6TH GRADE NEWS

LANGUAGE ARTS AND HISTORY:

Sixth graders are finishing their poetry unit with the novel-in-verse, Out of the Dust. A novel in poetry form is an excellent way to study figurative language within the traditional story elements of characters, setting, and plot. Also, as the story is told in short poem entries, it moves quickly. The class has discussed the events as a whole group, met in small groups to dissect characters and answer comprehension questions, and write individual “self-portraits” in the same style as Billie Jo, the protagonist, wrote in the beginning of the novel. We plan to complete this study with a choice mini-project and play an Out of the Dust board game constructed by students a couple of years ago.

MATH AND SCIENCE:

Snap!

When games like Fortnite and movies such as Endgame have captured kids’ attention, why not use their interests for academic purposes? Our students have been creating and sharing games to review key vocabulary terms in science, and we’ve stumbled upon a relatively new online game platform called Gimkit. This game was itself designed by a high school student to make classroom review more engaging, and he did just that by making “Thanos Mode” available for a limited time. Students answer questions and earn [imaginary] money for correct responses. They can then use the money to purchase upgrades to increase their earning power. In Thanos Mode, students purchase a series of six Infinity Stones of increasing value--the first stone is $5 and the last is $150,000. The first student to acquire all six stones is the winner and gets to “snap” half of the class (apparently this is a trademark move for the legendary Thanos)...we were all on the edge of our seats waiting to see who survived the snap!