“Failure to prepare is preparing to fail,” said the late legendary UCLA Coach John Wooden.

Fast-forward to today’s competitive college admissions process and Wooden’s wisdom still holds: “Start preparing for college at grade six [age 11],” says UC San Diego Director of Admissions Mae Brown.

Over the years, I have found that creating a familiar routine consisting of valuable, standards based activities  supported by high interest reading, writing and speaking activities maximizes instructional time, minimizes disruptions and ultimately helps my 6th grade students build the skills, confidence and “academic endurance” they need to be successful middle schoolers.

Through the interactions teaching children, I have learned that high-achieving teenagers and young adults need significant time to unleash their full potential. This maximizes their chances for admission to top universities or graduate schools and prepare for meaningful careers. Starting early is necessary for optimally boosting both IQ and EQ (emotional, social and leadership intelligence).

The best time is to guiding students far before they approach the supremely demanding and intense top-tier college applications season in their senior year of high school or in the second year of junior college (age 17). This time of the year is the “college app pre-season.” The devil is always in the quality of the psychology, strategy and details. Getting kids to work more smartly and effectively actually helps reduce their stress.

What does Sixth Grade Language Arts look like?

1. Vocabulary Workshop: a challenging and comprehensive vocabulary and spelling program focusing on the introduction, application, and mastery of rich vocabulary words. Three levels: Blue (5th ) , Red (6th ) and Orange (7th).

2. Daily Dazzle: a “bell” program designed to introduce and practice important elements of literature and grammar. Some examples of skills practiced-analogies, metaphors, similes, fact vs. fiction, parts of speech, correct spellings, comparative/superlative forms of words, etc.

3. Grammar : We’ll also be supplementing our grammar and usage instruction with the district adopted textbook  * subject to different locations -Prentice Hall Writing and Grammar, Harcout,Grammar, Holt McDougal, Littell Mcdougal.

4. Creative Writing: My goal is to assign a creative writing topic twice monthly. These topics will be developmentally appropriate for 6th graders and will often include a brainstorming graphic organizer and a paragraph organizer, and will require three drafts, rough, revised and final.

 5. Outside reading program: all students will be required to read a novel of their choice, for a minimum of 20 to 30 minutes every day, and to maintain a reading log, due EVERY Tuesday.

6. Friendly letter: In order to reinforce your child’s habit of daily reading, and to practice the elements of literature so important for a deeper understanding of good literature, I’m asking your child to write me a friendly letter about the book they are currently reading, due each Tuesday.

7. Group Novels: as the year unfolds, and the above framework begins to “gel”, we’ll begin a few whole group and small group novels, all with the theme of “survival” and relating back to my essential question of the year “Is the risk worth the reward?”

8. Literature: In addition to group novels, we’ll be using the district selected textbook *subject to location – Prentice Hall Literature Grade Six, Littell McDougal Gr 6, Collection Gr 6, or Holt McDougal Gr 6.