6th Grade Science

In 6th grade, students’ curiosity is regularly stoked by inquiry-based, hands-on explorations. The program has three fundamental goals: we want students to learn how to learn science, learn to love science, and learn to appreciate and wonder about the world around them. They pursue these goals in a year-long program of activities that allow them to formulate questions, develop hypotheses, collect observations, analyze data, work in a team, and form evidence-supported conclusions. Units of study include genetics and human evolution, variables and controlled experiments, the metric system, flight and rocketry, states of matter, color, light, lenses, mirrors and the eye, and astronomy. For example, students study density and buoyancy in an activity in which they design “lifeboats” from paper cups, measure the capacity of their boats, and then experiment with how many “passengers” (pennies) a boat can hold. They graph these different variables to determine a pattern, and then predict and test their hypotheses by repeating the activity with boats built by other students.  Students complete the 6th grade year with a passion for science and the ability to channel their active curiosity into refined inquiry.