Meaning Making
In grade six, meaning making grows in importance as
students interact with texts of increasing complexity across
all content areas. Beginning in grade six, the CA CCSS for
ELA/Literacy emphasize argument rather than opinion, and
students are expected to trace and evaluate arguments and
provide summaries different from their personal opinions or
judgments when analyzing texts. Teachers provide instruction
that enables all students to comprehend text, and students read
closely to gain understanding and construct meaning from texts.
Students learn to monitor their own understanding as they read
and use strategies to clarify any confusions that arise.
The goal of making meaning in grade six is to help students
understand and use the information they read in meaningful
ways. Standards for informational text and literature require
students to analyze text and cite evidence to support their understanding of key ideas and supporting
details. Grade six provides a foundation for later grades. For example, the grade six informational
reading standards require students to determine a central idea of a text, analyze how a key individual
or event is introduced, and determine an author’s point of view (RI.6.2, 3, and 6). In subsequent
grades, students perform the same analysis for multiple texts, ideas, and points of view.
Summarizing is an important way to demonstrate understanding of text and clarify thinking.
Although students have been expected to write summaries since grade four, in grade six students
are expected to write summaries that are distinct from personal opinions, judgments, and prior
knowledge. Effective summarizing involves identifying a topic
sentence and deleting redundant and trivial information to
identify a passage’s main idea. Often graphic organizers can
be used as a scaffold to support learning to write summaries
of more complex text (Boardman, and others 2008). For
example, a teacher might model how to summarize a
passage from a history textbook by using a piece of paper
folded into thirds—recording on each third the main idea,
key details, and important supporting evidence. In partners,
students would each write a summary sentence based on
the information in the top third of the paper and read their
sentences to their partners to compare. Students then
answer the following questions: If you had not read the text
yourself, would you be able to understand this sentence’s
main idea? Why or why not? Is there anything important
that should be added? What is it? Is there anything
unimportant that could be left out? What is it? Students discuss their responses and revise their
summaries based on the feedback they receive (Schoenbach, Greenleaf, and Murphy 2012).
In the following snapshot EL students become aware of the language resources used in stories and
for summarizing stories during designated ELD instruction.
Summarizing is an important
way to demonstrate
understanding of text and
clarify thinking. Although
students have been expected
to write summaries since grade
four, in grade six students are
expected to write summaries
that are distinct from personal
opinions, judgments, and prior
knowledge.Grade 6 Chapter 6 | 549