6th Grade English/Language Arts

Sixth graders are ready for the challenge of advancing their independence by using the writing process and learning to use their voice in sophisticated and varied ways as they write for multiple purposes and audiences. They are also ready to further develop their active reading skills, make deeper inferences, and explore a broader range of connections between themselves, the world around them, and the texts they read. 

In their writing, students will practice and execute each stage of the writing process: planning, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing. Students pay attention to organization, showing vs. telling, word choice, sentence fluency, avoiding repetition, using appropriate punctuation, and paraphrasing. Students begin the year with an in-depth unit on grammar, punctuation, and sentence structures before diving into their first written pieces of the year. Vocabulary and spelling will be practiced organically as part of the reading and writing process. 

The 6th grade literature curriculum develops sophisticated readers who can analyze text and draw connections between ideas. Focusing on a few works each year of fiction and poetry allows time to live with the ideas and language of each, while reading the works as a class fosters a common literary experience. Teachers develop students’ reading comprehension through a variety of genres as well as the development of annotation and other active reading skills. Students will consider identity, their own and that of the writer, as they explore texts. Finally, students will learn how to participate robustly in small- and whole-group discussions and to back their claims with evidence from the text.