For both reading and writing instruction, we use Lucy Calkins Units of Study. As both of these programs have so much overlap and connection, both of these classes will be combined into one larger block - Language Arts (ELA). In fifth grade, there is quite a bit more writing in response to reading. The emphasis will be on pushing students' thinking about story elements, structures and text features to help them come to deeper understanding about the text and how the author has chosen to craft it.

Our Language Arts Units - 

• Unit 1 - Interpretation Book Clubs (Realistic Fiction)

  • Mentor Text: Home of the Brave by Katherine Applegate

  • Short Narrative Piece, Summaries

  • End of Unit Writing - Literary Essay

• Unit 2 - Tackling Complexity in Nonfiction Text (Informational Text)

  • Mentor Text - When Lunch Fights Back: Wickedly Clever Animal Defenses

  • End of Unit Writing - Nonfiction Research Project Slides

• Unit 3 - Argument and Advocacy (Opinion Articles)

  • Mentor Text - various articles about whether kids should have homework.

  • End of Unit Writing - Opinion Essay 

• Unit 4 - Fantasy Book Clubs (Fantasy Fiction)

  • Mentor Text - City of Ember by Jeanne du Prau

  • Short Writes - Poetry

  • End of Unit Piece - Memoir

Grammar:

We will be learning about capitalization, parts of speech and punctuation use this year. After a grammar unit, there will be a quiz (class notes will be allowed on grammar quizzes). 

Helping students to develop a love of reading is one of my main goals this school year. I want students to have a love and appreciation for literature, characters, and authors. In order to help make this a reality in our classroom, students need to have their hands on books. Reading 30 minutes a day is something that I strive for. While we do get some reading time in class, reading at home is the best way to improve reading skills. 

In our classroom we have a reading requirement of 30 minutes a day. This can be broken down in whatever way fits best in your schedule. For example, if your child has a busy night, try doubling up another night during the week or on the weekend. 

I do require students to log reading so that they get into a habit of reading at home. The log simply asks for book title, the number of pages read and the number of minutes read, it is meant to be done in a couple of minutes. This will be done on a Google Form in students' Google Classroom, so no signature or parent approval is required. I simply want students to get in the habit of reading with as little added to this task as possible while still providing some accountability and information about how at home reading is going.

High interest and good fit books can be found among our Scholastic Book Club Flyers that come out monthly. They are distributed in the classroom, but can also be accessed through our classroom code here. Every book you purchase helps to provide free books for our classroom! There are books by grade-level and reading-level to choose from. Additionally, these are some of the best prices you will find for books, book sets and even eBooks. 

Shop by using the link above and entering our class code: GZ47V 

We do have paper flyers, but the easiest way to see what Scholastic has to offer is to go to the website - www.scholastic.com and search by grade level/series/author. 

 Grading in ELA will be done by rubric or by assignment points and percentages.

Reading:

Most assignments will be out of 10 points. If it is a 5 point assignment, I will double it to allow for half points to be used (Google Classroom doesn't allow me to use half points when recording grades). Most assignments will be responses to reading that we have practiced together before I have students show their thinking as an assessment. All reading assignments will be located in our Reading Google Classroom. We will have assessments at the end of each unit, and these will be scored using points and percentages. Multiple choice portions of end of unit assessments can not be redone, but written portions and assignments may be redone using my feedback up to two weeks after the completion of the unit. After that time, the assignments and assessments from the unit may NOT be redone.

Writing:

Writing grades will consist of grammar quizzes, short writes (rubrics will be given) and longer end-of-unit writes (rubrics will also be given). Rubrics are ALWAYS posted in Google Classroom for student review and use. I will post the End of Unit rubrics below, but rubrics for the shorter writes will be more specific to each assignment, and will be posted with the assignment.

Please check Parent Vue periodically. If you ever have any questions about your student's grade in any subject, please contact us. Thanks for your support!