WELCOME TO WEST JUNIOR HIGH

6^TH Grade MATH!

Your Math teacher is:  Ms. McMeekin –               Email:      [email protected]

Remind:                           Math Sec. 1 – h9f83d8      Math Sec. 2 – cg8cbf

                                        Math Sec. 3 – 8d6kg99     Math Sec. 4 – 2cah6f     

Welcome to 6^th grade math! We will work together to provide best practice instruction

and intervention. We will keep you informed using Remind and Canvas for weekly updates. 

We encourage you to communicate any concerns using the email address provided above or

by leaving a message with the office (901) 465-0798.

Math class will begin promptly with a problem of the day and include revisiting prior knowledge, direct instruction, notations, examples, vocabulary terms, and daily practice. All grades will follow with the FCPS and WJHS grading policy. Grades will stem from daily assignments, quizzes and tests. Late work will be penalized 5 points each day until work is turned in.

It is important that your student be prepared daily to receive instruction and take required notes and examples.

Prepare: Your student will need daily: mechanical pencils, loose-leaf paper, 3 ring binder and GoMath book.  We will use other resources which include Mastery Connect, IXL, Study Island and Khanacademy.

Parents and Guardians please:

• Remind your student to review notes, prepare, and engage in classes to ensure better understanding and success. Your student’s study habits are important to their goals and lifelong learning.
• Ask your student about their daily learning experience. Research shows that verbal recall is important to memory.
• Attendance is very important. Each day your student is given instruction, important layered information and skills needed to advance. Absence due to sickness is understandable.
• Home Reinforcement encourages success and confidence. Use accessible online practice tools: Online GoMath, IXL, Khanacademy.org.

Classroom Expectations:

Please note:

To provide your scholar with a good learning environment please read and follow the Student Handbook Conduct Policy (Absences, Tardiness, Behavior)

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Mathematics – 6 Grade:

Descriptions below provide an overview of the mathematical concepts and skills that students will explore and learn throughout 6^th grade math.

The Number System:

Students will extend their previous understandings of the numbers and the ordering of numbers to the full system of rational numbers, which include negative rational numbers, and in particular negative integers.  They reason about the order and absolute value of rational numbers and about the location of points in all four quadrants of the coordinate plane.

Students will use fractions, multiplication and division along with an understanding of the relationship between multiplication and division to understand and explain why the procedures for dividing fraction make sense.  Students use these operations to solve problems.

Ratios and Proportional Relationships:

Students will begin the formal study of ratios and proportions.  Students use reasoning about multiplication and division to solve ratio and rate problems about quantities.  By viewing equivalent ratios and rates as deriving from, and extending, pairs of rows or columns in the multiplication table and by analyzing simple drawings that indicate the relative size of quantities, students connect their understanding of multiplication and division with ratios and rates.  Thus students expand the scope of problems for which they can use multiplication and division to solve problems and they connect ratios and fractions.  Students solve a wide variety of problems involving ratios and rates.  Proportional relationships are then added and studied in 7^th grade.

Expressions and Equations:

Students begin to use properties of arithmetic operations systematically to work with numerical expressions that contain whole-number exponents. And equations that correspond to given situations, evaluate expressions, and use expressions and formulas to solve problems.  Students understand that expressions in different forms can be equivalent and they use the properties of operations to rewrite expression in equivalent forms. Students know that the solutions of an equation are the values of the variables that make the equation true.  Students use properties of operations and the idea of maintaining the equality of both sides of an equation to solve simple one-step equations. Students explore how algebraic expression can represent written situations and generalize relationships from specific cases.

Geometry:

Students build on their work with area from earlier grades by reasoning about relationships among shapes to determine area, surface area, and volume.  They find areas of right triangles, other triangles and special quadrilaterals by decomposing these shapes, rearranging or moving pieces, and relating the shapes to rectangles.  Using these methods, students discuss, develop, and justify formulas for areas of triangles and parallelograms.  Students find areas of polygons and surface areas of prisms and pyramids by decomposing them into pieces whose area they can more easily determine.  They reason about right rectangular prisms with fractional side lengths to extend formulas for the volume of a right rectangular prism to fractional side lengths.  They prepare for work on scale drawings and constructions in the 7^th grade.

Statistics and Probability:

6^th grade students begin to formally develop their ability to think statistically.  They understand that a set of data (collected to answer a question) will have a distribution, which can be described by its center, spread and shape. Students calculate the median, mean, mode and relate these to the overall shape of the distribution.  They recognize that the median measures center, mid value.  The mean measures the center, value of each data point would take on the total of the data values redistributed equally, balance point. They understand that the mode refers to the most frequently occurring number found in a set by collecting and organizing data sets, considering context.  Students use number lines, dot plots, box plots and charts to display numerical data.