Communicating Personal Experiences
English-Language Arts 6
Syllabus 2014-2015
Enduring Understandings
- Writing memoirs about our own lives is easier when we first analyze well-crafted memoirs.
- Reading stories about other people helps us better understand our own lives.
- We write about our lives to remember and define who we are.
Essential Questions
- Why do people tell their stories?
- What do authors do to make their stories interesting?
- How do I decide what to write about?
- What are the characteristics of a well-written memoir?
Throughout this 8-week unit, students will read published memoirs by famous authors and will conduct content and structural analyses to determine how authors are effectively communicating their personal experiences in writing. Specific lessons in this unit include a study of how to develop a list of meaningful topics for writing, how to recognize and craft the life lessons that make memoirs more meaningful, and how to communicate memoir-like writing in a variety of formats.
The culminating assessment (CAP) for this unit is a collection of two memoirs – one in prose and one in poetry – that represent the five key author’s craft techniques studied: focused events, thoughts and feelings, setting description, life lesson / theme, and voice.
Language study for this unit focuses on developing understandings of how subjects and predicates serve as the foundation for sentences. Students will study the parts of speech and will also learn several roots/affixes through self- and teacher-selected vocabulary work. The use of an Interactive Notebook is essential in this unit and throughout the year-long course; it becomes the place where all learning is recorded.
Student self-selected reading is a key component in all units in ELA 6. Students should always be reading a text at home and should have it with them at school daily. Student self-monitoring (of comprehension, fluency, and enjoyment) is essential to growing as an effective learner, so a variety of monitoring techniques will be used.
Key Texts
· 2-3 self-selected novels (fictional first person narration or non-fiction memoirs)
· My Life in Dog Years by Paulsen
· “Ode to Family Photographs” by Soto
· Knucklehead by Jon Scieszka (excerpts)
· “Super Patriot” by Avi
· Zlata’s Diary by Zlata Filipovic (excerpts)
· Baseball, Snakes, and Summer Squash by Graves
Unit Plan
Week of August 27 – Launching the Reading Workshop, Writing territories lists, Memoir study
Week of September 3 – “Ode to Family Photographs”
Week of September 10 – Knucklehead Read-aloud and Writing Workshop #1. Begin on-going language study
Week of September 17 – Life lessons / theme development, begin the diary memoir study
Week of September 24 – Continue diary memoir study, memoir poetry
Week of October 1 – Writing workshop #2 (poetry, diary formats), Language study test
Week of October 8 – CAP writing workshop, final drafts due and share day
Updated 6/25/2012