Grade 6 English
Unit 1 : Foundations
Enduring Understandings:
 Effective readers recognize how the words and phrases authors choose contribute to the
meaning of a text.
 Writers make careful decisions about how to construct arguments that best support their
claims.
 Effective writers make purposeful decisions when crafting their stories because there are many
ways to express a theme or central idea.
Essential Questions:
 What is character and how is it defined or developed?
 What techniques make an argument effective in achieving its purpose?
 How is a theme or central idea developed in a text?
Unit 2 : Adventures
Enduring Understandings:
 Effective readers recognize how the words and phrases authors choose create mood in
a text.
 Advertisers convince an audience of an idea by using persuasive techniques.
 Adventure stories expand our perspectives by offering experiences different from our
own.
Essential Questions:
 How do authors use language purposely to create mood?
 What techniques do advertisers use to effectively persuade an audience?
 What is an adventure and how do we capture its essence in writing?
Unit 3 : Challenges and Barriers
Enduring Understandings:
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Challenges force us to choose and commit to a course of action.
Challenges are a function of the friction between our current circumstances and our needs and
ambitions.
 Barriers are challenges for which no successful solution has yet been realized.
 Effective writers manipulate information, narrative elements and language to capture the
complexity of how challenges shape us.
Essential Questions:
 How can the same challenge be interpreted differently by various individuals or groups?
 When facing a challenge, how are one’s choices limited by circumstances and perspective?
 How are barriers transcended and thus changed into challenges of the past?
 What deliberate choices do writers make in order to convey the difficulty inherent in facing
challenges?
Unit 4 : Artistic Choices
Enduring Understandings:
 Effective readers recognize how the words and phrases authors choose create tone.
 Effective writers address the important issues of their society through imaginative creations.
 Effective writers develop a specific voice to match their audience and purpose.
Essential Questions:
 How do authors use language purposely to create tone?
 How does literature reflect the values and conflicts of our reality?
 How do effective writers communicate their own ideas through a narrator in prose or speaker in
poetry?
Books that may be introduced to the students include Maniac Magee, The View from Saturday,
The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle, My Side of the Mountain, Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry,
The Watson’s Go to Birmingham, Holes, The Single Shard as well as various short stories, poems
and speeches.
Some Common Tasks that students may complete include:
 Write and present an argument challenging or defending a quotation.
 Analyze how an author develops a character in a text.
 Compare how print and non-print text express a common theme or central ideas.
 Write an explanation of how an author uses language to create mood or tone.
 Create and present an advertisement for a product.
 Research a contemporary issue and provide an objective summary of each source.
 Write and present a speech that argues a claim.
 Write a collection of poems based on a theme or central idea.
 Write an essay explaining how an author uses fiction to give voice to real-world issues.
 Prepare and perform a scene from a play by Shakespeare.