ACcelerated (AC) 6th Grade math Course Overview
FIRST SEMESTERUnit 1: Exploring Real-Life Phenomena through Statistics
Expected Dates: Beginning of School Year to Late August This unit will introduce students to the study of statistics by experiencing how to design simple experiments and collect data. The unit begins with identifying what constitutes a statistical question. Students can collect, analyze and display data through a number of graphical representations. Unit 2: Making Relevant Connections through Number System Fluency Expected Dates: Late August to Late September Building on student knowledge and understanding of whole numbers and fractions from elementary school, students will begin working with number relationships to deepen their connection to fractions. Students will continue computation with four operations with both fractions and decimals using a variety of strategies. Unit 3: Investigating Rate, Ratio, and Proportional Relationship Expected Dates: Late September to Late October In this unit, students will understand the concept of a ratio and how to represent ratios using appropriate language to describe relationships, make tables of equivalent ratios, use such tables to compare ratios, and find missing values in the tables. Students will solve proportion problems, describe rates, including unit rates, in the context of ratio relationships, and solve unit rate problems (e.g., unit price, constant speed, words per minute…). Students will understand percent as a rate of per 100, solve real-world percent problems, and use ratios to convert within measurement systems to solve authentic problems. Unit 4: Exploring Area and Volume Expected Dates: Late October to Late November This unit will expand students’ experiences and understandings of the world around them by presenting learning plans that develop geometric principles, specifically finding the area of irregular polygons, surface area of three-dimensional figures, and volume of right rectangular prisms. From such experiences they will develop formulas for area, surface area, and volume. Unit 5: Rational Explorations: Numbers and Their Opposites Expected Dates: Late November to December This unit will introduce students to negative numbers as they are used to represent quantities that are less than zero such as temperatures, elevation, scores in games or sports, and loss of income in business. The importance of zero is emphasized in this exploration of numbers. There will be a focus on the concepts of opposites and absolute value, and how both are uniquely useful in ordering and graphing positive and negative numbers. Students will learn that rational numbers are points on a number line with magnitude, or value and that a number line will aid in comparing and ordering fractions, decimals, and integers. Positive and negative numbers are often used to solve problems in everyday life, and students will explore authentic problem-solving situations involving rational numbers. |
SECOND SEMESTERUnit 6: Graphing Rational Numbers
Expected Dates: Beginning January to Mid-January This unit will introduce students to graphing coordinates in all four quadrants of the coordinate plane. Unit 7: Making Relevant Connections within the Number System Expected Dates: Mid-January to Late February In this unit, students will build upon the understanding of rational numbers developed in 6th grade, transitioning from exploring to ultimately formalizing rules for basic arithmetic operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division) with rational numbers. Using both contextual and numerical problems, students explore arithmetic combinations of negative numbers and positive numbers. Students will explore the results of adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing pairs of numbers in context, leading to the generalization of rules. Rational numbers in different forms (integers, percents, fractions, and decimal numbers) should be used in computations and explorations. Unit 8: Building Conceptual Understanding of Expressions Expected Dates: Late February to Mid-March In this unit, students begin a more formal study of algebra as they move from arithmetic experiences to algebraic representations. Students learn to translate verbal phrases and numeric situations into algebraic expressions, understand like terms, and work with exponential notations. Unit 9: Exploring Real-Life Phenomena through One-Step Equations and Inequalities Expected Dates: Mid-March to Early April Students will explore one-step equations and inequalities as they build their problem-solving stamina. Students demonstrate their ability to solve equivalent expressions and find possible solutions for inequalities with nonnegative numbers and solutions. Unit 10: Reasoning with Expressions, Equations, and Inequalities Expected Dates: Early April to Early May In this unit, students will build upon the understanding of rational numbers developed in 6th grade, transitioning from exploring to ultimately formalizing rules for basic arithmetic operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division) with rational numbers. Using both contextual and numerical problems, students explore arithmetic combinations of negative numbers and positive numbers. Students will explore the results of adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing pairs of numbers in context, leading to the generalization of rules. Rational numbers in different forms (integers, percents, fractions, and decimal numbers) should be used in computations and explorations. Unit 11: Exploring Ratios and Proportional Relationships Expected Dates: Early May to End of School Year In this unit, students develop a deeper understanding of numbers by learning to express different representations of rational numbers (e.g., fractions, decimals, and percent’s), discovering how to identify and explain the constant of proportionality, and representing proportional relationships and scale drawings within real-world contexts. Students will extend their proportional reasoning as they use similar triangles to explain slope. Students graph proportional relationships and understand the unit rate informally as a measure of the steepness of the related line, called the slope. They distinguish proportional relationships from other relationships. Students in 7th grade will use proportional reasoning to explain why the slope is the same between any two points in a similar triangle. |