6th grade English Language Arts
14 units matched to the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS). Kids see this subject as “Language Arts”.
Focus areas
- Foundational language skills: Greek and Latin roots such as bene, scrib and jur, and context clues
- Comprehension, response and genres: point of view, plot, argument and multimodal texts
- Author's purpose and craft, and composition: rhetorical devices and logical fallacies, and editing complex sentences
- Inquiry and research: asking questions, finding sources and sharing what you learn
Units
Unit 1
Point of View
Telling first person, third person limited and third person omniscient apart, and thinking about what each narrator can and can't know.
TEKS student expectation: 6.9(E) · omniscient and limited point of view
Unit 2
Connotation & Tone
Words can share a dictionary meaning (denotation) but carry different feelings (connotation), like “cozy” and “cramped.” Students choose words for effect and identify a writer's tone.
TEKS student expectation: 6.9(F) · connotation, mood and tone
Unit 3
Make Your Case
Building an argument: stating a claim, choosing the strongest evidence, recognizing counterarguments and rebuttals, spotting persuasive techniques and ordering a persuasive paragraph.
TEKS student expectation: 6.8(E); 6.11(C) · claims, evidence and counterarguments
Unit 4
Agreement
Making verbs agree with their subjects (even with tricky phrases, “each,” “everyone” and “either…or”) and choosing pronouns that clearly match the nouns they replace.
TEKS student expectation: 6.10(D) · subject-verb and pronoun agreement
Unit 5
Sentence Repair
Spotting sentence fragments, run-on sentences and comma splices, and choosing correct ways to fix them with periods, semicolons, joining words or dependent clauses.
TEKS student expectation: 6.10(D) · fixing fragments, run-ons and comma splices
Unit 6
Commas & Clauses
Finding dependent clauses, telling simple, compound and complex sentences apart, and using commas in lists, compound sentences, introductions and appositives.
TEKS student expectation: 6.10(D) · commas, clauses and sentence types
Unit 7
Roots & Analogies
Using Greek and Latin roots (like “geo,” “aud” and “port”) to work out unfamiliar words, and completing analogies that compare word relationships.
TEKS student expectation: 6.2(B); 6.2(C) · Greek and Latin roots and analogies
Unit 8
Punctuation Power
Using a colon in a formal greeting or after a speaker's name in a script, and putting a comma after words like However and phrases like For example.
TEKS student expectation: 6.10(D) · colons, scripts and transitions
Unit 9
Text Forms & Features
Recognizing problem-and-solution reports, scripts, and web features like menus, and explaining how pictures and graphics add to a text.
TEKS student expectation: 6.8(D); 6.9(C) · text patterns, scripts and visual features
Unit 10
Check the Source
Children practice judging whether a source is credible and accurate, reading laterally, checking text and images made by technology such as chatbots, narrowing research questions and citing sources.
TEKS student expectation: 6.12(A); 6.12(H) · research questions and judging whether a source is credible
Unit 11
Media Techniques
Children name persuasion techniques such as bandwagon, testimonials, fear and scarcity, notice camera angles, music and what is left out, and think about why people react to the same message differently.
TEKS student expectation: 6.8(F); 6.9(A) · an author's purpose and the techniques media messages use
Unit 12
Spelling: Endings and Sound-Alikes
Children practice US spelling: when to double a final consonant, -ance and -ence, -cious and -tious, words that break i before e, and commonly confused words such as their, there and they're.
TEKS student expectation: 6.10(D) · spelling with suffix rules, tricky patterns and commonly confused words
Unit 13
Roots: mis, bene, man, vac, scrib, jur
Your child uses the roots mis/mit (send), bene (good), man (hand), vac (empty), scrib/script (write) and jur/jus (law) to work out word meanings.
TEKS student expectation: 6.2(C) · academic words built on the roots mis/mit, bene, man, vac, scrib/script and jur/jus
Unit 14
Devices or Fallacies?
Your child tells rhetorical devices (repetition, rhetorical questions) apart from faulty reasoning (hyperbole, emotional appeals and stereotypes) in what they read.
TEKS student expectation: 6.9(G); 6.12(H) · rhetorical devices, logical fallacies and faulty reasoning in sources
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