6th Grade ELA Syllabus
Middle School Staff
by Dalia Puga
La Villa Middle School
6th Grade ELA Syllabus
2009-10
TEACHER: Ms. Dalia Puga
TEXT: Cscope, Springboard, Glencoe Literature book
NOVEL: Holes, The Mighty, and other AR novels
COURSE DESCRIPTION:
This course will provide students with effective comprehension,
vocabulary, and oral reading skills. Students will be exposed to a
variety of literature including short stories, novels, poetry, and
plays. This course will encourage students to develop critical
thinking skills and reach their highest potential in order to
prepare for post level work.
Students will develop their independent reading skills through
Accelerated Reader and bell work. My goal is for each student to
read 10 books this school year with 80% scoring a 70 or better.
Students will also develop their writing skills by determining
their purpose for writing, such as to explore, inform, express an
opinion, persuade, entertain, or to share an experience or
emotion.
METHODS OF INSTRUCTION:
Instruction will be delivered through teacher modeling,
lectures, charts, word wall, SmartBoard, PowerPoint presentations,
technology and clips from movies.
GOALS:
• To make learning meaningful and significant by encouraging
students to reflect on the skills and strategies employed
(Listening, Speaking, Reading, Writing, and Technology skills)
• To empower students by providing an organized, focused way to
view progress throughout the year
• To measure students’ growth as readers, speakers, and performers
over the course of the year emphasize the recursive nature of the
learning process
• To allow specific opportunities for students to revise prior work
and incorporate newly acquired skills
• To create a sense of ownership and pride by featuring a variety
of student work
• To challenge each student to read 10 books this year.
Course Content Expectations: Upon completion of this course,
students should be able to do the following: (TEKS)
1. (A) establish purposes for reading selected texts based upon own
or others’ desired outcome to enhance comprehension; (B) ask
literal, interpretive, evaluative, and universal questions of text;
(C) monitor and adjust comprehension (e.g., using background
knowledge; creating sensory images; rereading a portion aloud;
generating questions); (D) make inferences about text and use
textual evidence to support understanding; (E) summarize,
paraphrase, and synthesize texts in ways that maintain meaning and
logical order within a text and across texts; and (F) make
connections (e.g., thematic links, author analysis) between and
across multiple texts of various genres, and provide textual
evidence.
2. Writing/Writing Process. Students use elements of the writing
process (planning, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing) to
compose text.
COURSE EVALUATION:
Students will be evaluate through their daily grades, class
work, class participation, group and individual projects, oral
reading, presentations and Cscope ,Springboard and teacher
assessments.
Grading:
90 – 100 = A; 80 – 89 = B; 70 – 79 = C; 60 – 69 = D; 50 - 59 =
F
All aspects of this course- reading, writing, spelling, vocabulary,
and grammar- will be taught interchangeably (I won’t be doing a
unit on reading, then one on writing, then a unit on spelling,
etc.) I will separate reading and writing grades to post in
gradebook
EXTRA CREDIT:
One of the following assignments may be done once per six weeks
for extra credit. It must be turned in on the fifth week of each
six weeks:
• Read a magazine article and write a half page summary. Include
the magazine title, title of article, and author.
• Read a newspaper article and answer the questions: Who? What?
When? Where? And Why? Attach the article.
• Share with the class about a book that you have read
recently.
• Memorize a poem and quote it to the class. Get it approved ahead
of time.
• Make a list of 10 things you learned from a non-fiction book.
• Cut out a picture from a newspaper or magazine and make up your
own article
or story. Attach the picture.
• Create 10 sentences using 10 vocabulary words from our "word
wall."
• Score a 100 on an AR quiz.
Homework:
Homework will be assigned every Tuesday. Also, students are
given time in class to complete daily assignments. If a student
does not finish the assignment during that time, he/she will be
required to take it home for homework. It will be due the next
day.
Makeup Work:
Student will be permitted to make up any work in class missed
because of absence. It is the responsibility of the student to turn
in missed assignments within the period of two days from the day
they were absent. This year LVMS has created a new class called “
Survival Camp” Students that do not do their work in class, do not
turn in homework, failed an assignment or exam will be recommended
to attend this class by their teacher or administrator. Class will
start at 4:15 PM and end at 5:15 PM. Recommendation will also be at
teacher’s discretion.
Feel free to visit me during my conference at 9:20 – 10:05 Monday –
Friday. You can also email me at dpuga@lavillaisd.org or call me at
262-4760.
