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Tell me more about block scheduling.
Students will be placed into three different blocks (STEM, Math and Humanities) The purpose is for students to get confortable moving into different classrooms, experience different teaching styles and prepare for middle school years.
I will be teaching humanities this year. A typical humanities class of two hours usually includes the following: writer’s workshop or reader’s workshop, social studies, small group or large group discussion, and lessons in reading, writing, vocabulary, grammar, history, geography or research. Organization and time management are emphasized in all projects.
Humanities
Shaping our study around a series of essential questions, we examine the diverse ways in which stories shape and reflect the understanding of ourselves, each other, and our neighborhoods, whether they be local or global. In order to do this, students need to understand how and why stories are written whether it be a book, poem or play.
Projects are designed to analyze a writer’s style and structure in order to read beyond the plot and discover the deeper levels in literature. Projects are also planned to connect the writing to its historical context when appropriate.
We write constantly gathering ideas for our own writing, responding to what we read, and crafting formal paragraphs, essays and narratives. Lessons are designed to utilize specific writer’s craft, grammar, and mechanics. In addition to expressing ourselves on paper, we also learn to organize and articulate our thinking in other ways such as small group literary discussions, oral presentations, and visual projects.
What does it all mean?
Literacy matters, independence matters, collaboration matters, and there is value in the process as well as the product. All we know of ourselves is learned through story and humanities class is designed to better know who we are and enlarge the world we live in.
Humanities aims to inculcate in students a love for reading and writing and a critical but open-minded view of the diverse world. Through coherently planned projects, constructive and consistent feedback, and opportunities for personal choice, students leave sixth grade with a strong sense of themselves as capable writers, readers, and thinkers.
Sixth grade humanities is an interdisciplinary block that uses discussion, projects, simulations, and guided research as a basis for studying language arts, literature, and ancient history. Students engage in an intellectual, creative, and artistic process and work as individuals as well as in whole group and small group formats.
As they read, students begin to ask interpretive questions, notice significant details of plot, character, and setting, recognize figurative language, and acquire and use new vocabulary. They develop writing skills by summarizing both fiction and nonfiction pieces coherently, narrating personal experiences, writing short fictional pieces, organize prose into paragraphs and organizing paragraphs around topic sentences. Students practice note-taking strategies, organize notes into basic outlines, and learn and use correct bibliographic formats. Students continue to revise and self-edit their work with the guidance of teachers. In the revision process, students pay close attention to the details of grammar, usage, and mechanics.
Discussion is an important component of the humanities curriculum because it allows students to develop their capacities to reason. Students listen to and consider others' ideas, recognize and articulate similarities between ideas, support ideas with textual evidence, and carefully further discussion with ideas expressed at appropriate times.