Below you will find a bulleted list of topics that students should be familiar with before starting 6th grade.
General Skills
- Agenda Usage – Recording daily assignments and checking for completion
- Organization and time management – teach and review basic academic support skills
- Experience with group collaboration for projects, homework, and problem solving
- Summarization Strategies (extracting relevant information)
- Identifying the “BIG” idea of a Topic being taught
- Recognizing the relevancy of what is being learned; purposeful learning
- Abstract Thinking
Language Arts Skills
- Understanding the parts and functions of a textbook (i.e. using glossary, index, table of contents, etc…)
- Knowing how to peruse/skim a chapter
- Outlining textbook reading selections
- Identifying context clues in a reading
- Analysis of text complexity
- Lecture note taking skills/Creating Note Outlines
- Experience with research (i.e. computer research, citations, cross referencing, etc…)
- Latin/Greek prefixes, roots, and suffixes
- Socratic Discussion/Debate
Social Studies Skills
- Understanding of basic geography
NOTE – every student should know “why” historical knowledge is important
Mathematics
- All Common Core grade level mathematic standards of grades K – 5 including but not limited to place values, reciprocals, mathematical operations involving fractions, decimals and percentages and positive/negative integers, greater than/less than, roots, powers, single variable operations, basic geometry (perimeter, area, shapes) and graph interpretation
- Word problems
- Using mathematical tools (calculators, protractors, etc.)
Science
- Scientific Method
- Introduction to the metric system (SI units)
- Basic introduction to Periodic Table of Elements
- Atomic structure
- Basic introduction to the 11 Body Systems
- Basic introduction to Technology
- Introduction to the basic topics in the sciences of: Biology, Physics, Chemistry, Astronomy and Geology
Participation
The students of the Science Academy STEM School must participate regularly (almost daily) in verbal and/or written exercises where they must analyze, synthesize, hypothesize, integrate and differentiate learned information in group/partnership discussion.