6th Grade - Gateway 2

The instructional materials reviewed for Grade 6 fully meet the expectations of anchor texts organized around appropriate topic(s), and more commonly theme, to build students’ ability to read and comprehend complex texts independently and proficiently at grade level. Students read different kinds of texts focused on the same themes and topics, building content knowledge of that topic/theme by the end of each respective unit. Examples include:

• Module 1: The module is organized under the theme, Transcendence and Transformation and the topic of “The Great Depression.” Eleven texts are included in 6th Grade Module 1. The core texts, Bud, Not Buddy and Out of the Dust explore the themes of suffering, struggle, and survival during the Great Depression. These themes are supported through the supplementary texts that provide students with historical context about the social and economic challenges of the time. The module includes engaging supplemental materials about the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. These materials historicize the novel's themes of persevering in times of difficulty. They also help students envision life during this period. To these ends, students read about Hoovervilles and study first person accounts of young people’s experiences as migrants riding the rails. They examine Dorothea Lange’s iconic photograph, Migrant Mother and analyze the powerful poem, Mother to Son, by Langston Hughes. They listen to jazz music and watch a fictionalized video about a General Motors' labor strike.

• Module 3: The module is organized under the theme, Transformation and the topic of “Narrating the Unknown Jamestown.” The module begins with asking the students two major questions: "Howdid the struggle for power shape the settlement of the New World? What factors led to the near extinction of the Jamestown colony?" These questions and others shape students’ inquiry as they explore Blood on the River, Written in Bone, and other texts about the Jamestown colony. Students incorporate ideas from both of these worlds—the vivid historical fiction of Blood on the River and the engaging scientific discoveries of Written in Bone—to better understand the challenges faced by those in the Jamestown colony. Students study arguments in context, looking at Jeffery Sheler’s article, Rethinking Jamestown, as both a model of argumentative writing and as another perspective on what recent scientific research has revealed about the true experiences of the Jamestown settlers. Samples from the text selections include: “Rethinking Jamestown” a scientific article written by Jeffery Sheler, “Address to Captain John Smith,” a speech by Chief Powhatan, and Nighthawks, a painting by Edward Hopper.

All modules develop student’s knowledge through structured learning activities that provide effective scaffolding of content leading to students comprehending texts independently and proficiently.

The instructional materials for Grade 6 fully meet the expectations of materials that contain sets of coherently sequenced questions and tasks requiring students to analyze the language, key ideas, details, craft, and structure of individual texts. Questions are organized into three categories: Focusing Questions, Content Framing Questions, and Craft Questions. Within the Content Framing and Craft Questions, there are additional categories of questions.

Examples include:

Module 1:

• Lesson 2: Add appropriate transitions to a paragraph to clarify the relationships among ideas.
• Lesson 6: Connect details and themes in Kentucky Flood to evidence from Bud, Not Buddy.
• Lesson 10: Analyze how the author’s use of slang and idiom helps to develop characters and convey meaning.

Module 2:

• Lesson 1: Compare and contrast details from the short film with details from the text to build understanding about Ramayana and Hindu mythology.
• Lesson 4: Analyze how the structure of Ramayana functions and advances its plot.
• Lesson 9: Write an explanatory essay about how Ramayana: Divine Loophole aligns to the monomyth’s expectations and themes, after aligning the text’s structure and archetypes to those of the genre.
• Lesson 12: Analyze scenes that depict Odysseus’s arête, hubris, and humility, and explain how they establish Odysseus as the hero archetype.
• Expand word knowledge of select words in The Odyssey using the Frayer model; use the relationship between words to better understand a word’s meaning.

Module 3:

• Lesson 8: Write two explanatory paragraphs that analyze how word choice conveys Samuel’s perspective about a factor threatening Jamestown.
• Lesson 10: Analyze how characters’ perspectives about the New World and its people impact the decline and development of Jamestown.
• Lesson 16: Apply an understanding of language and content to a new text through independent reading and analysis, and explain what challenges Carbone encountered and what solutions she used while writing her historical fiction novel.
• Lesson 17: Examine how Chief Powhatan’s speech sequences its ideas and includes powerful details to produce a clear argument.

Questions are organized into three categories: Focusing Questions, Content Framing Questions, and Craft Questions. Within the Content Framing and Craft Questions, there are additional categories of questions.

A representative example of how the program addresses this indicator comes from Module 3, Focusing Question #1: How do the settlers respond to the challenges of their journey to the unknown?

Content Framing Questions:

1. Wonder: What do I notice and wonder about Blood on the River?
2. Organize: What’s happening in chapters 1-3 of Blood on the River?
3. Organize: What’s happening in chapters 4-6 of Blood on the River?
4. Reveal: What does a deeper exploration of characterization reveal in Blood on the River?
5. Distill: What are the emerging big ideas in chapters 9-10 of Blood on the River?
6. Reveal: What does a deeper exploration of social and environmental factors reveal in Blood on the River?
7. Reveal: What does a deeper exploration of conflict reveal in Blood on the River?
8. Reveal: What does a deeper exploration of word choice reveal about Samuel in Blood on the River?

Craft Questions:

1. Examine: Why is listening to interpret important?
2. Examine: Why is correct pronoun number important?
3. Experiment: How does listening to interpret work?
4. Experiment: How does pronoun number work?
5. Examine: Why is the collection of evidence prior to formulating a claim important in argument writing?
6. Experiment: How does collection of evidence and formulation of a claim work in argument writing?

The instructional materials reviewed for Grade 6 meet the expectations for materials containing a coherently sequenced set of text-dependent questions and tasks that require students to analyze the integration of knowledge and ideas across both individual and multiple texts. There are limited questions used to assess reading comprehension and connect the reader to the text in a deeper way. Questions are employed to build students' knowledge.

Each module has a section entitled, “Major Assessments” for the teacher at the beginning of the module that displays all the “Focusing Question Tasks”, the standards involved, and the elements needed to be successful on the “End-of-Module (EOM)” culminating task. Also, each module contains a section entitled “Module Map” that discusses the “Focusing Question Tasks, Central Texts, Content Framing Questions, Craft Questions, and learning goals.” Many questions and tasks do not require students to demonstrate understanding of the text on multiple levels. Many of the questions do prepare students for an upcoming culminating writing task (EOM). In each module, students are presented with opportunities to work across texts.

Some questions/tasks that represent how this program meets this expectation include the following:

Module 1:

• Synthesize across texts and express understanding of hardships faced during the Great Depression.
• Connect details and themes in 1930s GM Sit-Down Strike to evidence from Bud Not Buddy.
• Relate the information from video to Bud Not Buddy.
• Compare and contrast the message conveyed by the two texts: Bud Not Buddy and Mother to Son.
• Explain what multiple texts convey about how people endured the Great Depression: Out of the Dust, Hoover’s Prodigal Children: Hungry Times on Mean Streets, and all other texts presented in this module.

Module 2:

• Compare two versions of the monomyth structure and determine how their stages align.
• Compare and contrast how Penelope’s character is depicted in illustrations and different translations.
• Contrast the experience of reading and listening to a Ramayana translation.
  Compare and contrast how Sita’s character is depicted in illustrations and different translations.
• Apply an understanding of language and content to a new text through independent reading and analysis.

Module 3:

• Evaluate the development and effectiveness of Sheler’s argument.
• Explain how photographs in Written in Bone deepen understanding of the text’s central ideas.
• Compose an objective summary and evaluate how Walker constructs his argument in Chapter 3 of Written in Bone.
• Compare and contrast two author’s presentations of the events.
• Compare and contrast how Carbone (Blood in the River) and Walker (Written in Bone) introduce and present info about Richard Mutton.

The instructional materials for Grade 6 fully meet the expectations that questions and tasks support students’ ability to complete culminating tasks in which they demonstrate their knowledge of a theme (or, for grades 3-5. a topic) through integrated skills (e.g. combination of reading, writing, speaking, and listening). The sets of questions and tasks students are asked to work with and complete support their ability to complete culminating tasks in which they are demonstrating knowledge of topics and/or themes.

Each module has several Focusing Question Tasks that scaffold the material to aid in the successful completing of the EOM task. The materials contain sets of high-quality sequences of text-dependent questions and activities that build to each culminating task. Many tasks are focused on pieces of writing; however, students engage in speaking and listening as well as reading and writing to prepare for tasks, providing learning through integrated skills.

Some examples of culminating tasks that showcase students' demonstration of topics and themes through a combination of skills and print and nonprint texts include the following examples:

Module 1:

• The culminating task (End of Module-EOM) in Module 1 is as follows: Students write an explanatory essay in which they examine how Bud or Billie Jo’s responses to hardships result in his or her transformation. This task captures students’ understanding of how hardship can, ironically, contribute to the human spirit’s resilience. In preparation for this EOM, students are engaged in the following activities: (1) a paragraph that has a topic statement, evidence and elaboration, and a concluding sentence; (2) an introductory paragraph that contains a hook, introducing section, and thesis; (3) a mini-essay that includes an introduction and two-body paragraphs containing relevant and sufficient evidence, thorough elaboration, and appropriate transitions; and (4) a full essay that includes a cause-and-effect structure, precise language, a formal writing style, and a concluding paragraph. Students apply what they have learned about structure, development, style, and conventions to write the EOM Task.
• In informal and formal responses over the course of the module, students learn, practice, and demonstrate the stages of expository writing. In particular, the purposeful sequence of activities focuses on students’ ability to compose a well-developed, cause-and-effect explanatory essay.
• Students also extend their speaking and listening skills in three Socratic Seminars about Bud, Not Buddy and Out of the Dust, by following rules for collegial discussions and engaging in evidence-based, collaborative conversations. Students set and monitor speaking and listening goals, including the ability to disagree strategically and defer politely to another speaker, leading to more effective communication and learning. Students are also presented with a plethora of print and non-print texts to assist in successfully completing the EOM task. These texts include music: It Don’t Mean a Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing, by Duke Ellington and Irving Mills, photography: Migrant Mother, by Dorothea Lange, poetry: Mother to Son, and videos: Black Blizzard, from History.com.

Module 2:

• The culminating task (End of Module-EOM) in Module 2 is as follows: (1) Plan your original monomyth using the Character Archetypes and Stages of the Hero’s Journey tables. (2) Choose two stages to fully develop into narrative scenes. (3) Use technology to create a presentation, and (4) Choose one of your narrative scenes to present in a fluent read to share your hero and his/her journey with the class. Having begun the module by focusing on the structure, characters, and themes of the monomyth, students use their knowledge of this genre to create an original hero’s journey.
• In preparation for this EOM, students are engaged in the following activities: The module builds upon students’ understandings of explanatory writing, incorporating it into the analysis of the anchor texts. This module also introduces narrative writing and the production and publishing of technology-based presentations. Narrative writing is purposefully scaffolded so that students are given the opportunity to experiment with context building, narrative techniques, transition words, precise word choice, and conclusions before drafting their own original myths in the EOM Task. Students create technology-based presentations to introduce their character and context as part of the third Focusing Question; students are given an opportunity to rehearse and perfect their production and delivery. For the EOM Task, students apply what they have learned to write two full scenes from their own original monomyth and use technology to present their ideas to their peers.
• Students develop their speaking and listening skills in three Socratic Seminars about Ramayana: Divine Loophole and The Odyssey, by following rules for collegial discussions and engaging in evidence-based, collaborative conversations. Students set and monitor speaking and listening goals: they practice reducing mental interference to enable effective listening; they reflect aloud the knowledge they acquire from others by paraphrasing their peers’ insights and contributions; and they practice maintaining eye contact when presenting to achieve increased audience engagement. Students are also presented with a plethora of print and nonprint texts to assist in successfully completing the EOM task.These texts include: an article: The Hero’s Outline, by Christopher Vogler, an essay: A Practical Guide to Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces, by Christopher Vogler, and a video: The Mythology of Star Wars, by: Bill Moyers and George Lucas.

Module 3:

• The culminating (EOM) task in Module 3 is as follows: “Write an essay in which you argue whether it was the social or the environmental factors faced by Jamestown’s early settlers that were most significant to the settlement’s struggle to thrive.” In preparation for this EOM, students are engaged in a variety of activities. This module focuses on argumentative writing. Students’ previous learning about the selection of relevant evidence serves as a springboard to evaluating which evidence best supports a claim. Students dive deeply into the development of claims and the organization of argumentative writing, focusing on the process by which an argument is drafted; they begin by considering evidence before crafting a claim, and then continue by selecting the best reasons and evidence that can be used as a defense. Similar to past modules, students also focus on improving their writing’s clarity and sustaining a formal style. Besides developing their argumentative writing skills, students again practice explanatory writing to complete textual analysis and to compare two authors’ portrayal of the same Jamestown colonist. Taking all of the module’s texts into account, students study the evidence they have accumulated before selecting a claim for the EOM Task, supporting their argument with ideas from both a literary and informational text.
• Students cultivate a stronger understanding of how to develop and support a claim while engaging in three Socratic Seminars. Students’ speaking and listening goals for this module focus on listening to interpret and practicing the presentation of claims and evidence. Continuing to grow their public speaking skills, students give mini-research presentations to their peers, integrating visual displays to clarify their findings.
• Students are also presented with a plethora of print and nonprint texts to assist in successfully completing the EOM task. These texts include: paintings, such as Nighthawks, by Edward Hopper, a speech: Address to Captain John Smith, by Chief Powhatan, and a video: Innovation in Plain Sight, by Amy Herman.

The instructional materials reviewed for Grade 6 meet the expectations that materials include a cohesive, year-long plan for students to interact with and build key academic vocabulary words in and across texts. Vocabulary is taught both implicitly and explicitly, using words in the core and supplementary texts. As texts are read multiple times, students gain new vocabulary. Explicit vocabulary instruction focuses on Content Specific Vocabulary, Academic Vocabulary, and Text Critical Vocabulary. Materials focus on elements of vocabulary, such as abstract or multiple meanings, connotation, relationships among words, and morphology.

Vocabulary Routines can be found in the Resources section of the Implementation Guide and include routines and instructional examples such as the Frayer Model, Morpheme Matrix, Outside-In, Relationship Mapping, and Word Line. Teachers utilize Word Walls and Vocabulary Journals for students to record newly-acquired words and vocabulary strategies.

Appendix B includes vocabulary support that explains the implicit and explicit vocabulary instruction. For example, Core lessons, 75-min. daily: vocabulary study that is essential to understanding the text at hand. Instructional strategies are explicitly introduced and practiced during vocabulary instruction and put into practice during a reading of the text. Vocabulary Deep Dives: vocabulary instruction and practice that advances students’ knowledge of high-value words and word-solving strategies, focusing on aspects such as abstract or multiple meanings, connotation, relationships across words, and morphology. The appendix also includes a Module Word List and a list of words that would pose a challenge to student comprehension.

Examples include:

Module 1:

• Lesson 1 - Cope vs. Endure
  
  • Students are asked the to answer the following two questions as an Exit Ticket.
  • What does Bud have to endure?
  • What is an example of Bud coping with a situation?
• Lesson 23: Launch
  • Using the Outside-In strategy, what might the word deformed mean?
  • How would the meaning change if Billie Jo had described her hands using another adjective, such as injured?
  • How does the word deformed reveal Billie Jo's perspective of her hands? Students Think-Pair-Share to complete the task.

Module 2:

• Lesson 7 - Suffix -ive in Manipulative and Extensive
  • The end of lesson question:“Who in Ramayana could be described as manipulative, and why?” or “What in Ramayana could be described as extensive, and why?”

• Lesson 11: Vocabulary Deep Dive (Define Words in Context)

• Lesson 16 - Word Relationships: Jubilant, Triumphant
  • The end of lesson question: “Which is more likely—for the hero of a myth to be triumphant because he or she is jubilant, or to be jubilant because he or she is triumphant?”

Module 3:

• Lesson 16 - Explore Content Vocabulary: Expedition and Excavated
  
  • End of lesson task: Students compose a Quick Write in response to the following question.
  • How did studying expeditions and things that were excavated prepare Elisa Carbone to write Blood on the River?

• Lesson 27 - Examine Sentence Variety
  • End of lesson task: Students compose a Quick Write in which they cite a unique example of sentence variety in Walker’s text and explain how it engages reader interest.
  • Lesson 29: Vocabulary Deep Dive (Explore Academic Vocabulary: serv as in preserve)

The instructional materials reviewed for Grade 6 meet the expectation for materials supporting students’ increasing writing skills over the course of the school year, building students’ writing ability to demonstrate proficiency at grade level at the end of the school year.

Through explicit learning-to-write instruction, teachers gradually release responsibility for a specific writing strategy through a series of lessons. One or more of the following Craft Stages shapes each lesson. (Implementation Guide)

• Examine: Students analyze how an exemplar models one or more writing strategies. The exemplar can come from authentic texts, class collaborative writing, or a module resource.
• Experiment: Students practice applying a target strategy. Scaffolded tasks provide significant support by limiting
  the volume of writing, providing parts of a writing piece, or focusing on a relatively simple topic.
• Execute: Students plan or draft a full writing piece, paying particular attention to applying the target strategy to
  support the purpose of the task.
• Excel: Students revise, edit, and respond to feedback on the pieces they drafted in the Execute stage, focusing on the target strategy. They reflect on their use of the strategy to refine their thinking about its use in current and future writing.

Students write an average of twenty or more minutes of writing pers lesson and are given explicit instruction of writing strategies. Students write both on-demand and process writing while accessing complex texts. There are a variety of writing performance tasks and Craft Lessons address 5 features; Structure, Development, Style, Conventions and process.

Students study Mentor texts and get feedback from the teacher, a peer, and themselves as well as being provided with writing checklist and rubrics to ensure that writing skills are grown throughout the year.

Module 1:

• Focusing Question Task 1: After reading chapters 1-5 in Bud Not Buddy, students write a ToSEEC (paragraph containing a Topic Statement, Evidence, Elaboration, and a Concluding Statement) paragraph in which students explain what makes Bud a survivor.
• Focusing Question Task 2: Students write two ToSEEC paragraphs in which they explain two hardships people faced during the Great Depression, citing evidence from Bud, Not Buddyand “Hoovervilles.”
• End of Module Task: Students write a cause-and-effect ToSEEC essay (introduction, two body paragraphs, and a conclusion) in which you explain how Bud or Billie Jo’s responses to hardship(s) (cause) contributed to his/her transformation (effect).

Module 2:

• After lesson 9, students, with a partner, complete the Character Archetype and Stages of a Hero’s Journey tables for Ramayana: Divine Loophole.
• In lesson 16, students think-pair-share on if and how their partners effectively concluded the scene written for The Odyssey using the narrative techniques taught.
• End of Module Task: Students plan an original monomyth using the Character Archetypes and Stages of the Hero’s Journey tables, choose two stages to fully develop into narrative scenes, and lastly create a presentation on one of the scenes.

The instructional materials reviewed for Grade 6 meet the expectations that materials include a progression of focused research projects to encourage students to develop knowledge in a given area, by confronting and analyzing different aspects of a topic using multiple texts and source materials. Modules are divided into Focus Questions that build knowledge of a topic using multiple texts. The focus questions all build to the End-of-Module Task that encompasses a module’s worth of texts and source materials. Students also complete shorter research projects throughout the modules. Teachers are also encouraged to use pausing points to complete student-led research projects. In every grade, at least one EOM Task focuses on a sustained research project. In addition, students conduct a variety of short research projects throughout the year.

Examples include:

• Module 2: Students examine the genre of the monomyth by first reading Ramayana: Divine Loophole, a stunningly illustrated retelling of the Hindu story of Rama, told in words and pictures by Sanjay Patel. This ancient myth is organized in three phases typical of the hero’s journey: (1) the hero Rama in his ordinary world, (2) he embarks on an epic journey to defend what is good and defeat what is evil, (3) and finally he returns home able to become a king after overcoming the obstacles of his quest. Students examine this structure again in Gillian Cross’s retelling of The Odyssey, which chronicles Odysseus’s transformation through tests and trials from an extraordinary mortal to an epic hero. They complete their study of these two myths by exploring other translations and the texts’ illustrations to build their knowledge of the hero’s journey and the archetypes it develops.
• Module 4: The module focuses on the difficult choices an individual must make in the face of adversity. By examining Shackleton, his crew, and Malala’s heroic actions, students learn how people transcend their hostile environments, and they progressively build a nuanced definition of heroism that includes both physical and moral courage as defining traits. To strengthen their understanding of what heroic actions resemble, students also watch the National Geographic video Lost Treasures of Afghanistan, which features the story of five Afghani citizens who protected one of their country’s most ancient treasures from being pillaged by the Taliban. By studying all of these individuals’ heroic actions, students contemplate how a single person can impact a group of people, a larger community, or even the entire world.

The instructional materials reviewed for Grade 6 meet the expectations for materials providing a design, including accountability, for how students will regularly engage in a volume of independent reading either in or outside of class. The majority of lessons require some independent readings of text followed by text-specific questions and tasks that reflect student accountability. Students are asked to annotate texts. Additionally, most homework assignments include independent readings and tasks that require students to produce evidence of reading and to keep an independent reading log.

Module 1:

• Lesson 1: Students read Chapter 2, annotating as they have done for Chapter 1. (1) Read the text carefully and annotate to help you read fluently. (2) Each day: a. Practice reading the text three to five times. b. Evaluate your progress by placing a √+, √, or √- in each unshaded box. c. Ask someone (adult or peer) to listen and evaluate you as well. (3) Last day: Respond to the self-reflection questions
• Lesson 5: Students read and annotate chapters 6–7, annotating information about new characters with a “C,” information about the setting with an “S,” and Bud's reactions with “BR.”
• Lesson 14: Students finish the book, annotating in the margins any events where doors open for Bud with “D.O.” and any surprises with an exclamation point.

Module 2:

• Lesson 12: Students read pages 74-99 in The Odyssey and add to the character and setting sections in their Response Journals.
• Lesson 16: Students read pages 158-71 in The Odyssey and add to the character and setting sections in their Response Journals.

Module 3:

• Lesson 10: Students read chapters 19–20. As was similar in Lesson 9, students identify and briefly explain one factor (social and/or environmental) that threatens Jamestown, and one factor (social and/or environmental) that contributes to Jamestown’s development. Students should continue recording these factors in the Factor Tracker section of their Response Journals.