6th Grade Newsletter
6th Grade Field Trip to The Field Museum
All 6th grade students will be going on a field trip to The Field Museum on February 20th!
Permission forms were sent home this week, but you can also find a copy here
✅ Please complete the front of the form and return it along with $5 to Mr. Sommer or Ms. Stone by January 30th.
🥪 Students should bring a lunch and drink on the day of the trip.
🍎 If you'd like the school to provide a lunch, please be sure to fill out the back of the form as well.
We’re looking forward to a fun and educational experience!
How much do you know about the Field Museum?!?
Click here to learn a little bit more about the amazing history of this world famous museum!
When Francisco (Panchito) Jiménez (b. 1943) was four years old, he and his family immigrated to the United States. At the age of six, he began working on farms, like other members of his family. Now a professor of literature at Santa Clara University in California, Jiménez said, “I came to realize that learning and knowledge were the only stable things in my life. Whatever I learned in school, that knowledge would stay with me no matter how many times we moved.” The Circuit: Stories from the Life of a Migrant Child is Jiménez’s autobiographical novel about migrant farm workers in 1950s California. It describes how migrant workers would go from farm to farm picking fruits and vegetables - also known as traveling the circuit.
Read the Excerpt here
Looking Ahead in ELA:
Students will be diving deeper into the concept of theme by analyzing two poems:
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"That Day" from I Remember Root River by David Kherdian
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"A Poem for My Librarian, Mrs. Long" from Acolytes by Nikki Giovanni
Through close reading and discussion, students will explore how authors convey deeper messages and emotions through their writing. The focus will be on developing the skills to answer the essential question: How and why do we determine a common theme across multiple texts?
This work helps strengthen students' analytical thinking and supports their ability to make meaningful connections between texts.
This week, we are diving into the present tense and learning how to conjugate verbs in Spanish. Students will explore both regular and irregular verbs, with lots of practice in conjugating and writing complete sentences using the present tense.
Our primary focus will be mastering the “yo” form, as it’s essential for building a strong foundation in verb conjugation.
To support at-home practice, students can use Quizlet (the link is posted in Google Classroom) to study the verbs we are working on in class. Students have been encouraged to spend about 10 minutes each day reviewing these verbs to reinforce their learning.
📆 Please note: There will be a quiz on January 23rd covering this material.
Looking Ahead in SLA:
We will continue our work in the Identity unit as we explore poetry from renowned Cuban poet Nicolás Guillén. His poems offer a rich lens through which students can reflect on identity, culture, and voice—central themes of our unit.
In addition to reading and discussing Guillén’s work, students will continue to practice present tense conjugation
This week in math, students continued their work with Fraction Division. Students have been using two strategies, common denominators and multiplying by the reciprocal (Keep Change Flip).
Students have used fraction division in finding missing side lengths when finding the area of triangles and rectangles.
Looking Ahead in Math:
Next week, we will be wrapping up our unit. Monday, students will be using fractional lengths to find volume. Our unit test tentatively is set for Wednesday for all math classes.
i-Ready Weekly Minute Tracker
Starting the week of January 6–9, Teacher K and Mrs. Bullock's classes will be introducing a weekly i-Ready log/minute tracker to help students stay accountable for their i-Ready usage. The goal is for all students to complete at least 40 minutes of i-Ready each week.
- Students should track their minutes on their half-sheet log and turn it in each Monday.
- If a student completed their minutes during class, they have already submitted their log for the week.
- A new log will be given out each week to support consistency and routine.
Thank you for helping us ensure students meet their weekly learning goals!
For additional guides for families click here
In Mrs. Kareotes' Class
This week, students were hard at work at their vertical spaces, engaging in hands-on, collaborative problem-solving.
They kicked off the week with the 2026 Math Challenge — a deceptively simple yet captivating puzzle! The goal? Using the digits in 2026 exactly once, students were asked to create mathematical expressions to represent each number from 1 to 50.
Students were encouraged to get creative and use any mathematical operation or symbol they could think of. It was a fun and challenging way to build critical thinking and number sense! Click here to see if you could handle the challenge...
On Friday, students tackled a new problem: “Peaches Today, Peaches Tomorrow.”
This rich math task encouraged reasoning, discussion, and perseverance. Here's a photo of one of our groups after they successfully solved the problem - great teamwork and determination on display!
This week, students will continue their exploration of Ancient Egypt. Using a variety of text sources, they will dive deeper into the key aspects of civilization through the lens of GRAPES:
- Geography
- Religion
- Achievements
- Politics
- Economics
- Social Structure.
This framework helps students organize their understanding of Ancient Egypt and make meaningful connections across different elements of its society.
Looking Ahead in S.S.:
Next week, students will finish using text to complete their Ancient Egypt GRAPES sheets. Students will then compare Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt using the knowledge they have learned.
Mr. Sommer's Class
Looking Ahead in Mr. Sommer's Science Class:
Next week, students will be engaging in hands-on learning as they conduct experiments to compare and contrast different types of insulators. Through observation and data collection, they'll explore which materials are most effective at keeping heat in or out—an exciting way to connect science concepts to real-world applications!
Next week is the last week of Fine Arts Rotation 2!
Rotation 3 begins on Tuesday, January 20th.
- Art → Drama
- Drama → Media Arts
- Media Arts → Music
- Music → Art
Students have chosen Restart by Gordon Korman.
Book Club meets once a week, on Thursdays, during 6th grade lunch. We eat, read, and discuss our books together in room 320. All are welcome!
Email Ms. Sorock at sorocka@district65.net with any questions.