In 6th grade English Language Arts students will move from writing opinions to writing arguments. Arguments are more formal and objective, and they rely on evidence (like quotations or statistics). When citing evidence from a text, decide whether to quote the text directly or to paraphrase it (put it in different words). Work on longer research projects as well as shorter ones. Be flexible: adjust a project’s focus or research question as needed. Decide on goals (what needs to be done) and roles (who will be responsible for what) when working in a group. 

 By The End of Sixth Grade, Students Can:

• Read a play or poem silently. Then listen to someone reading or performing it aloud. Compare the two experiences. 
• Describe how a story’s plot develops and how characters change during the story.
• Summarize a text objectively, without personal opinions. 
• Understand how different words can have similar meanings (denotations) but very different feelings (connotations): for example, thrifty and stingy. 
• Understand what plagiarism is and how to avoid it. 
• Decide whether a speaker is citing enough evidence to support their claims. 
• Analyze the impact of a specific word, phrase, sentence, paragraph, or section in a text.
• Use parentheses, commas, and dashes around words that add extra information to a sentence. For example, write The three boys—Joey, Amid, and Juan—went to look for the missing notebook.