6th Grade ELA Advanced Curriculum Map
Unit 1: Fiction
Materials: The students will read selected novels including but not limited to The Island
of the Blue Dolphins or Tangerine. Students may also read selected short stories to
include “All Summer in a Day”, “The Very Best of Friends”, “The Nightingale” and
“The Fun They Had” and “Love”.
Differentiated Topics: Specific skills to be addressed are identifying and applying
author's craft specifically irony, symbolism, metaphor. Students will also practice making
inferences, making predictions based on cause and effect relationships. Students will be
able to identify theme, both explicit and implicit; setting-integral and incidental;
characters: static/dynamic, flat/round and conflict: internal/external.
Assignments/Activities: Students will create detailed Plot Diagrams in which they
analyze the elements of a story in relation to cause and effect relationships.
Students may also participate in Literature Circles discussion of novels such as Frindle,
Hoot, Tangerine, A Single Shard, Bud, Not Buddy, and Freak the Mighty. In reading,
students independently analyze new vocabulary, create concise summaries, make
connections to the text, select poignant passages, create visual representations, or develop
questions about a text to contribute to small group discussion.
Students may also create Double Entry Journals that document their thinking about
specific parts of a text, be it questions, connections, or personal reflections.
Students may also use the SOAPS strategy to analyze the Subject, Occasion, Audience,
Purpose, Speaker of a particular text.
Using the Iceberg strategy, students may compare details about a character in a text that
are easily identified to those that are not as obvious, leaving students to infer based on
information in the text.
Students may journal ideas derived from a visual representation. They will develop their
writing into a narrative piece. Students may be asked to apply a particular technique such
as flashback or foreshadowing to own narrative writing.
Students may be asked to document examples of Author's craft on a chart; students must
identify the technique, explain how the technique impacts the story, and identify another
example of where the technique is used.
Students will do close readings and “mark” text, diagramming their thinking, use of skill
and identification of device.
Products/Assignments: Students will create short stories using the literary elements
discussed or other non-personal narrative pieces. Students will also write analytical
essays in which they analyze the author's craft used in a cold text.
Connections: Students will make connections between selected texts, specifically
comparing use of craft.
Unit 2: Literary Non-fiction
Materials: Students will read texts including but not limited to "Hard as Nails", excerpt
from The Land I Lost, selected pieces from Zlata's Diary, “The Drive in Movies”, “La
Bamba”, “My Brother and Me”, “Oranges”, or“Ode to Mi Gato”.
Differentiated Topics: The unit will focus on the Author and students will identify and
analyze style, perspective, tone, influences, purpose, and bias.
Assignments/Activities: Students will mark the text to show examples of how word
choice helps the reader to determine author’s purpose, influence, style and tone.
Students may compare an author’s techniques for character development in a fiction
piece and an autobiographical piece for example Gary Soto’s “The Drive-In Movies” /
“My Brother and Me” (non-fiction), “La Bamba”/ “Baseball in April” (fiction), and
“Oranges” / “Ode to Mi Gato” (narrative poem). Students may also study the works of
Walter Dean Myers in a similar fashion.
Students may compare and contrast biography and biographical sketches and research
information about the life of a selected author.
Students will do close readings and “mark” text, diagramming their thinking and
analyzing the author’s techniques.
Products/Assignments: Students may create a descriptive character sketch of an
individual of their choosing.
Students may create biographical sketches of author’s of texts studied.
Connections: Research of author’s from fiction and literary non-fiction unit.
Units 3 and 4: Informational Text and Non-Print Informational Text
Materials: The students will study examples of the following types of informational text:
websites, magazine articles, interviews, newspaper articles, trade books, advertisement,
and commercials.
Differentiated Topics: Students will evaluate the effectiveness of text elements, graphic
features, functional text features. They will analyze and create examples of propaganda
techniques. The focus of this unit is to support students’ understanding of real-world text
for practical purposes.
Assignments/Activities: The students will mark up text (websites, magazine and
newspaper articles, trade books and advertisements) and analyze the effectiveness of text
elements.
Students will also identify and evaluate persuasive techniques used in commercials; they
will then create their own commercials and effectively utilize the persuasive techniques.
Students will complete an author study of a newspaper reporter, identifying and
analyzing trends/patterns in craft and voice.
Products/Assignments: The students will create a pamphlet or brochure outlining the
information obtained from their research of a topic chosen by the teacher.
Connections: Teachers will use textbooks such as science and social studies as texts for
text feature/elements analysis.
Unit 5: Drama
Materials: Supplemental Reader’s theatre plays
Differentiated Topics: The Phantom Toll Booth, In the Fog, other supplemental Reader's
theatre plays
Assignments/Activities: Students will perform several dramatic pieces including reader’s
theater and longer plays with special emphasis on fluency, non-verbal cues, and stage
directions.
Students will watch a clip of a movie and create stage directions for a particular scene.
They will then evaluate the effectiveness of the actors performance.
Products/Assessments: Students will create the script for a commercial developed using
persuasive techniques. Students may also create scripts for a scene from a prose selection.
Connections: Historical Reader’s Theatre plays such as Julius Caesar and Sojourner
Truth
Unit 6: Fiction
Materials:
Oral Tradition: "Why Monkeys Live in Trees"/"The Case of the Monkeys That Fell from
the Trees", "Medusa's Head", "The Nightingale"; Science Fiction: "The Fun They Had",
Historical Fiction: various picture books including "Pink and Say", "Gleam and Glow",
"The Yellow Star"
Differentiated Topics: Setting: integral/incidental; Cultural awareness, dialect, universal
theme, allusion
Assignments/Activities:
Oral Tradition- Students will complete expert group research on various cultures
specifically the value systems of each culture. They will share an example of a piece of
fictional literature that demonstrates the ideals of that culture.
Science Fiction- Students will read 3-4 science fiction short stories and compare the
themes of each in order to define the characteristics of science fiction.
Historical- Students will analyze a short story to identify the details that contribute to the
setting of the story. They will then determine from that list which details are incidental
and which are integral.
Products/Assessments: Using the writer’s workshop model, students create a piece of
writing that is an example of the oral tradition literature, science fiction or historical
fiction.
Connections: Historical connections depending on the text selected
Unit 7: Poetry
Materials: “Ballad of Birmingham”, “The Bridegroom”
Differentiated Topics: Flashback, assonance, symbolism, imagery, tone, mood
Assignments/Activities: Students will read, compare and contrast poems with similar
themes and poetic devices. Students can complete a poet study and analyze the author’s
craft.
Products/Assessments: Students will apply analysis of craft and poetic devices to cold
texts. Students will create poems using the various techniques and devices discussed.
Students will create a poetry anthology with contents decided upon by the teacher.
Students will participate in Coffee House/ Open Mic.
Connections: Connections between devices in poetry and prose
Research: The research process will be address initially in the fiction unit, again in the
Literary Non-fiction unit and with a culminating brochure or pamphlet in the
informational text unit.