Grade 6 Grammar
Discover Grade 6 grammar standards
Grammar work at Grade 6 level is mainly focussed on consolidating the skills learned earlier in your child's elementary language arts journey. There are only a handful of new concepts that children are expected to learn at this stage.
To help your child revise these learnings, you can work through this checklist with them. You can also find links to our detailed advice on what is covered in earlier grade levels, by selecting the different grade pages above.
New Skills
- Use intensive pronouns
- Vary sentence patterns and structure
- Maintain a consistency in style and tone of voice
- Use subjective, objective and possessive pronouns
- Recognize and change inappropriate shifts in pronoun use
Pronoun Case
There are three different cases of pronouns:
- Possessive pronouns show that something belongs to someone
- Subjective pronouns are pronouns that are the subject of a sentence
- Objective pronouns are pronouns that are affected by the subject of the sentence
Subjective Pronouns
- I
- you
- he
- she
- it
- we
- you
- they
- who
Example
I tell the funniest jokes.
- I = subjective pronoun
Objective Pronouns
- me
- you
- him
- her
- it
- us
- you
- them
- whom
Example
Do we have to share the bananas with them?
- them = objective pronoun
Possessive Pronouns
- my
- your
- his
- her
- mine
- its
- their
- our
- yours
- his
- hers
- ours
- theirs
Example
That’s my teleporting torch!
- my = possessive pronoun
Intensive Pronouns
Intensive pronouns are the same pronouns as reflexive pronouns, however their function within a sentence is different. A reflexive pronoun is essential to the meaning of a sentence. An intensive pronoun is not essential to the meaning of a sentence: it can be removed and the sentence will still make sense.
The following are all intensive pronouns:
- herself
- himself
- itself
- myself
- ourselves
- themselves
- yourself
- yourselves
Intensive pronouns are used for emphasis.
- He himself rallied the animals.
- Maji battled the Voids herself.
Tone and Consistency
When deciding on the tone of voice to use in a particular article or story, your child will need to answer the following questions before beginning their writing:
- What are you writing?
- Who is your audience?
- What are their expectations?
Practice Tip
Challenge your sixth grader to write a report with a specific topic and target audience in mind. Ask them to annotate in the margins of their report and explain how they have directly addressed their audience and maintained this throughout their article.
Varying Sentence Structure
Children in sixth grade will be expected to write articles and stories that display a wealth of variety in language and sentence structure in order to maintain the interest of their audience. There are many tools that children can use to help facilitate a high level of variety and pace in their writing.
Children can try to use a range of the following sentence types throughout their articles are stories:
- Simple Sentences
- Complex Sentences
- Compound Sentences
- Compound-Complex Sentences
They can also attempt to use a range of different clauses whilst writing, including:
- Relative Clauses
- Adjective Clauses
- Adverbial Clauses
- Independent Clauses
- Noun / Pronoun Clauses
- Dependent / Subordinate Clauses
Practice Tip
Your child can develop their writing skills by using Night Zookeeper to post new articles and stories on a weekly basis. This is a safe online space where they can write about whatever interests they have whilst at the same time, practicing the skills they've been building since first grade!
How Night Zookeeper can help
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