6th
Grade ELA
Unit/Topics: Good readers use strategies to enable them to understand and read deeply.
Unit Essential Questions:
-How do you use reading strategies and literary devices to enhance reading comprehension?
-How do writers respond to and use literary devices in their writing?
Concepts:
Students will know:
-Reader’s Purpose: Readers adjust their strategies based on their purpose for reading: reading for pleasure vs.
reading for academics.
-Writer's Purpose: Writers adjust their strategies based on their purpose for writing: writing for pleasure vs. writing for
academics.
-Author's Purpose: Authors make choices in order to convey a purpose.
-Plot: Knowing the text structure of fiction stories allows readers to comprehend and predict an outcome.
-Character Development: Understanding character development allows the reader to connect, analyze, and enjoy
the changes of characters in a story.
-Figurative Language: Figurative language is used by authors to enable the reader to create connections and mental
images in the story.
-Theme: Readers will use theme to understand the "big picture" of a piece of literature.
-Narrative: Writers use literary devices in order to write a narrative.
Skills:
Students will be able to:
-Use reading strategies (annotating, connecting, clarifying, evaluating, predicting, questioning, summarizing,
visualizing) to enhance comprehension based on purpose.
-Use writing strategies (pre-writing/brainstorming, graphic organizers, writing checklists) to enhance a written piece
based on purpose.
-Interpret the author's choices in the text..
-Diagram the plot and analyze a fictional story by detecting the literary elements and support with evidence from the
text.
-Identify a character trait and use methods of character development to support and draw conclusion about the
character.
-Identifying types of figurative language, provide evidence from the text to support why it is figurative language and
interpret the meaning of the figurative language.
-Cite textual evidence to support analysis of an inferred theme.
-Write a narrative using literary devices.
Key Vocabulary:
-annotating, connecting, clarifying, evaluating, predicting, questioning, summarizing, visualizing
-pre-writing/brainstorming, graphic organizers, writing checklists
-plot, exposition, conflict, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution
-character trait, thoughts, actions, dialogue
-personification, simile, metaphor, idiom, onomatopoeia, hyperbole, alliteration
-topic sentence, evidence & explain, concluding sentence
-subject word, theme, evidence
Key Lesson Questions
-How do you use reading strategies to enhance comprehension based on purpose?
-How do you use writing strategies to enhance a written piece based on purpose?
-How do you interpret the author's choices in order to understand their purpose?
-How do you recognize the elements of plot and analyze a piece of literature using the elements?
-How do you cite evidence from the text to support conclusions drawn about the characters?
-How do you identify and interpret figurative language?
-How do you cite evidence from the text to support conclusions drawn about the theme of a text?
-How do you write a narrative?