6th grade Academic Literacy supports the transition to middle school by helping students understand and navigate the increased literacy demands of reading and writing to learn across all subjects. With an emphasis on nonfiction informational text, data, and informational writing, students will strengthen their ability to comprehend, summarize, analyze, interpret, and make connections within and across texts. Students will enrich their vocabulary and literacy skills through choice reading, shared reading experiences, and research opportunities. This is an interactive class that encourages critical thinking based on reading, writing, and discussion that is a foundation for the skills that will be developed in 7th and 8th grade.
Unit 1: Take It In: What's the Truth?
During this unit, students will explore the digital and physical world of 6th grade as they transition from elementary to middle school. Students will recognize that things are not always as they seem as skills are developed to help determine facts and understand text features. Students will discover the Three Big Questions and five Nonfiction Signposts that will frame nonfiction reading for the year and beyond.
Unit 2:The Set Up: What’s the Purpose?
During this unit, students will engage in activities to explore a variety of texts and determine the text structure(s) the author chose to use. Students will explore the deeper meaning behind what the author chose to share with us, and what we, as readers, can take away from it. By discovering the author’s underlying purpose, students can evaluate the deeper meaning of the article.
Unit 3: Let’s Focus: What’s the Big Idea?
During this unit, students will identify the components of a nonfiction article to help them write an engaging introductory sentence for a nonfiction summary. Students will investigate strategies to assist them in hunting down the main/central ideas that leap off the page to help provide the big picture. The author’s purpose will be analyzed in order to create an unbiased and effective nonfiction summary.
Unit 4: You Be the Judge: What’s the Proof?
During this unit, students will investigate authors’ motivations and perspectives in sharing information and embedding statistics. As readers, we will comprehend, interpret, and analyze a wide variety of statistical measures and graphs to be careful consumers of information. As authors, we will construct purposeful charts, graphs, and infographics that most effectively represent the information. We will differentiate between strong and weak claims, evaluating the strength of evidence while also investigating ways to strengthen arguments.
Unit 5: Defend It: What’s the Argument?
During this unit, students will state their case and defend their claim as they learn the art of designing a strong argument. After students successfully dissect an open-ended prompt, a strong claim will be stated and supported by properly punctuated evidence. Reasoning will wrap the CER paragraph up as students elaborate on how the evidence they chose supports their argument. The masterful art of CER writing will then expand into a full text dependent analysis essay (TDA).
Unit 6: Tell Me About It: How Do I Share What I’ve Learned?
During this unit, students will celebrate all they have learned by creating their own nonfiction magazine article spread. Beginning with an inquiry question rooted in deep interest, students will evaluate websites and sources in order to research, cite, and notetake about their passion. Synthesizing all they’ve learned about their topic and Academic Literacy content, the nonfiction magazine article spread will include not only a written article, but also engaging text and visual features that will be published and shared.
