“Exercise the writing muscle every day, even if it is only a letter, notes, a title list, a character sketch, a journal entry. Writers are like dancers, like athletes. Without that exercise, the muscles seize up.”
                                                                              ---Jane Yolen

Language Arts - Building Effective Writers and Communicators

Students will spend time each day developing skills in reading, writing, listening, and speaking. We will spend time working individually and collaboratively to develop effective communication.  The Language Arts curriculum is dictated by the Common Core State Standards.  You can learn more about the CCSS by clicking here. 

In Language Arts, students will get DAILY writing practice.  Students will write short paragraphs, essays, and longer research works.  Writers in my classes will respond to prompts, write journal entries, caption photos, write letters from different points of view, and dabble in poetry.  Writing will come in many forms and lengths to help students continue to develop skills in effective communication.  Early in the year, we focus on effective paragraph production.  Later in the year, we focus on longer pieces of formal writing.

In sixth grade, students will focus on the writing modes of argumentative (similar to persuasive writing), explanatory/informative (sometimes identified as expository), and narrative.  Each of these writing modes, while serving different purposes, share some common framework.  While developing writing in these modes, we will focus on clear purpose, appropriate structure and organization, developing strong introductions and conclusions, understanding audience, using effective supporting details, and developing a recognizable voice for each individual's writing.  With writing, we will also stress writing process.  Students will learn to be more effective at editing and revising the writing of others and their own.

Reading and Language Arts will often be integrated, with students working on tasks jointly for both classes.  Additionally, I work closely with Mr. Montplaisir to support student writing that is needed in other core classes.  At home, you will often see your student working on an assignment or project for Social Studies or Science, but completing the writing portion of the assignments for Language Arts.  This gives students a stronger framework to support writing, and it creates learning opportunities that have greater integration across the curriculum.  (This process also requires a good deal of communication between teachers, which helps to keep the homework quantity reasonable too.)

Common Core 
Stance on Writing

 "For students, writing is a key means of asserting and defending claims, showing what they know about a subject, and conveying what they have experienced, imagined, thought, and felt. To be college- and career- ready writers, students must take task, purpose, and audience into careful consideration, choosing words, information, structures, and formats deliberately. They need to know how to combine elements of different kinds of writing—for example, to use narrative strategies within argument and explanation within narrative—to produce complex and nuanced writing. They need to be able to use technology strategically when creating, refining, and collaborating on writing. They have to become adept at gathering information, evaluating sources, and citing material accurately, reporting findings from their research and analysis of sources in a clear and cogent manner. They must have the flexibility, concentration, and fluency to produce high-quality first-draft text under a tight deadline as well as the capacity to revisit and make improvements to a piece of writing over multiple drafts when circumstances encourage or require it." 
COMMON CORE STATE STANDARDS OF OREGON