St. Wendel Catholic School

Sixth grade Curriculum

The sixth grade can be a fun year.  The students are not in the same class the whole day and that gets them used to high school.  Learning the different teaching styles will also help them in the future.  When they are out in the world, they will have to learn how to get used to working for different bosses.  In sixth grade Language Arts, we do a variety of things.  The students have Literature.  They read a story and then they may have a quiz on terms and new words.  There will be projects that also go along with some of the stories.  They also have Grammar where they are learning about the parts of speech and the proper way to use them.  Next they have the traditional Spelling words and tests that they take every week.  I will give them sixteen new words and four commonly misspelled words to know every week.  Writing is also a part of Language Arts.  They will work on writing samples that may be used on the ISTEP test and they will also be working how to write differnet kinds of stories.  By putting this altogether, they practice the skills they have learned and will integrate them with our computer time.  In Math, they will take notes and examples on each lesson before they do their homework.  Then they will also have a 5-minute quiz the next day based on the previous lesson.  They are starting the fundamentals of Algebra.  Everything they learn this year will be the groundwork for Pre-Algebra next year.  We will also do games and activities to reinforce the concepts they have learned.  In Religion, I follow the testbook and add activities that will help increase their faith.  Just reading the textbook does not give them the big picture on what it means to be Catholic.

Pre-Algebra Curriculum

In Pre-Algebra, the children will be learning the bascics of Algebra.  In other words, I will be laying the groundwork for next year.  Many of the things they learn this year, will be repeated next year with just a little more material added.  They are going to learn the fundamentals that they will be able to apply to many real world situations.  They will not just be doing math problems and taking tests, they will also do projects that will help and show them that math is used every day and there is a reason why we learn things even if we think we will never use the stuff.

Algebra Curriculum

Last year I layed the foundation on what they will learn this year.  Some of what they learn will be a repeat from last year.  The only differences will be they have to use decimals and fractions.  As the year goes on, they will learn new things including how to use their graphing calculator.  There are times when I will expect them to do the work without the calculator.  They will not just be doing math problems and taking tests, they will also do projects that will help and show them that math is used every day and there is a reason why we learn things even if we think we will never use the stuff.