Foundational Skills (still important, even though they're building blocks):
* Fluency: Reading smoothly and accurately at an appropriate pace with good expression. This isn't just speed; it's about understanding what's being read.
* Decoding: Successfully sounding out unfamiliar words, using phonics knowledge and context clues. While this should be largely mastered, encountering multisyllabic and less common words is still part of the process.
* Vocabulary: Understanding a wide range of words, including academic vocabulary commonly used in textbooks. This includes being able to infer meaning from context and use dictionaries/thesauruses effectively.
Comprehension Skills (this is where the focus really shifts in 6th grade):
* Identifying Main Idea and Supporting Details: Going beyond simply summarizing; students should analyze how details support the central idea.
* Making Inferences and Drawing Conclusions: Reading between the lines to understand implied meanings and predict future events.
* Analyzing Character Development and Author's Purpose: Understanding characters' motivations, changes, and relationships, and identifying the author's message or reason for writing.
* Identifying Theme and Central Ideas: Understanding the underlying message or big idea of a text, often implied rather than explicitly stated.
* Summarizing and Paraphrasing: Condensing information while retaining the main points and expressing ideas in one's own words.
* Comparing and Contrasting: Identifying similarities and differences between characters, events, or ideas in a text or across multiple texts.
* Analyzing Text Structure: Understanding how the author organized the text (chronological, compare/contrast, cause/effect, etc.) and how this organization affects meaning.
* Distinguishing Fact from Opinion: Recognizing statements of verifiable truth versus personal beliefs or judgments.
* Evaluating Evidence and Arguments: Assessing the credibility of information and the strength of supporting details.
Literary Analysis Skills (starting to become more prominent):
* Identifying Figurative Language: Understanding and interpreting metaphors, similes, personification, hyperbole, etc.
* Analyzing Literary Devices: Recognizing and understanding the impact of techniques like foreshadowing, flashback, symbolism, and irony.
* Interpreting different genres: Demonstrating comprehension across a variety of genres (fiction, non-fiction, poetry, drama).
Research and Information Skills:
* Using text features: Effectively using headings, subheadings, bolded words, diagrams, charts, and indexes to locate information.
* Gathering information from multiple sources: Synthesizing information from different books, articles, and online resources.
It's important to remember that these skills are interconnected and build upon one another. A strong foundation in foundational skills is essential for success in comprehension and analysis. Sixth graders should be able to apply these skills to increasingly complex and challenging texts.