Sixth Grade

It has been a busy past couple weeks here at Bethlehem! We made it through accreditation, and we also had wonderful celebrations of Easter. We have continued to work hard in the classroom as well!  During math, students practiced working with two-variable equations by playing a game to try to find the greatest solution. Math is more entertaining when games are involved!  Students have continued to have great literature circle discussions. I have enjoyed listening in on conversations that students have had about their books. The depth and level of insights that students have shared is awesome!  In science, we have been working through plate tectonics, boundaries, earthquakes, and volcanoes. When learning about seismic waves, we used a slinky to demonstrate the way that different types of waves travel through the earth. While we celebrated Lent and the wonderful sacrifice of our Savior Jesus Christ, we talked about how different colors can rep

We have successfully kicked off our literature circles! We began by talking about what it looks like to have a good discussion. After reading a short story, four students modeled with a "fishbowl" discussion. The other students watched for good examples of discussion tactics along with things they could work on. For our literature circles, each student has a role to play. These include the Discussion Director, Literary Luminary, Summarizer, Checker, and Vocabulary Enricher. In order to become familiar, students practiced these roles in groups of others with the same role. We read through a folk tale called "The Fox and the Horse" to practice, and when students finished their roles, we did a "jigsaw" so that students could have a practice discussion.  When we started our literature circles, students studied the historical era of their book. Each book is a historical fiction or non-fiction novel. Students researched the author and era.

We had a packed week before break! During our math unit on positive and negative numbers, students played some math games to practice plotting points on a four-quadrant coordinate planes. We did group learning with stations, so some students worked with online math practice and games at our technology group. To review for our Bible test, we played an interactive review game using Kahoot. Students logged into the game using their Chromebooks, and they answered multiple choice questions. The screen tracked how well the students did. It was an intense game! On our last day before break, students worked hard on a desk atlas geography activity. This was to introduce students to our next social studies unit on Central America. To celebrate all of the hard work that went into the mystery/fantasy novel projects, students did a showcase of their projects. The 6th graders were able to walk from desk to desk and write down how the other students used their creativ

We had many fun activities leading up to spring break! These photos show what we did during the weeks before. The first several photos show what the students did during the youth group lock-in. The 6th graders that were present did an awesome job constructing a gingerbread "playground."  In school, students wrote down what they think of when thinking about God. We talked about how God is both just and merciful, and we applied this to our stories about the Babylonian exile of the Israelites.  We do many different activities to explore our vocabulary words for the week. During this activity, students matched the words with the definitions held by a partner. Then they wrote down the definitions on the board. During our studying of Mexico, students worked with partners to complete a web-quest that had them explore the government, resources, and economy of different regions in Mexico. We have been studying plate tectonics in science. As part of tha