January 23 - 27

Grade 6 Social Studies: Historical Models of Democracy

I can explain how the social structure of ancient Athens impacted its political structure 

Ancient Athens is said to be the birthplace of Democracy. In the coming weeks, students will be learning about Direct Democracy (as opposed to Representative Democracy like in modern day Canada). Since the political structure in Ancient Athens was so connected to the social structure, we spent some time this week developing an understanding of the rights and responsibilities of the people in Athens in 400 BCE. Students learned that there were three main groups of people: Citizens, Foreigners (called Metics), and Slaves. They quickly came to understand there were vast differences in the rights of all these people. For example, women were not allowed to go out in public unless accompanied by a man! Slaves had no say in where they worked or who they worked for! And the only people living in the City-State who had voting rights, were male citizens! The grade six students realized very quickly that male citizens made up a very small percentage of people affected by government decisions and it does not seem like a fair system of Democracy. 

The students loved seeing their peers dressed up as Citizens, Metics, and Slaves while we learned about the social structure. We also did a matching activity and read some information from the textbook before jotting down the rights and responsibilities for each person. Ask your child about this! They should be able to share some interesting facts with you!

Now that we have developed this foundation, we are ready to begin learning about how the government in Ancient Athens was structured. We will compare this model of Democracy to the Iroquois Confederacy and Modern-Day Democracy in Canada.

January 16 - 20

 Story Writing

We have been working really hard on writing our stories the last 2 weeks. Last week, we were given 2 picture prompts:

We then had a chance to talk to our classmates to generate ideas about what our story might be about. We then got a graphic organizer to help us plan our work. 

We learned about exciting beginnings, adding detail, and making sure we 'showed' the reader what we wanted them to picture in their heads, not 'told'. We followed the diamond story writing plan. We had to include most of our information in the main event of our story. We learned the importance of a balance between action, dialogue, description, thoughts, and sound effects. 

We then had the chance to get each other feedback. After a few people edited our work, we incorporated the feedback into our finished copy.

January 9 - 13

This week in math, we focused on solving equations that involved a letter variable. As a class, we worked through problems on the Smart Board:

Here is the link to the interactive website if you are interested!

Then it was our turn to make an equation using manipulatives! With a partner, we created equations where the larger object represented x and the smaller object was our '1s'. We had to solve our equation and verify the solution. Then, we solved other students' questions in our class

• I can write a problem as an equation with a letter variable. Example:

Same has a bag of candies and he gives 4 to a friend

x - 4 =

• I can show and explain preservation of equality

For example: n - 6 = 4 - 2

            n = 8 

Here are some of the questions we created 

Dec 19 - 22

 We started our Sky Science presentations this week! We were blown away by the knowledge and skill set of our grade 6 students! They were professional and so well prepared. Here are a few examples of the amazing work so far!

We hope everyone has a wonderful winter break! See you in 2023!

Dec 12 - 16

 For the last 2 weeks, the Grade 6 students have been working in groups of 3 to 4, researching a topic in science. Some of the topics are:

• The Rocky Planets
• The Gas Planets
• Constellations
• Space Travel

We had specific information we had to include in our research and success criteria to make sure we had everything we needed. It was amazing to see the Grade 6 students work together and divide the jobs evenly between group members!

Our presentations will begin on Monday. We are so excited to hear from the groups and learn about outer space!

Dec 5 - 9

 We have been working so hard on our Novel Choice Board Project. We have been focusing on strengthening our summarizing skills. We were given several projects to choose from, based on the novel we are reading in our Guided Reading groups. Here are 2 examples

We chose which 3 activities we were going to work on and we got success criteria to make sure we included everything we needed

We are so excited to show some of our finished projects!

I can use different media to give an insightful explanation of important parts in the novel.

I can thoroughly explain or show how events, setting, and ideas can affect the character’s feelings or actions in the story. 

I can use specific evidence from my story to show my understanding.

I can discuss topics or themes and the purpose of texts.

Nov 28 - Dec 2

 We started our new unit in Science this week - Sky Science!

We had so many great discussions this week. We asked thoughtful questions and watched a classic Bill Nye episode! We then created a visual journal page that included 6 things we learned from the video and any questions/wonderings we had. 

We then had a discussion on the difference between emitting light and reflecting light. We learned that almost everything we see around us reflects light, including our moon and even us! We also learned that stars, including our sun, emit light.

I can recognize that the Sun and stars emit the light by which they are seen and that most other bodies in space, including Earth’s Moon, planets and their moons, comets, and asteroids, are seen by reflected light.

We talked about the difference between revolving and rotating. We learned that the Earth does both! The Earth rotates around its axis, which causes day and night. We also learned that our planet revolves around the sun, which causes our seasons!

We also began to learn about how small we really are!

 I can understand that Earth, the Sun and the Moon are part of a solar system that occupies only a tiny part of the known universe.