Late September / October

• Students will read a Memoir called Daniel by Haven Kimmel.  As well, students will read other memoirs by Eric Carle.

• Students will move into brainstorming, pre-writing, and creating a rough draft for their memoirs. 

• Students will aquire the following skills and be expected to use them in the memoirs: having a clear purpose, difference between and effective and ineffective memoir, narrative leads, time transitions, rules of dialogue, difference between editing and revising, how to take a status of class, and how to include thoughts and feelings into their writing.

Early November

• Students will complete their second drafts of their memoirs in class.

• Students will spend the next couple of weeks revising their memoirs, peer/self editing, and sharing their stories.

• Students will begin writing their final drafts.

November-December

• Students are writing their final drafts.  They are due by the end of class on November 30th.

• Students who finish early will be allowed to type their memoirs in the computer lab during class.

• All students will participate in sharing their memoirs in class December 4th, 6th, and 7th.

• Students will move into writing Friendly Letters to hospitalized veterans and senior citizens to spread holiday cheer.

• Click here to see project guidelines.

December

• Students are beginning to write Friendly Letters.  They will close December with this project.

January - February

• Students are beginning a new unit on expository writing.  This unit will take students through CMT's.   They will:

  • Identify the "effective elements" of exposition.
• Write strong leads and thesis statements.
• Write interesting topic sentences.
• Write concluding sentences.
• Practice multiple strategies for elaboration.
• Practice using transitions to help the flow of the writing piece.

February-March

* Students will spend the month of February on elaboration.  Students will identify what a well elaborated paragraph looks like, learn many strategies to help them elaborate in their own writing, and utilize a questioning technique to identify a lack of elaboration in their peer's and own writing.

* Students will write limericks for class and a contest with the Journal Inquirer.

August/ Early September

• This month students will be getting used to the rules and routines of the 6th grade language arts class. Currently, we are going over vocabulary, bell work, and creating our writer's workshop notebooks. This notebook stays in the class at all times.

• In the next 2 weeks, students will be learning all the rules and their expected roles on behavior and procedures for the writer's workshop. During the introduction of writers workshop students will complete their "Writing Territories" and "Questions for Memoirists".  These lists are questions to guide students in writing down ideas, memories, topics of interest, and many other possible writing topics to be used for writing a memoir and other projects this year.

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