6th Grade Language Arts with Mr. Hagstrom, BMS 2018-2019

YMCA by Montey F.  Skirt, skirt!  Peeking over the final hill to the YMCA, it is like the burst of sunlight when the sun peeks up out of the Rocky Mountains, or the surprise of blinding headlights of a car coming over a hill at night, all in one.  Seeing the great green roof of the cafeteria, knowing what it holds in its walls. Great big telephone poles plunge into the baby blue clear sky, holding the excitement of the high ropes and zip line. The high ropes are like towering giants in the form of telephone poles,  waiting for their dinner to fall right into their hands. The panther pole is a plain telephone pole that has little pegs sticking out of its sides like wrinkles on the tall giant’s body, your feet feeling ten times larger than them.  The leap of faith is like a monstrous skyscraper plunging into the cloudless sky, the structural integrity untested. Complete unsteadiness is all you feel, as if the pole is teetering and tottering all over....

Second Week of October: Process for Unit I Writing to Compare Our Thinking About Readings Read the stories “Bad Boy” and “Skinny Tomboy” independently and annotate. Teacher helps students interpret “Skinny Tomboy” in whole class discussion. Teacher gives lectures on how the form and features of a poem may have special elements to help communicate and emphasize the story’s central message (Woodson & Luz Villanueva). Students close read “Skinny Tomboy” to understand how the story relates to the theme of stereotypical roles for girls and boys and the difficulty girls and boys can experience with these roles.   Students also examine the structure of the poem and confer on these topics. Students do a close read of “Bad Boy” and consider the same theme: traditional and expected roles for boys and girls and how a boy manages and reacts to a different path forward. Students confer to confirm the text meaning.  Teacher helps resolve interpretation questio...