6th grade

Mathematics 6 begins by building on students’ understanding of multiplication and division and equivalent fractions as a basis for understanding ratios and proportional reasoning. Work with positive rational numbers continues as students build fluency with standard algorithms for fraction and multi-digit decimal operations. Formal work with expressions and equations also begins at this level as students use variables to represent relationships and solve problems. Students then extend their understanding of numbers to include negative rational numbers, absolute value as a distance, and coordinates of points in all quadrants of the coordinate plane.

Students extend their understanding of length, area, and volume as they solve problems involving the areas of triangles, special quadrilaterals, and polygons, and volume of rectangular prisms. Finally, formal work with statistics begins at this grade level in the final two units as students represent data in various ways and build their understanding of statistical variation.

There is a focus throughout the course on mathematical processes and practices. These practices should become the natural way in which students come to understand and do mathematics. While, depending on the content to be understood or on the problem to be solved, any practice might be brought to bear, some practices may prove more useful than others. In Grade 6, students should pay particular attention to the precision of language as they begin to formalize ideas from elementary grades. As students begin to work with variables and develop fluency with algorithms and geometry formulas, they have the opportunity to make use of the structure of mathematics and describe regularity in repeated reasoning.

- Agile Mind Curriculum