ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARTS

Week 14: May 9th - May 13th

Students investigated how relationships within their books relate or contribute to greater social issues. In addition, they created a T-chart with the pros and cons of a relationship in their book blub book because all connections are complicated.

Week 14: May 2nd - May 6th

This week, students began our new unit: Social Issue Book Clubs. We brainstormed different social issues that are common in society today, and browsed different books within each of the issues. Students signed up for a book club based on the books!

Week 13: April 25th - April 28th

Students finished their essays this week! They participated in peer editing, looking for structure, organization, and convention mistakes. Afterward, students typed up their essays to turn them in.

Week 12: April 18th - April 22nd

Students wrote their final paragraphs for their character essays this week. We learned about writing captivating hooks to grab the attention of our readers and to end our essays with thoughtful remarks.

Week 11: April 11th - April 14th

This week students took their ELA Forward Exam. In class, we continued developing our essays by including reasons, evidence, elaboration, and more.

Week 10: April 4th - April 8th

Students began developing their essays by crafting a claim statement. We looked at student examples of claims, shared our own work, and submitted a draft. In addition, we practiced our persuasive writing by creating 10-minute paragraphs responding to the following statement: students should be paid for getting good grades and the driving age should be raised to 21.

Week 9: March 21st - March 25th

Our focus this week was selecting and analyzing our short stories for our essay unit. Students got to pick from four short stories and worked on identifying character traits and evidence in the text. We modeled how to do this work by reading "Raymond's Run" together.

Week 8: February 28th - March 4th

We launched into our new unit this week: The Literary Essay. Students learned about the steps to crafting an excellent paragraph with tools like claim, reason, evidence, and elaboration. They even got to practice by writing a paragraph about how the third little pig in "The Little Pigs" is brave.

Week 7: February 28th - March 4th

Students wrapped up their book clubs this week by creating slides as a group with important quotes from the story's character traits and symbols. They also took a book quiz to assess their knowledge of the important details in the story. Students were proud of their accomplishments as they could add a new book to their list of "Books I've Read." Way to go 6th graders!

Week 6: February 28th - March 4th

Students worked in their stations and book clubs to advance their understanding of symbolism, motif, and theme. We even did a sorting activity with Aseops Fabels by matching the story to the theme. Next, we discussed how these ideas are applicable to our group read-aloud and our book club books.

Week 5: February 21st - February 25th

Students learned about symbolism this week by viewing short films and identifying how the author uses symbols to share ideas. Next, we took a look at our own stories to identify symbols in the text.

Week 4: February 14th - February 16th

This week students continued their work on motifs and themes, and took an assessment to track their learning growth. Students watched a short film, "Belly Flop" to see the parallels between literary techniques in media.

Week 3: February 7th - February 10th

Not only did students engage in their Book Club groups, and practice motifs and themes, but they also participated in station work. Students used their knowledge of the text and context clues to identify the meaning of new words.

Week 2: January 31st - February 4th

We continued our work with motifs and themes by watching Taylor Swift's music video, "You Belong With Me." We noticed that not only do authors include motifs in their work, but song writers, movie makers, and artists do it. Literary techniques and devices are all around us, not just in books!

Week 1: January 24th - January 27th

Students enjoyed coming back to school and were ready to enter back into our Reading Unit. We explored motifs and themes by analyzing the Giving Tree. To end our week, students chose their Book Club Book: Esperanza Rising, Miracle's Boys, and Walk Two Moons.

SEMESTER 2

Week 17: December 13th - December 17th

Publishing our writing was the focus of this week. We did final edits and even had a publishing party with hot chocolate! Additionally, students tracked their reading growth by taking the Winter Fast Bridge Assessment.

Week 15: December 6th - December 9th

We focused on editing this week! Students engaged in small groups, mentor texts, and Nearpods to enhance their writing skills. We learned about common homophones like the difference between their, there and they're as well as too, to and two.

Week 14: November 29th - December 3rd

This week we learned about first-person point of view and practiced this skill by watching a clip of a spooky movie. Students challenged themselves by writing from the perspective of the main character in the clip. We revised our stories individually, and in pairs to prepare our writing for sharing.

Week 13: November 22nd- 25th

Students wrote fast and furiously for 20 minutes non-stop! We focused on getting ideas down on paper and following where our imagination takes us. Also, we practiced our "emotion writing." This means exploring how to show emotions through detail and description without telling the reader explicitly what the character feels.

Week 12: November 15th - 18th

We began our writing unit this week! Students brainstormed narrative writing ideas by using their emotions to fuel ideas. We also reviewed capitalization, punctuation, and quotation mark norms to ensure our skills were up-to-par for 6th-grade writing!

Week 11: November 8th - 12th

Students learned about flashbacks and backstory this week through the lens of the Hunger Games. We even watched a clip from the movie! Through going back in time, we gathered new insights about our characters. Additionally, we continued reading our new read-aloud Restart.

Week 10: November 1st - 5th

Students continued their work on setting as we wrapped up the quarter. We completed a end-of-the quarter by taking an assessment on a short story: The Ravine. We practiced our skills on character traits, pressures, setting, and overall reading comprehension.

Week 9: October 25th - 28th

This week students participated in multiple extension activities for The Skin I'm In. We created posters with character traits for our 6 main characters, produced a story mountain by identifying major plot points, and wrote our own book blurbs to inspire new readers. We even displayed our work up in the hallway to showcase our hard work. Way to go, 6th graders!

Week 8: October 18th - 22nd

This week we wrapped up our first read-aloud: The Skin I'm In. Students reflected in their notebooks about the books ending, and discussed whether or not they were satisfied. We also continued working on investigating the setting in stories, as well as the mood, through reading Holes. Not to mention, students also recorded themsvles reading their writing! We made FlipGrid's to share our stories, and celebrate our writing about setting.

Week 7: October 11th - 15th

Students learned about setting through the test Maniac Magee. We discussed how the time and the place influence how the characters act. Students reflected and took notes in their Reading Notebooks as they practiced this work independently.

Week 6: October 4th - 8th

This week we focused on investigating the pressures characters face. We analyzed influences like home-life, desires, bullying, etc., and how characters act in certain ways as a result of the pressures they face. Students drew "pressure maps" of their independent reading books to identify what they notice in their own books.

Week 5: September 27th - October 1st

Students identified the character traits that have the most impact on the stories they are reading. They also learned about the change agent and supporting their ideas with evidence from the text. On Friday, students participated in a gallery walk of their Reading Notebooks and completed an assessment.

Week 4: September 20th-23rd

We learned about how good readers look at characters' less likable sides, even if they are the protagonist. Students applied this ideology from our lesson to a scene from Harry Potter. On Thursday, we also began our partner fluency work by reading aloud passages with peers.

Week 3: September 13th-17th

This week, we continued our work on character traits by reading our class read-aloud: The Skin I'm In, engaging in reading fluency activities, and jotting in their notebooks. On Tuesday, students also completed the FastBridge reading assessment to track their reading growth.

Week 2: September 7th-10th

Students learned that characters, just like all of us, are complicated. We practiced identifying character traits and supporting our thinking with evidence from the text.

Week 1: September 1st-3rd

This week, students got to know one another, our classroom, and our school. We toured the LRC to check out books, created "I am Poems" to share about our identities, and even began identifying the different texts we will read in class by doing a "Genre Sort."