The emphasis of this lesson is on history and research rather than literature, selections from Jack London's The Call of the Wild are used to provide focus and structure for students' research in online databases of primary sources, and to serve as models of vivid narrative prose for students' own stories.

In this lesson, students will dissect a Times column about the leadership styles of former Vice President (and Nobel Laureate) Al Gore and President George W. Bush and then write their own opinion editorial on presidential leadership.

The objective of this activity is to reinforce the importance of being specific while dealing with events of a sequential nature, such as the phases of the moon.

In this lesson, students will review and revise their essays in order to address common errors.

In this lesson, students learn about proverbs: how they work, how they differ from cliches, how to interpret them, and how they can be culturally and personally significant. Students begin by talking about proverbs, interview family and friends to find proverbs that were not discussed in class, and figuring out the meaning of proverbs by creating a new definition of proverbs based on what they've learned.

This course was created by the Rethink Education Content Development Team. This course is aligned to the NC Standards for 6th Grade English Language Arts. 

This course was created by the Rethink Education Content Development Team. This course is aligned to the NC Standards for 6th Grade ELA.

In this lesson, students will work on writing the final copy of their newspaper articles, focusing on sentence structure and appropriate transitions to improve the flow of their writing.

Students will use scaffolding to research and organize information for writing a research paper. A research paper scaffold provides students with clear support for writing expository papers that include a question (problem), literature review, analysis, methodology for original research, results, conclusion, and references. Students examine informational text, use an inquiry-based approach, and practice genre-specific strategies for expository writing.

In this lesson, students use previewing to activate their prior knowledge and set a purpose for reading. Using a strategy called THIEVES, which is an acronym for title, headings, introduction, every first sentence in a paragraph, visuals and vocabulary, end-of-chapter questions, and summary, students are guided through a preview of a nonfiction text. After guided practice, partners work together to use the strategy to preview a chapter from a textbook.

This lesson plan, which is adaptable for use in middle school as well, introduces students to a wide world of writing. Students begin by brainstorming a list of the types of writing people do on a daily basis. Then, students work together to classify those writing genres in various categories, such as formal and informal, public and private, and digital writing. Students then invite people into the classroom to talk about what, why, and how they write in real life. As a culminating activity, students reflect on how these varying purposes and processes can apply to their own lives.

In this lesson, students will use the steps of the writing process (brainstorming, drafting, revising, proofreading, and publishing) to write original and, in small groups, perform their fables as skits. Students will also review the elements of a fable, such as theme, in order to create original written fables of their own.