6th Grade Science Goals
| 1) To encourage students’ inherent curiosity about the nature
of the universe 2) To further develop a wide variety of skills such as analyzing, communicating, comparing, cooperating, evaluating, generalizing, interpreting, listening, observing, organizing, and synthesizing 3) To connect facts to appropriate scientific concepts and principles 4) To develop patience and persistence while solving practical and theoretical problems 5) To gain an appreciation for the diversity and complexity of the natural world 6) To observe and care for developing organisms 7) To explore what it means to be human both culturally and biologically 8) To provide opportunities to discover and discuss what technology is and how it has shaped our world 9) To develop skill and confidence with using a variety of common household, shop, laboratory, and garden tools 10) To gently force students to replace misunderstandings with new or more complete understandings 11) To give pairs of students the responsibility of planning and teaching one day’s science lesson 12) To further develop skills with computers, especially in the areas of visual & systems thinking and research 13) To provide a broader context by encouraging students to reflect upon their science experiences and to make connections between these experiences and their lives outside the classroom |
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Click here for photos of glassblowing
6th Grade Science Topics
SINKING, FLOATING, AND NEUTRAL BUOYANCY
(AN INTRODUCTION TO DENSITY & PRESSURE)
A) Discrepancies—rocks that float, wood that sinks, similar
things that behave differently
B) Achieving neutral buoyancy by changing the weight of an object or the density
of the fluid
C) Equal volume bottles and equal mass experiments
D) Dot concentration diagrams as a way of visualizing what density is and
what it means
E) Measuring the buoyant force
F) Clay boats and measuring volume by displacement
G) Thinking about ratios
H) Student-made Cartesian divers and Galilean thermometers
I) Pressure--force per area ratios
J) Hydraulics--fluids under pressure
THE SCIENCE OF SUSTAINABILITY
(AN INTRODUCTION TO HUMAN ECOLOGY)
A) Knowing your stuff—the secret lives of everyday thingsB) Carrying capacity and ecological footprints
C) Population dynamics—the interaction of birth and death rates
D) Resource distribution and different economic classes
E) Sustainability and the use of commonly owned resources
F) Renewable and Non-renewable resources
G) The shape of change—graphing patterns of growth and decay
H) Stella--using software to model and understand dynamic systems
I) A Service Learning Project—preparing, planting,
and tending our winter food bank garden
HALLOWEEN SCIENCE
THE REASONS FOR SEASONS (AN INTRODUCTION TO THE SOLAR SYSTEM)
A) The 1000 yard solar system—Earth as a peppercorn
B) Light bulbs and mini globes to simulate Earth’s daily rotation and
yearly revolution
C) Equinoxes and solstices: Exploring angle of sun’s rays and changes
in sunrise and sunset
D) Arctic and Antarctic circles/Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn: Connections
to inclination
E) Reasons for seasons and the convenience of Polaris in Northern Hemisphere
F) Learning about Earth by creating one’s own planet
GLASSBLOWING (AN INTRODUCTION TO CHEMISTRY)
A) Discovering molecular bonding rules
B) Learning the names and structures of ten common molecules
C) Chemical reactions and their atomic balance
D) What is burning? Connections to fossil fuels and greenhouse gases
E) Lighting a Bunsen burner
F) Making Cartesian divers
G) Creatively manipulating hot glass
H) Home product chemistry—building models of a variety of household
molecules
I) Visit to a local glassblowing studio
MAKING STONE-AGE TOOLS (AN INTRODUCTION TO PALEOANTHROPOLOGY)
A) Evidence for past history of human life and culture
B) Hominid skulls and timelines
C) What are tools and what animals use them?
D) The only animal that uses tools to make other tools and maintains its tools
E) History, composition & manufacture of glass
F) Visiting master flint-knapper and lithic technologist, Dan Stueber
G) Creating our own Stone Age tool kits using obsidian flakes
H) Early technologies—fires without matches and the leverage of an atlatl
THE SCIENCE OF COMPUTERS
A) The basic parts
B) How microprocessors work
C) Digital information and how 20 questions got its name
D) How transistors work
E) How microprocessors are made
F) The Information Age and how computers affect our lives
G) Analog versus digital--how records and CD’s work
SOUND
A) Experiments with goblets and correlation of various
factors
related to pitch
B) Characteristics of sound
C) Echo investigations: The speed of sound
D) Lightning and thunder
E) Using computers to view and manipulate sounds
GARDENING
A) Nutrient cycling/composting
B) Experimental design and long-term care and observation of plants grown
from seed
C) Monitoring local variables such as moisture and temperature
D) Keeping weekly garden journals
E) A Service Learning Project—planting nitrogen-fixing red alders in
the retention pond area
F) Summer gardening volunteers—watering, weeding, tending and harvesting
during the summer months
HONEYBEES AND BUMBLEBEES
A) Social insects
B) Our observation hives
C) Interpreting and graphing the distance and direction components of honeybee
dances
D) Asking bees questions and getting answers
The above list of topics is not meant to be a course syllabus. Rather, it is designed to give parents an idea of the kinds of content and investigations that their children will be encountering in this class. We will likely not cover all of the above topics and we may cover some topics that are not listed.
