In 6th grade English, students read at least six major texts in various genres of literature, including short story, poetry, essay (descriptive, narrative, expository, and persuasive), and novel. Most of the major texts are read in the literature circle format, meaning that students choose their own reading materials, set their own reading calendars, engage in small group discussion about their books, and present a group oral book project after finishing the book. All reading selections are chosen with an eye on issues of gender, ethnicity, and cultural diversity as they exist in our contemporary world. While reading, students strengthen literal comprehension of texts as well as an ability to draw inferences from implied meanings. They also analyze how a text is structured and how an author employs story elements. Students do a fair bit journaling on their reading in a Moodle Wiki format on the Inside.Catlin site. As writers, students produce poems, stories, and essays for class, taking all major pieces through the writing workshop process: prewriting, drafting, peer responding, revising, proofreading, and publishing. Students use the laptop writing-lab in class to work on keyboarding and other technology skills, saving their work to the Inside.Catlin Moodle and Google Docs domains. They also have many grammar, spelling, and vocabulary lessons over the course of the year in order to enrich their own writing and make it more sophisticated and polished. At the end of the year, each student produces a personal Heroic Journey Anthology of her 6th grade academic year. Last, an overarching theme of the 6th grade is harvesting, and to this end students are given many opportunities to go outside and work in the organic garden, greenhouse, and apple orchard. The sixth grade team is in charge of two major Catlin Gabel concerns: the apple orchard and the Spring Festival plant sale fundraiser. Sixth grade teachers work together to teach a variety of interdisciplinary lessons on such topics as seed collection, photosynthesis, pollination, the foundations of human civilization, wheat harvesting in Mesopotamia, pizza baking in the garden cob oven, and sweetness in apples. Students grow food for the lunch salad bar in the Barn, and they learn how to compost back into the garden to complete the circle. Throughout these interdisciplinary lessons, students are reading and writing across the curriculum—writing for history lessons and reading for science lessons while in Language Arts.