Grade 6 · printable course

Reading, Reasoning, and Writing: Grade 6 English Language Arts

Grade 6 · 435 pages · 72 lessons · PDF, print at home

This is a full year of 6th grade reading and writing built entirely on free material, old public-domain stories, folktales, speeches, and open nonfiction, so you won't be buying a textbook or novel set. The whole year trains one core habit: don't just tell me what you think a text means, show me the exact line that proves it. From that habit, your child learns to tell the difference between what a story is about (topic) and what it's actually saying (theme), to read figurative language as a choice the author made on purpose, to compare two accounts of the same event, and to write three kinds of essays, argument, informative, and story, each one reusing skills from the reading units instead of starting from scratch.

Delivered by email within minutes as a PDF stamped with your name. Print any part as often as you need for the children in your household; the link never expires.

$27.99

one household licence

Want every Grade 6 subject at once? Letters & Devotion Grade 6: The Complete Year is one PDF for $79.99.

What is inside

Every unit and lesson in this book, in order. The same lessons are taught online at lettersanddevotion.com, so a family can move between paper and screen.

Reading, Reasoning, and Writing: Grade 6 English Language Arts

72 lessons · try a lesson online free

Unit 1: Reading With Evidence9 lessons
  1. 1.Explicit vs. inferred meaning in a text
  2. 2.The difference between a claim and a restatement of the text
  3. 3.Exact quotation as evidence for a claim in narrative text
  4. 4.Relative strength of competing textual evidence for the same claim
  5. 5.Criteria for evidence relevance and fit to a specific claim
  6. 6.Context clues for unfamiliar vocabulary in grade-level text
  7. 7.Peer evidence choices evaluated against a shared claim
  8. 8.The claim-evidence-justification routine applied to novel content
  9. 9.Transfer of evidence-evaluation criteria beyond assigned text types
Unit 2: Theme vs. Topic8 lessons
  1. 10.Topic as a one-word/short-phrase label of a text's subject
  2. 11.The structural difference between topic (label) and theme (full-sentence claim)
  3. 12.The choice-consequence chain in a fable's plot
  4. 13.A theme statement inferred from choice-consequence evidence in a fable
  5. 14.Textual evidence that supports a stated theme claim
  6. 15.Two competing, differently-supported theme claims for one text
  7. 16.An inferred theme for an unfamiliar fable lacking a stated moral
  8. 17.The theme-vs-topic distinction applied outside narrative fiction
Unit 3: Figurative Language and Author's Craft9 lessons
  1. 18.Simile and metaphor as structured comparisons between two unlike things
  2. 19.The shared quality connecting the two terms of a comparison
  3. 20.Personification's effect on the tone of a passage
  4. 21.Connotation vs. denotation of near-synonyms
  5. 22.The effect of connotative word substitution on reader impression
  6. 23.Allusion as a compressed reference to shared cultural or textual knowledge
  7. 24.The irreplaceability of figurative wording — why the meaning conveyed has no literal equivalent, not only what a restatement omits
  8. 25.Figurative devices (simile, metaphor, personification, allusion, connotation) as they occur across two unseen texts of different genres
  9. 26.Disagreements about device classification in ambiguous or borderline figurative lines
Unit 4: Writing Arguments With Reasons and Evidence9 lessons
  1. 27.A claim as a defensible position distinct from a summary
  2. 28.The distinction between a reason and its supporting evidence
  3. 29.Fit between a specific piece of evidence and the reason it is meant to support
  4. 30.Strongest-to-weakest organization of reasons as a rhetorical choice
  5. 31.The rhetorical function of a rebutted counterclaim
  6. 32.A rebuttal that directly answers a counterclaim's specific point
  7. 33.Transition words as signals of argument structure
  8. 34.A complete argument essay integrating claim, reason, evidence fit, and counterclaim/rebuttal
  9. 35.Claim-reason-evidence-counterclaim structure applied outside the text-response context it was taught in
Unit 5: Reading Across Two Texts8 lessons
  1. 36.Presence/absence of specific details across two texts on the same topic
  2. 37.Theme statement for a myth text, distinguished from its topic
  3. 38.The relationship between author's purpose and selection/omission of detail across two genres
  4. 39.Synthesis of two accounts into a claim unavailable from either single source
  5. 40.Trustworthiness judgment about competing accounts, grounded in purpose and audience rather than genre
  6. 41.The incremental value of a third account added to an existing two-text comparison
  7. 42.Definitions of theme, topic, and textual evidence
  8. 43.Conversion of chart-organized comparison notes into connected paragraph prose
Unit 6: Writing to Inform: Structure and Sources9 lessons
  1. 44.Fit between organizational structure (cause-effect, compare-contrast, categorical) and topic content
  2. 45.Plagiarism, quotation, and paraphrase as distinct actions on source text
  3. 46.Paraphrasing procedure for a single source sentence
  4. 47.Selection of organizational structure for a two-source topic
  5. 48.Topic sentences that preview paragraph-level structure
  6. 49.Effect of structural choice on reader's takeaway from identical content
  7. 50.Integration of evidence from two sources into a coherent multi-paragraph informative draft
  8. 51.Pre-draft structural plan for a multi-section informative essay
  9. 52.Structural-fit justification for an entirely new topic and source pair
Unit 7: Narrative Craft: Dialogue and Pacing10 lessons
  1. 53.Dialogue punctuation and paragraphing conventions (new line per speaker change)
  2. 54.The scene/summary label applied to the identical contrasted pair used in instruction
  3. 55.The distinction between narrative scene (slow, detailed) and summary (fast, compressed), applied beyond the modeled example
  4. 56.The effect of a pacing shift on reader experience of story time
  5. 57.Showing character through action and dialogue versus telling through direct statement
  6. 58.A planned sequence of story beats allocated to scene or summary treatment
  7. 59.Sensory and figurative detail used to build scene-paced narrative writing
  8. 60.Revision of stated-trait sentences and pacing allocation in an original draft
  9. 61.Pacing and characterization craft choices in an unfamiliar narrative text
  10. 62.Theme versus topic, applied to the student's own completed narrative
Unit 8: Cumulative Synthesis: Reading and Writing Across the Year10 lessons
  1. 63.Textual evidence that supports versus merely relates to a theme claim
  2. 64.A theme claim for a new short story, distinct from its topic
  3. 65.Figurative language (metaphor, personification) in a new passage
  4. 66.Comparison of two authors' presentations of the same event
  5. 67.Structural fit between a writing mode's purpose and its organizational pattern
  6. 68.A complete draft in a self-selected writing mode
  7. 69.Revision of a draft in response to specific feedback on evidence use or structure
  8. 70.Oral justification of a revision decision using evidence or structural reasoning
  9. 71.The definitional distinction between theme and topic
  10. 72.Strength of textual evidence relative to a stated claim

More for Grade 6

Everything for Grade 6 · All printable books