Sixth grade begins 'team' approach to instruction

Students embrace more challenging material

By Joanne Fox Journal staff writer | Posted: Tuesday, January 17, 2006

Sixth-grader Breanna Jensen, appears eager to answer a question during an English class at Sioux City’s East Middle School. Also pictured are Ian Curtis and Jessica Camerer. (Staff photo by Tim Hynds)

Editor's note: The Journal continues its five-part series on Back to School with the sixth grade experience.

"Finally, I can write something critical about going back to school," I thought as I entered the sixth-grade classroom of Kathy Bahrke at East Middle School on this unusually warm October day.

The students were watching TV at 7:45 a.m. and I assumed it was to keep them quiet.

But wait, this isn't network television. This seems to be a news report on Hurricane Katrina and the newscasters look like they're about 18.

These announcers had the composure and articulation of CNN anchors in interviewing adults in leadership positions. Finally, the two young men identified themselves with the in-school educational TV network Channel One.

I waited for some blatant advertising for soft drinks or fast-food places to goad me into disliking this program, but the only promotion was to encourage reporting weapon possession by calling an 800 number. It certainly put the reality of middle school into perspective.

During the program, Bahrke brought me everything a sixth-grader needed. I was dying to go through the bright yellow folder but didn't dare draw attention to myself, because by now, it was silent reading time.

Bahrke provided me with the book "Don't Sweat the Small Stuff for Teens." Students were reading a variety of authors, among them H. Jackson Brown, Judy Blume, Bill Wallace and were sporting a variety of reading styles. Among them were upright with book vertical to almost lounging with book flopped in the lap.

But there was a disturbing similarity -- nearly all of the students' desks were piled with three-ring binders, spiral notebooks and textbooks, in addition to the recreational reading books. I was apprehensive. How much work was I in for today?

Bahrke suggested that Amy help me find my locker and help me practice the combination. There were no lockers at Cooper School in sixth grade. That didn't come until I entered junior high school, but having witnessed the pile of items on the students' desks, I understood the need for the locker.

Once I mastered the locker -- Amy gave me tips on the last number -- we returned to the classroom and opened my folder. Here was my registration card, my fee schedule, my accident insurance plan, my assignment book (think Franklin Planner from fourth grade), my class schedule with an explanation of how to read it, my locker number and combination, my "Welcome to East Middle" letter, my bus code of conduct handout and my Phi Team Newsletter.

Pre-algebra con job

Suddenly, the bell rang, except it was more of doorbell hum than a dinging. It was time for Pre-algebra, a class the principal, Tom Peterson, had conned me into taking.

"But, math wasn't my strong class," I tried to explain to him at our initial meeting. I began reliving Algebra and Geometry from freshman, sophomore and junior years, the last math courses from my entire academic career including college and post-graduate studies.

"Oh, you'll like this," he insisted. "It'll be a good experience."

We didn't stay long in Jason Hirschbach's math room. Instead we walked up the stairs to the library to work on the computers on adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing ... integers.

Here's what I saw on the screen from the Web site: www.pre-alg.com.

-12 + 3 + (-6) + 14 = ?

Once solved, this was followed by the question and exercise, "Which equation illustrates the additive inverse property?"

The hint provided was, "The sum of an integer and its additive inverse is zero."

Right. I may have the report card to prove my A in ninth-grade Algebra, but no explanation could ever accompany it.

I don't know what I would have done without Sabrina and Emily on both sides of me. Even the hints didn't make much sense. I made note of the Web site, www.pre-alg.com. I had the sick feeling Algebra would resurface in high school.

In addition to the Pre-algebra class, Jim Fiegel had his science class working on the computers. I tried to count the computers (anything to avoid the lesson) and came up with about 40 Gateways and 15 laptops. I mentioned to Jeremy as we were leaving that was a lot of computers.

"Many of the rooms have computers and they're really nice," he said, "except in the keyboarding room. Those just sort of serve a purpose. We don't need anything fancy in keyboarding. You are coming to keyboarding, aren't you?"

"Well, that's not on my schedule today," I replied.

"Oh you've got to, you just got to!" he exclaimed as we returned to the classroom just before the bell for science class.

Science and electricity

I was already recalling with dread the electricity experiment in fourth-grade science. Instructor Julie Sweeney handed out a sheet entitled "Power of a Motor." My heart sank. I knew I would have to depend on my partners Brittney, Brady and Tyler.

We took turns connecting a battery to a knife switch and a motor with a pulley. My partners were great about letting me flip the switch and operate the stop watch. We recorded the force of the motor in Newtons and the work in Joules, words I had never heard before. We (OK, my partners) proved our hypothesis that three batteries would provide more power than one.

It was time to switch classrooms again and as I walked down the hall, somewhat out of the line of traffic, I heard a "Where are you going?" I looked right into a teacher's face and I'm not sure which of us was more surprised.

"Oh, I thought you were a student," she apologized. "Are you a sub?"

"No, I am a student today," I explained as I was bustled down the hall to English.

Apparently, I was supposed to walk on the inside of the teacher. Had there been a yellow line, like in kindergarten and fourth-grade lunch, I might have responded correctly.

English was next, back with Bahrke. Today we wrote letters for parent/teacher conferences. They were to serve as an explanation of how we were doing in school. We brainstormed on things we would want to include (Sam was my partner on this) and then reviewed the parts of a letter: the heading, the greeting, the body, the closing and the signature.

No adults allowed

When the bell rang at 10:39, it was time for lunch. It seemed a bit early, but that was the schedule. I put my materials in my locker and Austin led me upstairs to the lunchroom. Today, I was buying my lunch.

"Watch it if it's spicy chicken today," he warned me. "It'll burn your mouth."

I ate with the sixth-grade team teachers at the request of Principal Peterson.

"It's something I'm not negotiating on," he said, when I asked to eat with the students. "This is their time and I don't allow adults to eat with them. Not even when a parent asks."

It was a bit odd to suddenly switch gears and discuss with a group of adults what I was doing as a student. I explained as best I could that I had come up with this idea to return to school as a student, experience a day and write about it.

One male teacher, who shall remain nameless, looked at me with a poker face and asked, "Who did you make mad at the paper to get this assignment?"

Reading followed lunch.

JoEllen Meier took us through "Number the Stars" by Lois Lowry. I was not familiar with the story of the determination of the people of Denmark to get the Jews to safety while the Nazis were equally determined to annihilate them.

I browsed the first chapter quickly and was impressed by the language. I noticed it won the Newbery Award. I thought of "The Diary of Anne Frank," but this book focused quite a bit on how the young people were drawn into the ordeals of World War II. Breanna, Emily and I discussed the questions and answers.

Regular math followed and I was buoyed when I saw the exercise. It involved variables and expressions, including working out "x," but I was more confident with this than the Pre-algebra exercise. Sami worked with me on the math and I was proud I could hold my own on this.

Goal setting

Then it was back to Bahrke's class for homeroom or TA (Teacher Adviser). We worked on setting two goals for home and two goals for school, such as being nice to each other and less talking in class. Bahrke asked the students to use what time was left to quietly work on homework or read.

I finally looked through my bright, yellow folder at the information and found that middle school has a different grading scale than fourth grade. This was more of the 90 to 100 is an A that I recalled for high school. It still differed from my Cooper School sixth-grade report card which had no grade scale, but listed A as superior, B as above average, C as average, D as below average and U as unsatisfactory.

As I was going over my notes, I looked up to see my favorite middle school story. Almost directly across from me was one of my classmates who had his good-sized book in front of him, while his eyes surveyed the classroom.

The book was upside down.

Eventually, something startled him and his eyes returned to the book. Once he realized the error of his ways, he furtively glanced around and slowly turned the book around.

I found Social Studies fascinating. Teacher Kate Albrecht explained to me that National Geographic was piloting a program on immigration. Each group of students learned about either the Irish, Chinese, Mexican or German-Jewish immigration, then shared their findings with the rest of the groups.

The final class of the day was a TAG (Talented And Gifted) program. The class was creating brochures on their own personal Utopia using Microsoft Publisher. Chris Still handed me 12 pages of back-to-back information on how to go about setting up my own Utopia, complete with its own location, history and physical features.

"Just to let you know," Brittney confided to me, "we talk a lot in this class and do most of the work at home."

The class reminded me of my teacher Nellie Winkler's attempts to introduce us to parliamentary procedure at Cooper. We had elections and learned about the duties of each office. It didn't appear on our report card under any subject, but it was probably the closest to an advanced approach as we could get in 1963-64.

I returned to sixth grade the next day for Art with Karol Holton. In addition to learning that color has three physical properties, hues, value and intensity, we were handed vocabulary sheets on which we were to define the words and use them in a sentence.

We practiced with water colors on values and intensities working with orange and blue. We didn't create any pictures, but it would be the start for the next exercise in the class of watercolor drawings.

I had been warned by the teachers at lunch the previous day that I would need gym clothes for Physical Education. They teased me that if I didn't have the right clothes, I would be assigned clothing from a grab bag.

Thank goodness today's class with Richard Kaufman was archery, so I remained in my street clothes. I know this may be hard to believe with four sons who went through Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts, but I have never touched a bow and arrow.

I was partnered with a group of other girls. Morgan was very helpful in showing me how to position my arm, aim at the target and release. My first attempt was lame, but the more I shot, the closer I got until I finally did hit the target several times and had the winning score in my group. They hailed and applauded me.

A chance to excel

Finally, I entered the room for keyboarding with Raz Vanderloo. There were twice as many students as in my other classes and Jeremy was right that these computers were not at the same level as in the library.

I called up the exercise on the screen and began typing. It really felt good to excel at something. Jacob watched my fingers fly over the keys and whispered, "You're good!"

"It's just years of practice," I said as humbly as I could muster as I watched the screen tell me I was typing about 68 words per minute.

As Vanderloo told us class was almost over and we were to return to our desks, Chris, who had been sitting a couple of seats away leaned toward me and said with a puzzled look on his face, "Why are you doing this?"

"I thought it would be fun to learn what it was like to be back in school," I said.

"You know, I've thought about being a journalist," he said.

"Good for you," I responded. "It's a great job."

As I walked to my car, I recalled that just before Social Studies class ended, Katie asked me, "So, how does it feel to be a sixth-grader."

I was caught off-guard by such a forthright query, so I think I stammered, "It's a challenge."

In the next few days, I received two 12- by 18-inch posters with well-wishes from my fellow sixth-graders and teachers. My favorite: "Joanne, I know being a sixth-grader is challenging!" It was signed by Katie.

Sixth grade is no longer the last of the elementary experience, I realized. It's an initiation into high school.

In one way, that was a strong precursor for my ninth-grade experience. On the other hand, there was no way to prepare me for something I hadn't anticipated -- the reality that being nearly 40 years older than my classmates would eventually take its toll on me.

Joanne Fox may be reached at (712) 293-4247 or joannefox@siouxcityjournal.com.