6th-Grade ELA Assignment

Sixth-grade students read an excerpt from a grade-level historical fiction text called "Counting on Grace," then answer text-specific written and multiple-choice questions. This assignment is strong because it exposes students to a worthwhile text that builds historical knowledge. It also asks questions that focus students on key details to progressively build their understanding, and allows students to articulate that understanding in writing.

This assignment is strong because it has a strong text and strong questions:

It allows students to engage with a worthwhile text. The text is about two children and their teacher writing a letter to a committee that investigates child labor violations. The text builds students’ knowledge of labor movements in the early twentieth century, requires them to navigate period-specific vernacular, and demands significant inferential thinking about the characters’ predicaments because the problem at the heart of the story is not explicitly stated.

It requires students to read carefully and focus on key details. The questions direct students back to the specific passages in the text that matter most to build their understanding. By building on each other and becoming increasingly more complex, the questions posed help students develop a comprehensive understanding of the whole excerpt.

It allows students to share what they learned in writing. Students get the chance to articulate independent ideas about the text, and to support those ideas with specific evidence. They also practice structuring an argumentative piece of writing: making a claim, supporting it with evidence, and organizing their thoughts in a logical introduction-body-conclusion format.