Syllabus

This course focuses around the primary area of English Language Arts and the Common Core Learning Standards, Reading literature, reading informational texts, argumentative writing, narrative writing, and informational writing. The goal is for individual student improvement and the ultimate objective is to reach mastery in each of these areas. In class we are a community of readers, writers, learners and thinkers.

By the end of the school- year, your child will be able to:

6.W.1: Write arguments to support claims with clear reasons and relevant evidence.

6.W.2: Write informative / explanatory texts to examine a topic and convey ideas, concepts, and information through the selection, organization, and analysis of relevant content.

6.W.3: Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective techniques, descriptive details and sequencing

The course begins with an examination of the Eastern Hemisphere today, using geographic skills. This provides the foundation for making connections between the past and the present throughout the course. The remainder of the course is divided into seven Key Ideas that cover a time span from prehistory into the 1300s. Students are provided the opportunity to explore belief systems across time and to examine the foundations of democracy.

By the end of the school- year, your child will have studied:

6.1: Present-day Eastern Hemisphere Geography

6.2: The first humans through the Neolithic Revolution in the Northern Hemisphere

6.3: Early River Valley Civilizations in the Eastern Hemisphere

6.4:Comparative World religions

6.5: Comparative Classical Civilizations in the Eastern Hemisphere

6.6: Mediterranean World: Feudal Western Europe, the Byzantine Empire, and the Islamic Calipahtes

6.7: Interactions across the Eastern Hemisphere

The goal of this course is to inspire active, lifelong, independent readers who explore diverse genres.

By the end of the school- year, your child will be able to:

1. Cite textual evidence to support an analysis of text

2. Explore literary and informational texts

3. Determine theme / central idea and point of view in literary and informational texts

4. Analyze the role of a particular sentence, paragraph, stanza, chapter, scene, or section and how it contributes to the develop of theme/central idea, plot, setting, etc.