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6B - Mrs. Young
Room MotherThe room mother for our class is Ann Boyd. She may be contacted at: RM6B@sainttimothyschool.org. She will be coordinating volunteers for the Specials Classes, as well as special classroom activities and field trips, and forwarding school-wide emails. To assist her in communicating effectively, please contact her with your current email address. CommunicationCLASS WEBPAGE: This page will provide general information about what we are studying in 6th grade as well as links to certain websites of particular interest to our lessons. You will be able to access our reference information from this page. It is important to visit Mrs. Kurtis’ page as well to get a complete understanding of the 6th grade program. SCHOOLNOTES: I communicate with families most frequently through my SchoolNotes site. Please register for notification of when I have updated the site by clicking on “Notify Me” and following the instructions. This site will provide information on what is going on in the specific subjects that I teach. It is updated on a weekly basis. A current calendar and a listing of test dates are posted there. Please remember that these dates are subject to modification based on what is happening in the classroom and at school. Sometimes it takes a little longer to go through material; other times, unexpected activities cause a change in scheduling resulting in a change in test dates. As suggested above, it is important to be on Mrs. Kurtis’ Notify Me list as well. EMAIL: The best way to reach me is through email. I rarely check my voice mail; if you need to speak with me, please call through the office and leave a message there or send a note via your child. I try to check email on a daily basis and will make every attempt to respond to your message within 24 hours. BI-WEEKLY PACKETS: On alternate Thursdays, Mrs. Kurtis and I send home packets with graded papers and tests. These are accompanied by a cover sheet that itemizes what is being returned, along with a signature line for the parent to sign. This signed cover sheet should be returned the next day. In addition to sending home graded papers and tests, Mrs. Kurtis and I send home a progress report on a bi-weekly basis. This serves to notify you of your student’s current grades in either math, science, and religion or social studies, reading, and English. We each send home our own homeroom’s spelling grades as well. The progress report also substitutes for the quarterly interim report that goes home to students with grades below 78. Tests Spelling: alternate Wednesdays, using the current Vocabulary Unit. (6B only) VolunteeringTo volunteer for Specials, please contact the room mother, who will prepare a schedule of volunteers for Art, Library and Computers. For your convenience, schedules are available online.
UniformCheck your handbook for the most up to date uniform requirements. You must keep your shirt tucked in, not bloused. If it is too short to stay tucked, it may be a sign that you need a larger shirt. On the other hand, if the shirt is much too long or too big, there is an excess of shirt to be tucked in and that can cause problems too as well as lumps. SOCKS: To avoid confusion, please refer to the Student Handbook regarding the uniform requirements pertaining to socks. They state, in part, that "Crew socks (white only)" are to be worn with the fall/spring uniform for both boys and girls. Crew socks are easily obtainable and sold in packaging labelled "crew socks." Examples of crew socks are shown below.
SubjectsRELIGION: The focus of 6th grade religion is to understand that God's saving actions and His love are manifested in salvation history and fulfilled in Jesus. To accomplish this goal, the primary focus of study in 6th grade religion is salvation history as described and disclosed in the Old Testament. We will spend about three fourths of the year studying the events of the Old Testament that lead up to the birth of Jesus. The rest of the year we will briefly study the life and ministry of Jesus and the establishment of the Church. We will focus on the Old Testament prophets and their call for faithfulness to God and for social justice. We will see that the Church calls us in the same way today. To help us understand this call we will study the works of mercy and Catholic social teachings. There are a few special religion projects in 6th grade. The first of these is a project to help the students discover that each one's patron saint can be a model to imitate and an intercessor and guardian. A project in the spring helps the students to develop a scriptural Rosary to help them to prayerfully reflect upon the life of Jesus and Mary. We will use the meditations collected by the students to pray the Rosary as a grade before we begin our end of the year party. Finally, as part of our study of the Passover and Exodus by the Hebrew people we will celebrate a Seder meal on the morning of Holy Thursday. We will see the connection between the prayers and actions of the Seder and many of the prayers and actions of the Mass. MATH: The focus of math in the 6th grade is on the practice and development of many of the math skills learned in the prior grades. A strong foundation in basics like the multiplication tables is very important. Students who need a little more practice in this area would be wise to start drilling those times tables so that they become very comfortable. The skills practiced in 6th grade will enable the students to succeed in their junior high math. We will reinforce problem solving skills; review whole numbers; add, subtract, multiply and divide decimals and fractions; study patterns and variables; work with ratios, proportions, and percents; work with data and graphs; explore more geometry; study some probability; and introduce integers. While many of those things are to be reviewed and reinforced from earlier grades, there are several topics new to the 6th grade. These include:
Pi day (P day, March 14) is a fun day in 6th grade math. Using simple tools, lots of measuring, and some eating we will discover the relationship between circumference and diameter and derive an approximation for Pi. There will be regular morning work, done as seatwork at the beginning of the day. Some of the work will be in the form of worksheets and other work will be done using the math textbook. Unless specifically stated, the work is done individually, without a calculator, and all work must be shown. The math morning work is collected at the end of the week for a grade. The new math textbook should be fun to use. You may access the activities online. There are opportunities to check answers to some problems in the back of the textbook, online lesson quizzes and chapter tests, a workbook for daily notetaking, and a workbook for homework problems. The problems in the textbook are available for additional practice and the answers to the odd problems are in the back of the book. The answers to all of the chapter review questions are also found at the back of the book. Another helpful section in the textbook is the Skills Handbook, which begins on page 654. There is a detailed explanation of various review topics with examples and then problems for practice. SCIENCE: The new 6th grade science curriculum will let us really get out and practice our skills of observing, measuring, collecting data, graphing, analyzing, and inferring. Some topics will be ongoing and others will be more compact. We will be keeping individual, group, class, and sometimes grade data logs. We will be observing, recording, and analyzing various weather related phenomena such as the temperature, pressure, cloud cover, and precipitation. We will also be monitoring and measuring various features of the two retention pond areas on the property and in our small goldfish pond near the office. The students will have the opportunity to participate in the fall and spring stream clean up effort sponsored by the Fairfax County Park Authority and Ellanor C. Lawrence Park. We will also be monitoring the moon, sun, stars, and planets via observations of the day and night sky and using the newspaper and websites.
One of the favorite 6th grade activities is our annual trip to Mars, via the Challenger Learning Center for Space Science Education. We haven’t left anyone on Mars yet, but there can be some harrowing experiences getting to the Mars command center and heading back to Earth. This year’s trip will be different because we will go over three days, dividing the 6th graders into three groups. Mrs. Kurtis and Mrs. Ostrander will have a chance to go for two of the trips.
Battle of the BooksA diocesan-wide competition for interested 5th and 6th grade students. Students read from a list of 16 books in a variety of genres. Five students and two alternates will be chosen to compete in a Jeopardy style competition. If interested, please print out the booklist and start reading!
Available to Download and Print10 Essential Rules for 6th Grade Spellbinders Instruction Sheet Bibliography Citations Worksheet
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