ELA Course Description

6th Grade ELA Course Description

6th Grade ELA:

What are the stories that sustain and educate a culture? What does it mean to fight for the land and people you come from? How can you lose yourself and find your identity at the same time? Who gets to be treated as human? This ELA class will introduce and analyze these essential questions through literature, informational texts, poetry, and short stories to empower all students to be liberated readers, writers, and critical thinkers. While focusing on rigorous grade level standards in literature and informational domains, students will also analyze the places they come from and how it shapes who they are. Students will be assessed through written responses and essays, standardized benchmark tests on ANET, MAP growth assessments, and novel-based interdisciplinary projects. To be successful in this class, students should be prepared to read independently for at least 10-20 minutes at a time, determine the meaning of unknown words and phrases, annotate texts for deeper meaning, participate in class discussions, and ask questions of themselves, their peers, and their teachers. ELA is a very discussion- and participation-based class, so it is very important that students come to class having read the required passages, or they will not be able to participate in class discussions and debates. Our priority standards will be:

• RL.6.1/RI6.1- Citing evidence to support a claim

• RL.6.2/RI6.2-Determine the main idea

• RL.6.4/RI6.4-Determine the meaning of unknown words and phrases (figurative language included)

• RL.6.6/RI6.6- Determine the point of view of a character or writer

• W6.2-Write to inform using relevant evidence

Students will ultimately come to answer the 6^th grade guiding question, “Where am I from?” through the following units:

Quarter 1: Folklore through short stories: This unit will focus on folktales, myths, legends, tall tales, and creation stories to determine how different cultures create their worldview and what they deem important. Students will demonstrate mastery in this quarter by writing their own folklore stories and writing an explanatory essay on how a particular story shows the values of the culture it comes from.

-Recommended independent reading text: Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky by Kwame Mbalia OR Root Magic by Eden Royce

Quarter 2: Hurricane Child by Kheryn Callender: This unit focuses on identity through the intersections of race, nationality, and sexuality. The story follows a 12-year-old Black girl on the Caribbean island of St. Thomas as she navigates bullying in school, a crush on her new friend Kalinda, and the pain of her mother’s absence. Students will analyze how each of these intersections played a role in the development of the characters, and will analyze how the intersections of their own identities plays a role in the development of their own selves through journals and an informational essay on a topic relating to one of their identities.

-Recommended independent reading text: The House You Pass on the Way OR Brown Girl Dreaming by Jaqueline Woodson

Quarter 3: Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry OR Song of the Trees by Mildred D. Taylor: This unit focuses on land ownership, protest, and dignity in the face of injustice through the eyes of a 9-year-old Black girl in 1930’s Mississippi. Cassie’s family owns 400 acres of land in a time where most Black folks are sharecroppers for white former slave owners. With the threat of racial violence and other, more covert, forms of white supremacy, Cassie’s family must find a way to hold fast to their dignity while keeping each other and their community safe. In alignment with the social studies Quarter 3 theme of Colonization, the book will be related to other issues of gentrification, colonization, and land rights in America and internationally, connecting their own realities as Philadelphians to the struggles of Palestinians, Native Hawaiians, and Indigenous Americans. Students will analyze the importance of land, independence, and protest through a comparative essay.

Quarter 4: Monster by Walter Dean Myers AND “Monster” directed by Anthony Mandler: How does your race, gender, and neighborhood effect how the law sees you? This unit focuses on themes of humanity, justice/injustice, and innocence through the lens of Steve Harmon, a teenage boy on trial for murder. Students will read excepts from the book as well as watch scenes from the movie to compare and contrast how the story of Steve Harmon is told. Students will analyze the role of the justice/injustice system in the lives of young Black people and will read and write poems answering the question “Who gets to be human?”. Students will demonstrate mastery by writing a persuasive essay that answers the question “Should prisons exist?”, as inspired by Angela Davis’ book by the same name.