Essential vocabulary for 6th grade Language Arts

1. Language Arts
Vocabulary
6th Grade
Academic Vocabulary

2. 6th Grade
Language Arts Standards
LA.6.1.1 Students use the reading process to apply a variety of comprehension
strategies before, during and after reading.
LA.6.1.2 Students read and interpret a variety of literary texts including historical
fiction, novels, poetry, fairy tales, tall tales, myths, legends and plays.
LA.6.1.3 Students demonstrate understanding of informational texts.
LA.6.2.1 Students apply writing skills to plan, draft, revise, and publish writing for
intended audiences.
LA.6.2.2 Students write a variety of expressive and expository pieces.
LA.6.3.1 Students speak on a focused topic with clear organization including main idea
with supporting details and a recognizable conclusion.
LA.6.3.2 Students communicate using organization, volume, posture, pace, eye con-
tact, and relevant gestures.
LA.6.3.3 Students follow directions and provide relevant feedback through note taking
or orally responding.
LA.6.3.4 Students read aloud their own or others’ texts fluently and expressively.
LA.6.3.5 Students engage in small group discussion using strategies to contribute and
create consensus.
LA.6.3.6 Students understand and explain techniques used in media such as
propaganda

3. Adjective
• An adjective describes a noun.
The race car is green.

4. Adverb
• An adverb is a word that modifies the meaning of a Verb;
an Adjective; another adverb; a noun or noun
phrase; determiner; a numeral; a pronoun; or a prepositional
phrase and can sometimes be used as a complement of
a preposition.
Roxanne happily played with the balloon.

5. Cause/Effect
• A cause is the reason why something happens.
The effect is what happens because of the
cause.

6. Characterization
• The creation and convincing representation of
fictitious characters. How a character acts,
speaks, looks, feels, and how other characters
react to the character.

7. Chronological
• The arrangement of events in time.

8. Climax
• a. A moment of great or culminating intensity in a narrative or
drama, especially the conclusion of a crisis.
• b. The turning point in a plot or dramatic action.

9. Conflict
• Opposition between characters or forces in a
work of drama or fiction, especially opposition
that motivates or shapes the action of the
plot.

10. Exposition
• writing or speech primarily intended to convey
information or to explain; a detailed statement or
explanation; explanatory treatise: The students
prepared expositions on familiar essay topics.

11. Falling Action
• the part of a literary plot that occurs after the
climax has been reached and the conflict has
been resolved.

12. Fiction
• the class of literature comprising works of
imaginative narration; made-up stories.

13. Foreshadowing
• to show or indicate before hand; prefigure; to
hint at future events.

14. Headline
• a heading in a newspaper for any written material,
sometimes for an illustration, to indicate subject matter, set in
larger type than that of the copy and containing one or more
words and lines and often several banks.

15. Imagery
• figurative or descriptive language in a literary
work; designed invoke images in the readers
mind.

16. Infer/Inference
• Make a judgment statement based on prior
knowledge and evidence.
If Jane is crying, she must be
sad.

17. Main Idea
• The central idea in a literary work; what the
tex is mostly about.

18. Metaphor
• A comparison between two unlike things with the
intent of giving added meaning to one of them.
Unlike a simile, a metaphor does not use a
connective word such as like, as, than, or
resembles to state a comparison.

19. Mood
• The feeling an author creates for the reader in
a story/text.

20. Narrator
• One who narrates or tells, a story. A writer may choose to
have a story told by a first person narrator, someone who is
either a major or minor character. Or, a writer may choose to
use a third person narrator, someone who is not in the story
at all. Third person narrators are often omniscient, or "all
knowing"- that is, they are able to enter into the minds of all
the characters in the story.

21. Nonfiction
• Any prose narrative that tells about things as
they actually happened or that posses factual
information about something. Autobiography and
biography are the most common forms.
A social studies textbook is
nonfiction or factual.

22. Noun
• A noun is the name of a person, place, thing,
or idea

23. Personification
• A figure of speech in which an animal, an object,
a natural force, or an idea is given personality, or
described as if it were human.

24. Plot
• The sequence of events or happenings in a
literary work. A plot is what happens in a
story.

25. Poem
• A piece of writing that partakes of the nature of
both speech and song, and that is usually
rhythmical and metaphorical.

26. Point of View
• The vantage point from which a narrative is
told.

27. Possessive
• indicating possession, ownership, origin, etc.
This is the dog’s bowl.

28. Proofread
• to read (copy or printer's proofs) to detect and
mark errors to be corrected

29. Punctuation
• The marks, such as period, comma, and
parentheses, used in writing to separate
sentences and their elements and to clarify
meaning.
. ! ? , “ ‘

30. Quotation
• A group of words taken from a text or speech
and repeated by someone other than the
original author or speaker.

31. Research Paper
• Research papers are generally longer pieces of
written work than essays. Writing a research
paper involves all of the steps for writing an
essay plus some additional ones.

32. Resolution
• the part of the story's plot line in which the
problem of the story is resolved or worked
out. This occurs after the falling action and is
typically where the story ends.

33. Rising Action
• Rising action is the series of events that lead
to the climax of the story, usually the conflicts
or struggles of the protagonist.

34. Root Words
• A root is the basic element of a word, and it is
the foundation on which the meaning of a
word is built.

35. Short Story
• A short story is a brief work of fiction. It
usually contains one major conflict and often
only one major character. Its brevity usually
suggests concise narration and limited setting.

36. Simile
• A comparison made between two dissimilar things
through the use of a specific word of comparison
such as Like, as, than, or resembles. The comparison
must be between two essentially unlike things.

37. Summarize
• to briefly describe the who, what, when, why
and how of something.

38. Supporting Details
• details that tell you more about and support
the main idea

39. Theme
• Theme is the dominant idea that a writer is
trying to convey to his readers in a work of
literature. A universal idea in literature.
The author wrote a story about the
joy of love.

40. Thesis Statement
• The main idea of how something relates to a
particular theme or idea.

41. Tone
Tone is the feeling created by a work of
literature.

42. Topic Sentence
• is a sentence that captures the meaning of the
entire paragraph or group of sentences. It tells
what the passage is mainly about.

43. Verb
• the word or phrase that gives the action, or
asserts something, in a sentence, clause etc.

44. Voice
• Voice is the author's style, the quality that
makes his or her writing unique, and which
conveys the author's attitude, personality, and
character.