Mount Vernon Schools

Welcome to our 6th grade class (Mrs. Jacks and Mrs. Backlund). Your students have the unique opportunity to be in a job-share classroom. What this means for them is that most weeks, Mrs. Backlund teaches at the beginning of the week and I finish the week with your students. They get the benefit of the experience, expertise, and perspective of two teachers. We are excited to have the opportunity to be a part of this unique learning environment.

The following is some important information for our students and their parent.

Binders and Planners:
Every day, students should bring their binders and planners to school and home. This is a key part of them learning how to be organized. There binder has tabs for each subject and a separate one for homework so that they can easily organize and find materials. Their Planners should be in their binders at all times. These are the primary communication between school and home. Parents can initial Daily Reading at Home, review what students did in class each day, and see when projects and homework are due.

Math Topics:
The 6th grade is filled with exciting advanced Math concepts. Because we are building on skills taught throughout the previous grades, it is very important that students have a firm understanding of multiplication and division, so that they are able to keep up with the new concepts introduced this year.

Some of the 6th grade topics are:

An introduction to Pre-Algebra; finding values for variables
Understanding, ordering, and converting between fractions, decimals, and percentages
Multiplying and dividing fractions
Probability
Multiplying and dividing decimals
Graphing
Comparing and ordering positive and negative numbers
Word problems involving all of the above topics

Language Arts Focus:
6th grade students will be working a great deal on reading and writing. We will be learning common spelling patterns, working to build vocabulary, and practicing reading strategies including; finding the main idea and supporting details, recognizing cause and effect relationships, sequencing events, making generalizations, drawing conclusions, and identifying problems and solutions in stories. We are also working on utilizing all of the steps in the writing process and critically evaluating our own writing to not only edit, but also revise our writing to make it more interesting and clear for readers.

Science and Social Studies:
We will be completing several exciting projects throughout the year to learn about the landforms and water ways of our own country and abroad. We will also be exploring food, models, designs, mixtures, and solutions through scientific experimentation and writing.