© 2014 Amplify Education, Inc. All trademarks and copyrights are the property of Amplify or its licensors.

Amplify 55 Washington St., Suite 900 Brooklyn, NY 11201 212.796.2200

6th Grade Quest Summaries with CCSS Alignments

© 2014 Amplify Education, Inc. All trademarks and copyrights are the property of Amplify or its licensors. | 1

Amplify ELA Quests, Grade 6

A Quest is a series of lessons that uses the language of games and adventure to motivate students to read a

text closely and to write about it more expressively. Each Quest is different, based on the individual core text

that students are reading, but each unfolds as an original long-form narrative that plunges students deeper

into the text and envelops them in its historical context.

In this immersive environment, Quests harness students’ curiosity and competitive drive and compel them

toward a specific goal. When students study the works of Edgar Allan Poe, for example, the Quest plays out

as a macabre murder mystery which teams of students must solve. During the Quest they read fascinating

primary source documents while a variety of other elements—such as music, cartoons, photographs, and

interactive tablet experiences—create a multimedia adventure that doesn’t feel like school.

In addition, the collaborative nature of Quests raises the stakes for individual students, who must rise to the

challenge of the material they’re studying to help their teams succeed. During a Quest, students may be

asked to inform the rest of the class of the contents of source documents. Students also learn the meanings

of vocabulary words from context and pass those meanings on to their peers. Discussing their thoughts and

impressions and sharing their insights with their classmates are fundamental components of these special

lessons. Quests are learning experiences, but at the same time they provide opportunities for students to

teach.

While exercising core skills, Quests provide an opportunity for students to master difficult texts in a way that

is dynamic, empowering, and fun!

Unit B: FictionTom Sawyer, Treasure Hunter

Tom Sawyer, Treasure Hunter is a “treasure quest” that emphasizes the youthful freedom and mischief in

Twain’s coming-of-age story, which can sometimes be obscured by the historical and dialectical particulars

of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in the classroom. Students get to live out some Sawyer-esque hijinks

that lead them into unexplored spaces in the text and in their classrooms—or gymnasiums or auditoriums

(wherever teachers decide to stage the Quest).

When students open the Quest

app, they see an animated red

cloth bindle unfolding before

them. The bindle contains all

sorts of childish artifacts—from a

compass to a “live” tick—that Tom

might (and does) take with him on

his adventures. From this tablet

launch pad, students can also

access the text of The Adventures

of Tom Sawyer and a collection of

map pieces that track students’

progress through the Quest.

Groups complete challenges

to obtain clues that help them

advance. The clues lead to markers, such as greeting cards and inspirational posters (supplied by Amplify),

When students open their bindles, Tom Sawyer’s world comes vividly to life.

© 2014 Amplify Education, Inc. All trademarks and copyrights are the property of Amplify or its licensors. | 2

placed around the classroom.

A virtual telescope in students’

bindles picks up these markers,

and when seen through students’

tablets, the markers appear as

windows that open out onto

Tom’s favorite haunts: islands,

graveyards, and cliffsides.

As the app registers these

markers, it also unlocks more

clues and challenges, leading

students on the virtual path

toward the treasure. Each

challenge requires students to

complete a one-page piece of

writing, for which they must return to the novel to read closely and find details. To move on in the Quest, a

student’s writing must be approved by his or her teacher. With the teacher acting as gatekeeper, the Quest

can map to the teacher’s specific

goals for each student while still

allowing students to drive their

own writing progress.

Students will come away

from the Quest with a deeper

understanding and appreciation

of certain elements in The

Adventures of Tom Sawyer,

such as Tom’s use of hyperbole,

storytelling, and deception. In

addition, they will have practiced a

number of writing skills that they

learned over the course of Unit

B, such as how to use evidence

and description to strengthen

an argument. They will also have produced six single-page pieces of writing, and will have discovered that

through imagination, their school environment can be transformed into a haven of whimsy and adventure.

Common Core (CCSS) Alignments: Literacy RL.6.1, RL.6.2, RL.6.3, RL.6.5, W.6.1, W.6.1.B, W.6.2, W.6.2.B,

W.6.4, SL.6.1, SL.6.4, SL.6.6, L.6.1

As students hunt down their prize, they are confronted with imaginative challenges that

send them scrambling back into their books.

The Quest turns the classroom into a world of adventure! Which team will be first to

master The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and discover the treasure?

© 2014 Amplify Education, Inc. All trademarks and copyrights are the property of Amplify or its licensors. | 3

Unit C: SciencePerception Academy

The Perception Academy Quest is a series of linked activities that focuses on brain disorders and how they

affect what we perceive and how we respond to the world around us. Students move through the periods of

a school day as though they had one of the perception disorders described in Oliver Sacks’s book The Man

Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. The Quest builds on the work students have been doing in Unit C and helps

them master the challenging

neurological concepts in Sacks’s

non-fiction text. Perception

Academy makes the study of

the brain so compelling and

accessible that it builds students’

confidence and helps them

approach difficult non-fiction

texts with less anxiety.

The Quest is structured like a

medical thriller: On an ordinary

morning, students are involved

in a minor school bus fender

bender on the way to school.

They experience the crash via

audio recording though their

headphones. While “walking”

the rest of the way to school,

they hear narration detailing the

eerie “symptoms” of altered perception—something is clearly amiss, but students don’t yet understand

what it is. At school, augmented

reality software distorts students’

tabletized school breakfast,

offering more evidence of the

mind-bending changes going on

inside them. Finally, in ELA, they

read case studies in Sacks’s book,

which detail the powerful forces

that have commandeered their

perception—they are suffering

from neurological disorders, the

result of brain trauma.

Soon, students are exploring

the implications of five distinct

maladies on all facets of their

daily life. They play a card game,

created for the Quest, that

helps them confront their new limitations, and then they practice cooperative problem-solving skills with

Using “Augmented Reality” software, students perceive the world as though they have

been diagnosed with a real-life perception disorder, in this case Hemi-spatial Neglect.

Students are given a task (in this case, putting a baby to bed) and are asked to use

textual evidence to imagine what obstacles people with a variety of perception disorders

(memory loss, face blindness, etc.) would encounter in trying to complete it.

© 2014 Amplify Education, Inc. All trademarks and copyrights are the property of Amplify or its licensors. | 4

a partner to complete a challenging task. The Quest concludes with a collaborative writing assignment in

which students use the knowledge they’ve acquired of all five disorders and create a scenario that explains

the circumstances of that morning’s bus accident. For an entire afternoon, students feel the constraints of a

life in which the brain has failed to function reliably, thereby widening and deepening their understanding of

the brain, its functions, and its fundamental importance to the quality of life and, indeed, to the survival of all

living creatures.

Over the course of the Quest, students will also watch a series of videos, each presenting testimony from

a real person experiencing one of the disorders that students are studying. Dr. Sacks himself has “face

blindness,” the inability to recognize faces, even of loved ones. Like the simulated experiences students go

through, these videos serve to create awareness, empathy, and respect for the real people described in

Sacks’s work.

Common Core (CCSS) Alignments: Literacy.SL.6.1b, SL.6.1c, RI.6.1, RI.6.2, RI.6.3, RI.6.9

Unit D: Heroes, Gods, and MonstersGreek Myths

Greek mythology is filled with beautiful and fantastical fictions, from Apollo’s blazing chariot to the many

hissing, writhing heads of the Hydra. The Greek Myths Quest introduces students to a wide spectrum of

similar archetypes in these myths. Students will work from two texts, Greek Myths by Olivia Coolidge and

Heroes, Gods and Monsters of the Greek Myths by Bernard Evslin. By tackling small chunks of text in groups,

the class will be exposed to a sweeping survey of Greek mythology. Students will work in small groups and as

a class to find patterns of character and plot and, from there, analyze what these stories meant to the Greeks

who told them.

Students are aided in their journey by a miniature representation of Greece that lives on their tablets. As

students share these myths with one another, their vacant natural world is transformed into a world filled

with gods and monsters. The clouds transform into the snow-white cattle of the god of the sun, Apollo,

and the waves into the strong arms of the sea god, Poseidon. This world will help students understand

connections between myths and propel them to explore the text in order to uncover more surprises.

As students become familiar with the archetypes of these myths, they craft their own retellings, adding some

of their own imagination to ancient formulae. By the Quest’s end, students will have been exposed to dozens

of mythological characters and will understand how and why stories are told.

Common Core Alignments Pending