Sixth Grade

Our curriculum is driven by the Diocesan Standards which align with the Common Core State Standards (CCSS).

Religion

The curriculum is based on the four Pillars of the Catechism of the Catholic Church: What Catholics Believe, How Catholics Worship, How Catholics Live, and How Catholics Pray. We focus on building an awareness of how God is at work in our lives. In addition, there is a special emphasis on the Old Testament and our faith ancestors.

In following the teachings of Jesus Christ, all Sixth Grade students are asked to share their gifts and talents by performing at least three community service hours per trimester.

English - Language Arts

Students learn to spell the 850 most commonly used words in their everyday writing through the use of the Rebecca Sitton Spelling Program. The goal of this program is to promote long term mastery of words used in everyday writing and to build students’ accountability for the correct spelling of priority words across the curriculum.

Students expand their vocabularies and improve vocabulary skills through a study of Latin base words. Understanding these roots allows the student to unlock the meaning of hundreds of English words from classic origins.

In Literature class, students gain an appreciation and understanding of traditional and contemporary literary selections including the short story, drama, nonfiction, poetry, the oral tradition, and the novel. They practice active reading skills such as predicting, clarifying, visualizing and summarizing.

Sixth grade utilizes the Step Up to Writing program and introduces formal writing styles of expository (essays and summaries), persuasive argument, research reports with citations, poetry forms, and personal/story narrative. MLA formatting is introduced. The writing program is composed of multiple components covering organizational skills, note-taking strategies, ways to respond to various genres and text styles, and oral speaking and listening skills.

In addition, a formal grammar program covering Parts of Speech and instruction in language mechanics and conventions are also taught throughout the sixth grade.

Mathematics

St. James math programs teach the California Common Core Math Standards (CCCSS). The CCCSS for Math for these 5-8 grades focuses on five main areas with continued progress in complexity and depth since research shows mastery is best developed over time. Through this three-year process, which spirals material from concrete to abstract concepts, students gain greater in-depth knowledge and are better able to apply Mathematical understanding to real-world situations. Specifically, for Grade 6 Math, the five main areas are:

In grade 6, instructional time should focus on four critical areas: (1) connecting ratio and rate to whole number multiplication and division, and using concepts of ratio and rate to solve problems; (2) completing understanding of division of fractions and extending the notion of number to the system of rational numbers, which includes negative numbers; (3) writing, interpreting, and using expressions and equations; and (4) developing understanding of statistical thinking. 

•    Students use reasoning about multiplication and division to solve ratio and rate problems about quantities. By viewing equivalent ratios and rates as deriving from, and extending, pairs of rows (or columns) in the multiplication table, and by analyzing simple drawings that indicate the relative size of quantities, students connect their understanding of multiplication and division with ratios and rates. Thus, students expand the scope of problems for which they can use multiplication and division to solve problems, and they connect ratios and fractions. Students solve a wide variety of problems involving ratios and rates. 

•    Students use the meaning of fractions, the meanings of multiplication and division, and the relationship between multiplication and division to understand and explain why the procedures for dividing fractions make sense. Students use these operations to solve problems. Students extend their previous understandings of numbers and the ordering of numbers to the full system of rational numbers, which includes negative rational numbers, and in particular negative integers. They reason about the order and absolute value of rational numbers and about the location of points in all four quadrants of the coordinate plane. 

•    Students understand the use of variables in mathematical expressions. They write expressions and equations that correspond to given situations, evaluate expressions, and use expressions and formulas to solve problems. Students understand that expressions in different forms can be equivalent, and they use the properties of operations to rewrite expressions in equivalent forms. Students know that the solutions of an equation are the values of the variables that make the equation true. Students use properties of operations and the idea of maintaining the equality of both sides of an equation to solve simple one-step equations. Students construct and analyze tables, such as tables of quantities that are in equivalent ratios, and they use equations (such as 3x = y) to describe relationships between quantities. 

•    Building on and reinforcing their understanding of numbers, students begin to develop their ability to think statistically. Students recognize that a data distribution may not have a definite center and that different ways to measure center yield different values. The median measures center in the sense that it is roughly the middle value. The mean measures center in the sense that it is the value that each data point would take on if the total of the data values were redistributed equally, and in the sense that it is a balance point. Students recognize that a measure of variability (interquartile range or mean absolute deviation) can also be useful for summarizing data because two very different sets of data can have the same mean and median yet be distinguished by their variability. Students learn to describe and summarize numerical data sets, identifying clusters, peaks, gaps, and symmetry, considering the context in which the data were collected. 

•    Students in grade 6 also build on their work with area in elementary school by reasoning about relationships among shapes to determine area, surface area, and volume. They find areas of right triangles, other triangles, and special quadrilaterals by decomposing these shapes, rearranging or removing pieces, and relating the shapes to rectangles. Using these methods, students discuss, develop, and justify formulas for areas of triangles and parallelograms. Students find areas of polygons and surface areas of prisms and pyramids by decomposing them into pieces whose area they can determine. They reason about right rectangular prisms with fractional side lengths to extend formulas for the volume of a right rectangular prism to fractional side lengths. They prepare for work on scale drawings and constructions in grade 7 by drawing polygons in the coordinate plane.

In addition, St. James School follows the California Common Core Math Practices:

1. Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them. 

2. Reason abstractly and quantitatively. 

3. Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others. 

4. Model with mathematics. 

5. Use appropriate tools strategically. 

6. Attend to precision. 

7. Look for and make use of structure. 

8. Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning.

History

Students develop knowledge, skills, and citizenship through the study of the earliest people, Early Middle Eastern and North African civilizations, early Asian civilizations, the foundation of Western ideas, and the rise of the Roman Empire.

Science

St. James School School educates the whole child. Therefore, Sixth Graders also attend classes in Music, PE, Spanish, and Art.