Sixth grade is students’ first year in Middle School, which is a huge accomplishment and transition for them and for their parents. Sixth graders learn to be significantly more independent over the course of the year, and parents will start to notice the changes in their children. While your child will still be learning academically this year, their transition into changing classes and having multiple teachers may take precedence.
This year, students will continue to expand on things they started learning years earlier. Teachers may continue to push students to read more difficult texts across a variety of genres. Writing also becomes a heavily emphasized skill, with students being required to write longer pieces on more difficult topics. Some of their papers may take up to a week for completion. They will incorporate a larger vocabulary, more evidence to support their claims, and write across a mixture of different genres.
In terms of Math, by the sixth grade, our teachers will be encouraging students to develop a solid foundation in all of the essential math areas. They will study everything from basic algebra concepts to geometry to statistics. Perhaps the greatest gain that sixth grade students will make this year is in the area of reasoning and problem-solving. They will be expected to explain how they came up with their answers and demonstrate their work at every stage.
In Science, the emphasis is on helping children to fine-tune their approach to the scientific method. They should be better equipped to formulate hypotheses, make observations, conduct experiments, and begin to analyze all of the available data. Science may begin to overlap with math this year as well. Sixth graders should be able to analyze and interpret graphs or charts that relate to their studies. They will also be required to take measurements and interpret the information.
Sixth grade is a wonderful time of growth for our students, both socially and academically. It can be a trying time as children attempt to figure out how to handle the increasingly difficult course load. However, parents can make themselves available to assist them through each of these steps. Understanding what sixth graders will be studying can help parents to better support their children’s studies.
