Welcome to Sixth Grade

The sixth grade class at Notre Dame School is not a traditional, self-contained classroom.  The students actually experience the changing of classes and have four different teachers.  The first few weeks of school are always a challenge for them with trying to remember where to be and when, but once they get used to the schedule, they appreciate the variety changing classes offers.

We begin the year by getting to know each other through our "Grocery Bag Autobiography." All students drew their self portrait on the outside of a grocery bag and placed at least five items in the bag that are important to them and relate to them in some way. The students first tried to identify each student from the portrait . Then the artist claimed the bag, described each item inside, and told why that item was in the bag.

Another new experience for the sixth grade is the acquisition of the subject of vocabulary taught as a subject class (and in addition) to the vocabulary words gleaned from literature. They are comprehending that augmenting their vernacular is paramount to becoming articulate.

Our religious education is an ongoing process at Notre Dame School. Our focus in sixth grade is on the Old Testament and how it prefigures the life of Jesus in the New Testament.

In Literature the first novel we read is Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred Taylor. This novel features African Americans as the main characters and is set in rural Mississippi during the 1930s.  Our next novel is Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls, a poignant story of a young boy who works his way to owning hunting dogs. We have also read The Misfits, a story of four students (considered misfits--by themselves and others) who form their own political party with a no-name calling platform to offer the middle school students an additional choice in the upcoming student government elections. We also read Bud, Not Buddy by Chrisopher Paul Curtis. This novel is about a young boy named Bud who lived in an orphanage and vavious foster homes. He ran away from the last foster home and  through determination is on a quest to find his father. The last novel we read as a class is Homecoming by Cynthia Voight about a mother who abandons her four children at a shopping mall. This year made possible through a grant, we will have literature circles with the theme of the books being bullying.

English class continues to build on what students have already learned in the previous grades. In addition to the use of the textbook, they  write research papers and essays. We prepare our research paper as a joint project with the Science class in which students research a topic for the science fair and prepare an abstract.  (A separate writing class is also taught as a subject by Mrs. Lynn Delehanty to all students at Notre Dame.)

The sixth grade is also the grade primarily responsible for the recycling program. This year through the efforts of the science teacher, Mrs. Trumble, we received grants to augment our recycling efforts. We are now using our two-bin composting system. Through our efforts to reduce waste, we have gone from four containers of trash per day at lunch to less than one full container. If we can find a way to recycle meat, fish, and dairy, we could have zero waste.

Our summer packets this year are online. For sixth grade language arts please go to http://www.eduplace.com/kids/hme/6_8 ; then to Grammar Blast. Do Units 1-8 and the Super Challenge Quiz on All Units. Also go to Wacky Web Tales: On Track of Big Foot, and Power Proofreading for Grade Six.  For vocabulary go to Http://www.sadlier-oxford.com/vocabulary  Click on Student and then Level A.

The Seventh and Eighth Grades

The first novel read by the seventh grade class is To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. This novel is concerned with civil rights which is a focus of our social studies and literature classes. We do a combined unit with the Social Studies class on the Japanese Internment Camps. In the literature portion of this unit, the students are grouped into literature circles. Each group reads a different novel about the internment camps and then present a culminating project related to the content of their novel. This project was made available by a grant from The Michigan City Education Foundation. We also read The Giver by Lois Lowry. This science fiction novel is about a boy named Jonas who lives in a utopian society. As a combined project with the computer class, pairs of students will prepare a power point presentation of an actual "utopian" society that was once a community in the United States.

English class is a continuation of what was learned in past years. Students  also do a research paper for the science fair and write an alphabiography--a twenty-six chapter autobiography beginning with each letter of the alphabet. This assignment was inspired by the book Totally Joe--a sequel to The Misfits--by James Howe.

Vocabulary is a separate subject for the seventh grade also. By this year, the students understand the value of this class and try to incorporate the words learned in the class in their writing.

The online summer packet for seventh grade language arts is: http://www.eduplace.com/kids/hme/6_8 Then go to Grammar Blast Units 1-7 and the Super Challenge Quiz on All Units. Also go to Wacky Web Tales: The Beach, then to Power Proofreading for Grade Seven. For vocabulary to to http://www.sadlier-oxford.com/vocabulary  Click on Student then Level B.

In eighth grade literature, the first novel we read is The Outsiders, a novel by S.E. Hinton concerning teenagers involved in rivalry between the rich and the poor. We also read The Pigman, a novel by Paul Zindel about respecting the older generation. We continue our literature class studying the Holocaust.   Several publications are read addressing this topic including magazine-type booklets, two books Why Do They Hate Me? a diary/journal composed of many teenaged authors who experienced WWII in the Warsaw Ghetto, concentration camps, combat, and as hidden children and participants in the Kindertransport, and Night  by Elie Weisel, a survivor of the Holocaust.  In a project in conjunction with the computer class, the students organize Power Point presentations on various aspects of the Holocaust not covered in class. This study  culminated in April with a visit from Mr. Frank Dudash who as a soldier in WWII was a liberator of the concentration camp of Ordruf. The eighth grade was also assigned a research paper about one of the sites they saw in Washington, D.C.