, nationalities, commands, cognates, and stress and accents; when a word needs a written accent and when it does not.

As a culmination of their learning, students have been working on a project called “The End of Term Mini-Game,” in which they create a board game and write all of the content taught and learned in class, while adding more grammar and vocabulary aspects based on their personal interests.