Grade 6 - Writing

• Unit 1

• Unit 2

• Unit 3

Session 1

• Essay boot camp

• Ratcheting up the level of student work

• Essay body paragraphs have beginnings, middles, and ends

• Reflecting on being an essayist

Session 2

• Growing big ideas from details about characters

• Generating meaningful ideas, right from the start

• Link ideas in the story

• Thinking gets better through talk

Session 3

• Writing to discover what a character really wants

• Helping students write with engagement and precision

• Using thought prompts for elaborating

• Setting goals for future work

Session 4

• Crafting claims

• Strengthening claims and supporting them with compelling evidence

• Planning the boxes-and-bullets structure, then finding evidence

• Drawing on structure boot camps to organize evidence

Session 5

• Conveying evidence: Summarizing, storytelling, and quoting

Session 6

• Studying a mentor text to construct literary essays

• Small groups to support students as they draft

• Using transitional phrases

• Using a checklist for self-analysis and goal-setting

Session 7

• Revising essays to be sure you analyze as well as cite text evidence

• Troubleshooting common problems with analysis of evidence

• Considering the counterargument

• Giving feedback using the checklist

Session 8

• Looking for themes in the trouble of a text

• The power of compliments

• Making claims more precise and compelling

• Planning a thematic essay

Session 9

• Drafting using all that you know

Session 10

• First impressions and closing remarks

• Addressing struggles

• Using academic language

• Writing conclusions

Session 11

• Quoting texts

• Finding and selecting powerful quotes

• Quoting with attention to accuracy

• Minding the gaps in essays

Session 12

• Editing inquiry centers

Session 13

• Building the muscles to compare and contrast

• Deeping students' initial observations

• Grouping comparisons under the umbrella of an idea

• Strategies for comparing and contrasting

Session 14

• Comparing and contrasting themes across texts

• Taking the bumps in the road in stride

• Using a model to help craft comparative essays

• Being literary scholars

Session 15

• Applying what you have learned in the past to today's revision work

• Thinking about how to write an essay, not just what

• Problem solving as students revise

• Offering constructive feedback

Session 16

• Identifying run-ons and sentence fragments

Session 17

• Celebrating literary essays