This resource accompanies our Rethink 6th Grade ELA course. It includes ideas for use, ways to support exceptional children, ways to extend learning, digital resources and tools, tips for supporting English Language Learners and students with visual and hearing impairments. There are also ideas for offline learning. 

This parent guide supports parents in helping their child at home with the 6th grade English Language Arts content.

In this lesson, students will take their knowledge of how a position paper is constructed using reasons and evidence in order to plan their body paragraphs on the Planning My Body Paragraphs graphic organizer.

In Ray Bradbury's “All Summer in A Day” takes place on the planet Venus in a future world where people have come to set up a civilization. In this CCSS lesson students will explore this fiction story through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments.

In this lesson plan, the traditional autobiography writing project is given a twist as students write alphabiographies—recording an event, person, object, or feeling associated with each letter of the alphabet. Students are introduced to the idea of the alphabiography through passages from James Howe's Totally Joe. Students then work with the teacher to create guidelines for writing their own alphabiographies. Students create an entry for each letter of the alphabet, writing about an important event from their lives. After the entry for each letter, students sum up the stories and vignettes by recording the life lessons they learned from the events. Since this type of autobiography breaks out of chronological order, students can choose what has been important in their lives. And since the writing pieces are short, even reluctant writers are eager to write!

In 1937, pilot Amelia Earhart planned to be the first to succeed in a dangerous flight. However, her journey was plagued with many obstacles, and controversy continues to surround the theories that attempt to explain her mysterious disappearance. In this CCSS lesson students will explore her life through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments. Included are sample writing tasks.

In this 14 day unit plan students read, research, draw conclusions, and write beginning level argumentative essays comparing/contrasting major world religions.

In this 28 day unit, students will gain background information on historic wars, compare different genres, presentations of events, recognize different points of view, research an essential question, compile evidence, create warrants that lead to a claim which answers the essential question, and write an argumentative essay.

In this lesson, students will discover a policy within their school or district that is important to them and that they'd like to change. They will conduct an investigation of the policy in question and write a letter with their claim, results, and recommendation to the appropriate audience.

This story, set in 1820s Austria, is a series of letters written between a young boy, Christoph, who lives in Vienna and his uncle, a music student who lives in Salzburg. In the letters, Christoph tells his uncle of the strange gentleman, Ludwig van Beethoven, who has rented a room in the boy’s home. In this CCSS lesson students will explore this story through text dependent questions, academic vocabulary, and writing assignments.

Birth of a Colony explores the history of North Carolina from the time of European exploration through the Tuscarora War. Presented in five acts, the video combines primary sources and expert commentary to bring this period of our history to life. The opening segment describes the forces that motivated European exploration and colonization of the New World. Explorers and colonists encountered native peoples with agricultural lifestyles, strong communities, and respect for the land. These Indian communities saw themselves as part of nature, and they lived in harmony with the natural world. Their spiritual practices, such as the Green Corn Ceremony, reflected this worldview. The Europeans came to the New World primarily in search of land and riches. With two such different cultural viewpoints, clashes were inevitable. This teacher's guide includes a strictly social studies lesson and a complementary ELA lesson (writing assignment).

This lesson provides an introduction to the use of factual information in creative writing. Students first examine texts to identify how a published author incorporates facts in fiction writing by reading and questioning the books Diary of a Worm, Diary of a Spider, and Diary of a Fly (Cronin). After conducting inquiry on their own to gather facts on a topic decided upon by the class, students use their facts to write several diary entries collaboratively, entries which will contribute to a class book modeled on the mentor texts. Finally, students peer review each other’s work, and revise and edit their own writing before using the Multigenre Mapper interactive to publish their work.

The lesson includes an exploration of the genre of letters to the editor, a review of persuasive writing structure and letter format, and an emphasis on multi-draft writing. The lesson focuses on the character Roy Eberhardt from Carl Hiaasen’s Newbery Honor Book Hoot for its examples. Students can complete the activity for any book that they have read.

Students become novice lexicographers as they explore recent new entries to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), learn the process of writing entries for the OED, and write a new entry themselves. Students will follow up their entry with a persuasive essay and a competition in which the strongest contender for the title of New Word is chosen. Extensions will offer students a chance to evaluate old lists of "new words" and discuss the power dynamics of dictionaries.

Students examine books, selected from the American Library Association Challenged/Banned Books list, and write persuasive pieces expressing their views about what should be done with the books at their school.

Students research the three tenets of cell theory and describe the scientific evidence that supports this theory. After students complete their research, they will engage in all steps of the writing process, including prewriting, outlining, revising, and editing. At the conclusion of the lesson, students will create a three-paragraph argumentative essay to examine the cell theory and the scientific evidence that supports this theory.

A quick go to resource to help support citations when writing. Also encourages student developemnt of finding key points within informational text. 

In this lesson, students will analyze a body paragraph of the model position identifying the author's reason, supporting evidence, and the author's explanation of how the evidence supports the claim.

Students are introduced to concepts of social justice, such as diversity, tolerance, equity, and equality, through a literary text, class discussions, and guided research. Students plan a service-learning project, then work in small groups using Photo Story software to produce a multimedia presentation designed to foster community support for the project. Students also use the ReadWriteThink.org Printing Press to create informational fliers about the project. The lesson concludes—and the service-learning project begins—with a showing of the Photo Story productions for parents and other community members.

Students read and discuss the Founding Fathers of our country indulgence in gripe sessions. In fact, a list of grievances comprises the longest section of the Declaration of Independence; however, the source of the document's power is its firm philosophic foundation. You can capitalize on the inclination of your students to complain to increase student awareness of the precedents behind the Declaration of Independence. Students will summarize the contributions of the "Founding Fathers" to the development of our county as well as explain how key historical figures exemplified values of American democracy.