6th Grade at Home: A Student and Parent Guide with Lessons and Activities to Support 6th Grade Learning (Math & English Skills)

Introduction

You and Your Child

Your job is to help your child excel in school. Everyone agrees that children bloom when their parents, family, friends, and neighbors nudge them to learn—from the Department of Education to the Parent Teacher Association, from research organizations known as educational laboratories to the local newspaper, from the National Endowment for the Arts to kids’ shows on TV.

But state standards hardly make for enjoyable leisure reading, and plowing through reports on the best ways to teach math and reading can leave you rubbing your temples. You’re caught in the middle: you want to help your child, but it’s not always easy to know how.

That’s where 6th Grade at Home comes in. We identified the core skills that sixth graders need to know. Then, we put them together along with some helpful tips for you and fun activities for your child. We built this book to be user friendly, so you and your child can fit in some quality time, even as you’re juggling all your other parental responsibilities.

For a helpful orientation to 6th Grade at Home, head over to The Princeton Review’s channel at www.YouTube.com/ThePrincetonReview.

Rob Franek, Editor-in-Chief of The Princeton Review, will share suggestions for how best to use these books with your child and get the most out of this educational tool. Our team at The Princeton Review is here to help you and your child as best we can.

A Parent’s Many Hats

As a parent, we understand you are expected to wear many hats. Check out the following ways you can use 6th Grade at Home to get more involved in your child’s academic life.

Teacher. You taught your child how to cross the street and tie his or her shoes. In addition, you may have worked to teach your child academic skills by reviewing the alphabet, helping your child memorize facts, and explaining concepts to your child. By doing so, you are modeling a great learning attitude and great study habits for your child. You are teaching him or her the value of school.

Nurturer. As a nurturer, you’re always there to support your child through tough times, celebrate your child’s successes, and give your child rules and limits. You encourage your child while holding high expectations. All of this can help your child feel safe and supported enough to face challenges and opportunities at school, like new classmates, new teachers, and so on.

Intermediary. You’re your child’s first representative in the world. You’re the main go-between and communicator for your child (school-to-home and home-to-school).

Advocate. As an advocate, you can do many things: sit on advisory councils at school, assist in the classroom, join the PTA, volunteer in school programs, vote in school board elections, and argue for learning standards and approaches you believe in.

Sometimes it’s hard to know what to do, and it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. But remember, it’s not all on your shoulders. Research shows that family and close friends all have a huge effect on children’s academic success.

What’s in This Book

Click here to download a PDF of select activities.

How Does Your Child Learn Best?

Did you know that your child learns in a lot of different ways? When children learn, they use their minds, their bodies, and their senses—their sense of sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell.

Some children can succeed in any classroom while others need specialized learning support, but all of them have strengths and weaknesses. Your child can learn to rely on his or her strengths and then work on any weaknesses. This book is full of activities that address each of these learning styles.

Visually—Using Our Sense of Sight Your child may learn best by looking at pictures, outlines, maps, and such. Your child may like to draw pictures or take notes.

Auditory—Using Our Sense of Sound Your child may learn best by listening to teachers speak, discussing with friends and classmates, or listening to music while studying. Your child may like to tap a rhythm with his or her pen or pencil while studying.

Kinesthetic—Using Our Sense of Touch and Movement Your child may learn best by moving, taking action, or walking around.

How to Use Learning Styles

Talk with your child about his or her successes at school, home, or with hobbies. How did your child learn what he or she needed to succeed? Knowing how your child learns best can help you make the most of your child’s natural strengths and work on your child’s weaknesses.

Once you know how your child likes to learn, you can make sure your child includes those learning methods that work (especially when studying for important tests). You can also support your child as he or she tries out more challenging learning methods. In the long run, this will help your child become a well-rounded learner!

You know getting involved with your child’s school experiences is the right decision. But here’s a reminder of some of the rewards you may reap! Research shows that getting involved in your child’s school experiences can result in:

Increased academic performance

Better behavior at school

Increased academic motivation

Better school attendance

And lest you think your child reaps all the rewards, you might find that helping your child learn gives you:

More info about your child’s school

A greater sense of your own learning preferences

More appreciation for all the work you did as a student

A better relationship with your child’s teacher and school staff

Want to Know More?

Check out these online resources for more reading and math support.

Math Chimp. If you want information about more effectively helping your child in mathematics, go to http://www.mathchimp.com.

Early Math from PBS Parents. If you want activities to become more engaged in your child’s school mathematics program, go to https://www.pbs.org/parents/learn-grow/all-ages/math.

Parent Resources from Reading Rockets. If you want to better understand how to enhance parent-teacher conferences and relationships, go to https://www.readingrockets.org.

Office of Elementary & Secondary Education (OESE). If you want information about training, advocates, or other educational assistance, go to https://oese.ed.gov.

Parents for Public Schools. If you want to find out about chapters of parents working together to advocate for school improvement, go to www.parents4publicschools.org.

Parent Teacher Association (PTA). If you want to connect with other parents involved in local schools, go to www.pta.org.

Parent Training and Information Centers. If you want to find out about education and services to assist a child with disabilities, go to www.parentcenterhub.org/.

Reading Is Fundamental. If you want help with supporting your child’s reading and learning, go to www.rif.org.

Finding the Main Idea

Have you ever listened to a friend tell a long story, and found yourself wondering as the friend went on: What’s this story about? What’s the point? Or have you ever read a story—or an article or a poem—that made you feel this way? Sometimes what you are reading may seem so confusing that you wish you had the help of a detective like Sherlock Holmes to figure it out! The good news is that you don’t need to hire a detective to untangle the message in a story, poem, essay, or article—you just need to know how to find the main idea. Then you can do the detective work yourself!

How do you find the main idea? Here is your first clue: in any kind of reading passage, the main idea is what the passage is mostly about. It contains the information that an author most wants you to know. Why is this valuable to you as a reader? When you find the main idea, you will find it easier to understand the passage as a whole and you’ll better remember the information you read. Finding the main idea will help you in school and on standardized reading tests. It may even help you see the point of your friend’s long stories!

At the end of this lesson, you will be able to:

understand why finding the main idea is important and useful

develop skills to help you find the main idea

apply a consistent and step-by-step process to find the main idea

Sixth graders, when you ask them to tell you the main idea of a newspaper article or book, will often launch into a long-winded summary (first this happened, then this other thing happened, and then another thing happened…) It can be hard for them to synthesize everything into one clear idea. After you read something with your student, ask them what the three most important details are, and, if possible, have them distill it down to one main idea.

Dive Right In!

Refer to your Activities PDF for a printable version of this activity.

Marking Up Text

Directions: Read the following passage. Use your pencil to find the main idea and mark it with an MI. Ask yourself the three questions for finding the main idea and write the answers at the end of the passage.

Paw Power: Dogs who Bring Smiles and Joy Pamela Margid

If you have ever been hurt or sick and had to stay in a hospital, you may have met a very special kind of dog there called a therapy dog. A therapy dog is a dog that is trained to provide affection and comfort to people who are in hospitals, special needs centers, and retirement homes. They also visit people in disaster areas who have experienced things like floods, hurricanes, or earthquakes. Just like doctors, nurses, counselors, and rescue workers help people to feel better, so do these exceptional dogs. Therapy dogs cheer people up by making them laugh, keeping them company, and helping them to relax. It’s hard not to smile when you get a visit from a sweet, furry pup who just wants to be petted, sit with you, and do funny tricks to entertain you.

Many different kinds of dogs work with their human trainers to become therapy dogs. Therapy dogs come in all sizes and breeds, from the tiny Yorkshire Terrier to the great big Golden Retriever. But dogs that are trained to work as therapy dogs have one important thing in common—they all must have the correct personality for the job. To be good therapy dogs, they need to be gentle, patient, confident, and friendly. The dogs must enjoy being around people, being petted, and sitting in people’s laps. They need to remain calm in any kind of situation. Before they can visit people and begin their work, therapy dogs must pass behavior tests to make sure they have the right personality for the job. When the dogs in training pass all their tests, they are ready to go to work and make people smile. These days, therapy dogs have become so popular that they even visit schools sometimes, so one day you may meet a therapy dog in your own school—if you haven’t already!

MAIN IDEA QUESTIONS

1. What is the overall topic?

2. What is the most important thing the author says overall about the topic?

3. Do the other sentences support the overall main idea?

Answers can be found on this page.

Explore

How to Find the Main Idea in a Paragraph

Let’s start by doing some good old-fashioned detective work and taking a look at how to find the main idea in a paragraph. First, you’ll need to identify the topic of a paragraph.

The topic of a piece of writing tells you what subject an author is writing about. An author separates and begins a new paragraph each time he or she introduces a new topic or idea. This way, each paragraph discusses only one topic or idea at a time. For example, the first paragraph of an essay about President Thomas Jefferson might describe his childhood. Thomas Jefferson’s childhood would be the topic of that paragraph. Then, the author would start a new paragraph to talk about Jefferson’s achievements throughout his life. Jefferson’s achievements would be the topic of the second paragraph.

Once you identify the topic of a paragraph, you can begin to look for the main idea—the most important point an author wants to tell you about the topic. The author can locate the main idea in different places in a paragraph, but it is almost always found in one sentence within the paragraph. Then, the author uses the rest of the paragraph to discuss the main idea by giving you supporting details.

Supporting details are sentences that support the main idea. These sentences contain information in the form of facts, examples, descriptions, or ideas that help explain the main idea. For example, in a paragraph about Thomas Jefferson’s achievements, the main idea might be Jefferson was one of our most talented presidents and he achieved many successes in his lifetime. The supporting details would tell you about some of those achievements—that he was a politician, an architect, an archeologist, an inventor, and the founder of the University of Virginia.

Now that you understand how the topic and supporting details give you important clues about the main idea, let’s go find it!

To figure out the main idea, ask yourself these questions as you read:

What is the topic?

What is the most important thing the author says about the topic?

Do the other sentences support that main idea?

When you have found a sentence that answers question 2, you have found the main idea. After finding the sentence that states the main idea, check to see if the details in the other sentences support it. If they do, you can be sure you have found the main idea.

Use Your Pencil

Your pencil is a useful tool in helping you find the topic, the supporting details, and above all, the main idea, so don’t forget to include your pencil in your detective kit! While you are reading, use your pencil to underline the topic and the main idea. When you find the main idea, mark it with an MI for main idea. Let’s look at an example and try this together.

Read the paragraph below. First, identify the topic. When you’ve found it, underline it. Then find the main idea. Underline it, too! Mark the main idea with an MI. Lastly, identify any supporting details. Do the details support the main idea you found?

To double-check your work, ask yourself the three questions for finding the main idea.

The earth’s climate has changed constantly over its 5-billion-year history. In the past, the climate was so warm it caused the oceans to rise and cover much of the earth. At other times, it got so cold that those same oceans froze and covered everything with ice. Both of these changes may seem extreme, but they occurred slowly over many thousands of years. They provide good scientific proof of how the earth has transformed over time.

What is the topic?

What is the most important thing the author says about the topic?

Do the other sentences support that main idea?

In this paragraph:

The topic is the earth’s climate change. You can tell it is the topic because all the sentences talk about it.

The main idea is that the earth’s climate has changed constantly in its 5-billion-year history. You can tell that this is the most important thing the author is saying because other sentences describe that idea in detail.

The other sentences support the topic because they give you examples of the way the earth’s climate has changed over time.

Finding the Main Idea in a Longer Passage

Now that you are able to detect the main idea in a single paragraph, you can apply what you have learned to find the main idea in a longer reading passage like an article, essay, story, or poem. In a longer reading passage, the main idea is what the whole passage is mostly about. It is the overall message in an article, essay, story, or poem.

In a longer passage, each paragraph supports the overall main idea. For example, suppose the paragraph that you read earlier about the earth’s climate change was part of a longer article called The Greenhouse Effect. Let’s say that the main idea the author wanted to get across was "Due to the greenhouse effect, the earth’s