Grade 6 Writing: goals and how we get there
A grade 6 writing student at Learn To Be does three things:
- Works through the Paragraph Mastery Grade 6 course.
- Writes about what they read.
- Practices a little every day (at home!).
The goal and what success looks like
By the end of grade 6, a student writes essays that do three different jobs:
- explain something,
- argue for something,
- tell a story.
The student also revises. A first draft is the start, not the finish. On demand, the student can make a sentence shorter, cut a repeated idea, and choose a stronger verb.
Everything from earlier grades stays correct.
Typing goal: the student types 35 words per minute.
The course
Paragraph Mastery Grade 6 has 60 lessons. It covers topic sentences, detail sentences, and how to build a paragraph.
- Find the start. Try the first few lessons. If they are easy, skip ahead to where the student starts making mistakes.
- Do not skip lessons after that. A student moves on only after they master a lesson.
This course builds the paragraphs that an essay needs. When the student finishes it, the next step is Essay Foundations Grade 7.
If the course is too hard, go down to Sentence Mastery Grade 5.
What they write about
Kids cannot write about nothing. They write about what they read. The topics come from this grade's reading program. The 6th Grade Reading course also has short science and history passages that give them things to write about.
- Ancient Greece and Rome: The Lasting Ideas
- The Enlightenment
- The French Revolution
- Industrialism, Capitalism, and Socialism
- Independence Movements in Latin America
- World Geography: Deserts, Rainforests, and Rivers
- Plate Tectonics
- Astronomy: Gravity, Stars, and Galaxies
- Energy
- The Human Body: Circulation and Immunity
A typical session
- Warm-up, about 10 minutes. Quick sentence practice. Make a short sentence longer. Join two sentences into one. Finish a sentence that starts with "because", "but", or "so".
- Course lessons. This is the main part of the session. Do one or two lessons together.
- Write about what they read. The student writes a short piece about something from their reading. The reading gives them something to say.
Between sessions (at home)
Daily practice happens at home, not in your session. A little every day works better than a lot once a week.
Tell the parent:
"Every day, have your child sign in at learntobe.org and do a lesson in their writing course. A little every day helps most."
Show the parent and the student how to sign in and find the course during your first session.
Other resources
- IXL. If your student has an IXL account through our pilot, its diagnostic shows the grade level your student works at in each part of English language arts. Use it as an extra check, not instead of the course. See How should tutors use IXL?