Description
About the Author
E. D. Hirsch, Jr., is a professor of English at the University of Virginia and the author of The Schools We Need, The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, and the bestselling Cultural Literacy. He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Product Description
What should your child learn in the sixth grade? How can you help him or her at home? This book answers these important questions and more, offering the specific shared knowledge that thousands of parents and teachers across the nation have agreed upon for American sixth graders. Featuring sixteen pages of full-color illustrations, a bolder, easier-to-follow format, and a thoroughly updated curriculum, What Your Sixth Grader Needs to Know, Revised Edition, is designed for parents and teachers to enjoy with children. Hundreds of thousands of children have benefited from the Core Knowledge Series. This revised edition gives a new generation of sixth graders the advantage they need to make progress in school today, and to establish an approach to learning that will last a lifetime. Discover:
• Favorite Poems—old and new, from Edgar Allan Poe’s classic “The Raven” to Maya Angelou’s “Woman Work”
• Literature—from around the world, including Homer’s epics the Iliad and the Odyssey, Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, and Mark Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper
• Learning About Language—he rules of written English, including the four kinds of sentences, common English sayings and phrases, plus an introduction to Greek and Latin roots
• History and Geography—world history from ancient Greece and the fall of the Roman Empire to the Enlightenment and the French Revolution; American history of the post—Civil War era, including the Industrial Revolution, immigration, urbanization, and reform
• Visual Arts—a brief history of art, stretching from the classical period through the Renaissance, Baroque, and Romantic periods all the way to the age of realism, with full-color reproductions and discussions of great works by artists such as El Greco, Rembrandt, and Winslow Homer
• Music—understanding and appreciating music, including musical notation, chords, and scales—plus biographies of great composers such as Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Chopin
• Math—challenging lessons, ranging from probability and statistics, geometry, ratios and proportions to basic pre-algebra
• Science—fascinating discussions of plate tectonics, oceans, astronomy, the environment, the human body, and the immune system—plus short biographies of great scientists such as Marie Curie
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
General Introduction to the Core Knowledge Series
I. WHAT IS YOUR CHILD LEARNING IN SCHOOL?
A parent of identical twins sent me a letter in which she expressed concern that her children, who are in the same grade in the same school, are being taught completely different things. How can this be? Because they are in different classrooms; because the teachers in these classrooms have only the vaguest guidelines to follow; in short, because the school, like many in the United States, lacks a definite, specific curriculum.
Many parents would be surprised if they were to examine the curriculum of their child’s elementary school. Ask to see your school’s curriculum. Does it spell out, in clear and concrete terms, a core of specific content and skills all children at a particular grade level are expected to learn by the end of the school year?
Many curricula speak in general terms of vaguely defined skills, processes, and attitudes, often in an abstract, pseudo-technical language that calls, for example, for children to “analyze patterns and data,” or “investigate the structure and dynamics of living systems,” or “work cooperatively in a group.” Such vagueness evades the central question: what is your child learning in school? It places unreasonable demands upon teachers and often results in years of schooling marred by repetitions and gaps. Yet another unit on dinosau