SIXTH GRADE ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARTS

CURRICULUM OVERVIEW 2016-2017

Teachers:6B Heidi Pouley

Sixth graders have three 45 minute periods and two 90 minute block periodsof ELA each week for a total of almost 51/2 hours of instruction. Mr. Hostetter (7A) and I will co-teach the block periods meaning that there will be two teachers for more targeted instruction, twice a week. I am excited to share a love of reading and writing with the sixth graders this year. Students will have many opportunities to learn from their strengths and to learn and practice new strategies. They will also stretch themselves as readers, writers, and learners.

Our LANGUAGE ARTSprogram includes reading informational text, reading literature, writing, speaking and listening and language. The goal for all of our language study is that students will apply these skills in their writing across content areas. These elements are integrated with literature and with other courses, especially social studies and religion.

We focus our vocabulary study on exploring Greek and Latin prefixes, root words, and suffixes. Nearly 70% of the English language is derived from Latin and Greek languages. The object of this study is to have students become familiar with the Greek and Latin roots as building blocks of the English language (and other romantic languages) so they can be used in building a larger, richer vocabulary. This focused study will allow students to decipher words they encounter and enable them to use the vocabulary in speaking and writing to express their ideas more effectively.

Writing is the major emphasis of our language arts program.We will focus on three major types of writing; writing arguments to support claims, informative/explanatory writing, and narrative writing. We use an instructional model for teaching writing called six-trait writing. This approach describes six aspects of writing: ideas, organization, voice, sentence fluency, word choice, and conventions.Teaching the six traits helps students understand components of effective writing. It also gives us a common vocabulary that we can use as we discuss our writing. As we are working on specific traits, students may be evaluating their writing on just one or two traits. As students understand the traits more fully, we will ask them to pay attention to more traits at once.We also emphasize the writing process, especially effective pre-writing and revising strategies. Students will do many kinds of writing, using forms that fit their purpose and audience.

The goal of readingLITERATUREandINFORMATIONAL TEXTSis to expand students'reading skills and develop their understanding of a variety of texts. Some of the major skills are listed below.

Identifying various reading strategies and using them appropriately

Citing textual evidence to support analysis

Determining theme or central idea

Understanding literary elements, including narrator, plot, character, setting

Determining the meaning of words and phrases in a text

Analyzing how parts of a text fit into the overall theme or plot

Determining the narrator or speaker’s point of view

Comparing/Contrasting the texts

Interpreting figurative languagein literature and poetry

We will use a variety of texts in literature, including a Reader’s Handbook. The handbooks belong to the students, and they will use them all through middle school. We encourage you to take a look at your child’s book. Throughout the course of the year, students will read a variety of short stories, articles, poetry, and novels.

ELA Texts:

Reader’s Handbook (text)

Write Source (text)

Scholastic Scope Magazine (monthly magazine including multiple genre)

Seedfolks by Paul Fleischman (novel, fiction)

Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson (novel, memoire, free verse poetry)

*The Adventures of Ulysses by Bernard Evslin (novel, fiction, adaptation of Homer’s The Odyssey)

*Number the Stars by Lois Lowry (novel, historical fiction)

*Friedrich by Hans Peter Richter (novel, historical fiction)

*Devil’s Arithmetic by Jane Yolen (novel, historical fiction)

*Journey to Topaz by Yoshiko Uschida (novel, historical fiction)

*Each student will not read each of these texts, they are simply the names of all the texts used in class