Welcome
to Miss Lachowicz's Classroom 6-8
RELIGION – *Every quarter all junior high students, 6th, 7th, and 8th graders, are encouraged to volunteer seven (7) hours of service in various areas: Church, Family, School, and Community. Service is something we do voluntarily without payment just to be good stewards of all God’s creation. An adult in charge or parent must sign the service sheet for authorization with a short explanation of services completed. These are due the week before grades.
*Every Friday we attend the 8:30 a.m. Mass and receive the sacrament of Eucharist. Before Christmas and Easter, our entire class receives the sacrament of Reconciliation. Students are urged to go to more often to receive Reconciliation and attend Sunday Mass with family and friends regularly.
Link 1 to PDF: Project for World Religion Curriculum Fair
PDF Handout for: World Religion Project for January Curriculum Fair
*We learn all prayers in our Sadlier’s We Believe We Are God’s People religion book: Hail Mary, Glory Be, Our Father, Nicene Creed, Memorare, and the Act of Contrition. We pray the rosary in October and May to honor the Blessed Virgin Mary, our patroness of our school. We pray for our own special intentions regularly in class and at church. We pray to praise God, thank God, ask for favors and forgiveness. Good Christians pray five times a day: morning, breakfast, lunch, dinner, and night.
*Sixth graders focus on reading and learning the Old Testament of our Holy Bible. We compare and contrast other world religions: Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. We responsibly and respectfully learn how other faiths impact lives long ago and impact our lives today. We research world religions’ topics such as origins, founders, idea of supreme being, beliefs/creeds, holy place, houses of worship, holy days, sacred writings, rituals and laws, and symbols.
The Catholic New World Newspaper and the Venture Magazine followed the sixth graders in their world religions projects and tours to a synagogue, temples, masjid, mosque, and other churches. The Burhani Mosque Yearbook also wrote about our visit.
Check us out:)! PDF Venture Magazine We have visited four of our five houses of worship this month: St. Mary's Catholic church; Hindu temple, or mandir; Islamic masjid, or mosque; and a Buddhist temple.
SOCIAL STUDIES – Our journey in Macmillan/McGraw-Hill’s Our World takes us back through time to ancient civilizations where students compare and contrasts people, traditions, beliefs, cultures, and ways of life from all around the world throughout time. We explore the differences and similarities of people yesterday and today, recognize and examine contributions, new and old technologies that changed our world. We examine how the first clans and tribes became villages, kingdoms, towns, cities then into nations and countries. We explore various people who made great contributions to the world while analyzing how people lived and cooperated to become productive civilizations through wars. Knowing all the geography really makes a difference: continents, oceans, seas, rivers, mountains, lakes, deserts, and plains. Every Monday is “Current Events,” where each student must bring in newspaper or magazines articles (not Internet) pertaining to what we are studying. Save them in a folder to discuss and share – 10 pts.
>>>>>1st quarter: Old & New Stone Age - Mesopotamia (Middle East) - Egypt 
.........2nd quarter: Greece - Italy - India – >>>>>>China - World Religions..............
3rd quarter: Africa - Middle Ages (Europe) – Americas (1500-1900)
>>>>>>>>>>4th quarter: Conquests – Explorations – Innovations – WWI - WWII 
ENGLISH - Sixth graders always use all of their language skills they have learned since first grade and add some new ones. We begin reviewing capitalization rules and punctuation applications from our Voyages in English by Loyola Press.
<<<<<<<<<<1st quarter - Know when or when not to capitalize! Use the correct punctuation marks by following the rules: periods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . exclamation marks ! ! ! commas , , , hyphens – apostrophes ‘ ‘ ‘colons : : : semicolons ; ; ; “quotes”
<<<<<<<<< Write proper sentences, divide into Subject / Predicate, and define type of sentence it is: Declarative..., Interrogative???, <<<< . . . Imperative, and ! ! ! Exclamatory. Narrative writings.
< > < > < 2nd quarter - Nouns – Pronouns – Articles – Adjectives – Paragraph writing. Editing, Revising, Rewriting, Essays, Descriptive and persuasive writings.
< > < > < 3rd quarter – Prepositions - Conjunctions – Verbs – Adverbs – Poetry - Sentence structure
< > < > < 4th quarter - Sentence structure, Expository writing, ID all parts of speech
VOCABULARY – Our new Vocabulary books replace the old spellers for junior high. Every student is expected to complete the weekly units independently, and on their own. We go over and correct the pages together as review for the weekly tests. Sixth graders are exceptional at following schedules and making a routine of their own. Great work 6th graders! We work on antonyms, synonyms, content meanings, using context clues, and of course proper spelling by syllables. Feel free to move ahead at your own pace. Handwriting is really stressed in vocabulary writing. Write cursive letters correctly!
Sadlier-Oxford Vocabulary Workshop Level A
http://www.sadlier-oxford.com/vocabulary/iwords.cfm?sp=&level=A
READING – Sixth graders love short stories from our literature books. Prentice Hall Copper series. We compare and contrast many short stories to examine characters and their traits, settings and background knowledge, differences between main idea and themes, chronological order and plot, climax and conflicts, and inferences. We read and write about things we read in narrative, descriptive, or expository essays. We also read biographies, drama, poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and perhaps some fantasy or mystery. We often connect our reading novels and short stories to our social studies units. All in all we read stories of characters in the Middle East, Mexico, India, China, Africa, Europe, and Americas. Some additional books are added just for fun with connections made by our own sixth graders and chosen by them.
