Skills & TEKS · Grade 6

Skills & TEKS Alignment

For the featured breakout Cargo Ship Rescue and the Grade 6 concept set — aligned to the 2021 Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills for Science (§112.26).

🎯 Misconceptions confronted

Every lock targets a documented Grade 6 misconception — the ideas that most depress achievement on state science assessments:

🚨 “heavy things always sink” (it's density vs. volume, not weight); “a moving object must have an unbalanced force on it” (a net force of zero can mean stillness or steady motion); “Newton's Third-Law pairs cancel each other out” (they act on different objects, so they don't); and “energy gets used up” (it transfers and transforms — it is conserved).

📋 Lock-by-lock alignment

Recurring themes: systems & models, cause & effect, energy & matter, structure & function, stability & change.

Lock	Skill / thinking move	TEKS (aligned to)	High-effect-size strategy
L1 · Sequence Crane's energy	Order an energy-transformation chain; show energy is conserved.	`6.8(A)` potential vs. kinetic; `6.8(B)` energy conserved through transfers & transformations; `6.5(E)` energy flows through systems.	Concept mapping / sequencing (Hattie d≈0.64)
L2 · Multiple choice Steel ship floats	Distinguish mass from volume; use density to explain flotation.	`6.6(D)` compare density relative to fluids; `6.5(C)` scale, proportion & quantity.	Confronting misconceptions / worked examples (d≈0.57)
L3 · Evidence sort Balanced forces	Separate strong evidence from a true-but-irrelevant fact; reason net force = 0.	`6.7(A)` forces on objects; `6.7(B)` net force, balanced vs. unbalanced; `6.1(B)` evidence-based reasoning.	Classifying / sorting evidence (d≈0.60)
L4 · Word Name the law	Identify Newton's Third Law force pairs acting on different objects.	`6.7(C)` identify equal & opposite force pairs (Newton's Third Law).	Feedback + transfer (d≈0.70–0.86)

🔧 STEM engineering design challenge

Pair the breakout with the hands-on Build a Cargo Barge challenge (foil hull, most cargo before sinking, iterate) — TEA's design process, a CER write-up, and a naval-architect career highlight. Anchored in 6.6(D) plus engineering practices 6.1(B), 6.1(G), 6.2(D), 6.3(A–C), 6.4(C).

🛠️ Open the STEM challenge →

🧩 The Grade 6 concept set

The More Grade 6 breakouts add one short activity per key concept: states of matter (6.6A), mixtures (6.6B), the periodic table (6.6C), density (6.6D), chemical change (6.6E), forces & net force (6.7), waves (6.8C), seasons & tides (6.9), Earth's layers & rock cycle (6.10), and ecosystems & cells (6.12–6.13).

🧑‍🏫 Teacher supports

Design every lesson for all learners: UDL supports (CAST v3.0), ELPS supports for emergent bilingual students, and a lesson-plan guide — each in all seven languages. See also the full standards correlation.

Standards are aligned to, not reproduced from, the official TEKS. Effect sizes from Hattie, Visible Learning.