Family Digest · Quarter 2 · Week 11
Greek Dark Age & the Rise of the Polis
Phoenicians and the alphabet; how the city-state emerged.
6.NS.C.6
6.NS.C.7
RI.6.2
W.6.2
MS-LS1-4
C3 D2.His.2.6-8
ELA this week
- Monday: Read on the Greek Dark Age; central idea (RI.6.2).
- Tuesday: Vocabulary: alphabet, polis, citizen, oligarchy.
- Wednesday: Compare two short accounts of the polis; whose voice dominates?
- Thursday: Plan informative paragraph: 'What made the polis new?' (W.6.2).
- Friday: Draft & publish the informative paragraph.
Words to know
alphabet
polis
citizen
oligarchy
Standards
RI.6.2
W.6.2
Math this week
- Monday: Plot points in all four quadrants of the coordinate plane (6.NS.C.6).
- Tuesday: Reflect points across axes; identify ordered-pair patterns.
- Wednesday: Order rational numbers on a number line (6.NS.C.7).
- Thursday: Absolute value and ordering with negative rationals.
- Friday: Mixed practice: coordinate plane, integers, ordering rationals.
Words to know
coordinate plane
integers
ordering rationals
Standards
6.NS.C.6
6.NS.C.7
Science this week
- Monday: Continue germination observation; record day-1 measurements.
- Tuesday: Inherited vs. acquired traits — pea-plant Punnett intro.
- Wednesday: Investigation: dominant vs. recessive traits in a class survey.
- Thursday: Punnett-square practice; model monohybrid crosses.
- Friday: Bean-seed week-1 measurement; sketch growth so far.
Social Studies this week
- Monday: Greek Dark Age (1100–800 BCE); loss of writing, depopulation.
- Tuesday: Tyre and Sidon; trade across the Mediterranean; the alphabet spreads.
- Wednesday: Geography of mountains and seas; why Greece formed many small city-states.
- Thursday: Citizenship in early Greece; the rise of tyrants and hoplite armies.
- Friday: First Olympics 776 BCE; oracles at Delphi; what unified the Greeks.
Ask at the dinner table
- 1.Ask: "Who is the main character or speaker in what you read today, and what do they want?" Then have your child read aloud one favorite sentence from "Read on the Greek Dark Age".
- 2.Ask: "Who is the main character or speaker in what you read today, and what do they want?" Then have your child read aloud one favorite sentence from "Vocabulary: alphabet, polis, citizen, oligarchy".
- 3.Ask: "Who is the main character or speaker in what you read today, and what do they want?" Then have your child read aloud one favorite sentence from "Compare two short accounts of the polis".
- 4.Ask: "Who is the main character or speaker in what you read today, and what do they want?" Then have your child read aloud one favorite sentence from "Plan informative paragraph: 'What made the polis new?'".
- 5.Ask: "Who is the main character or speaker in what you read today, and what do they want?" Then have your child read aloud one favorite sentence from "Draft & publish the informative paragraph".
- 6.Ask your child to teach you tonight's idea in 60 seconds: "Show me one example of plot points in all four quadrants of the coordinate plane (6." Teaching it back is the fastest way to lock it in.
How to help at home
Read together. Spend 15 minutes on any text — fiction, news, even recipes. Talk about new words.
Show your thinking. When you do math in real life (cooking, shopping, budgeting), narrate it out loud.
Ask "why" and "how." For science and social studies, open-ended questions matter more than right answers.
Celebrate effort. Six hours of school is a long day. Notice the work, not just the grade.