The beginning of the school year is an exciting time! Students enter their classrooms with a heightened sense of curiosity and wonder. First impressions go a long way for young learners, and it is important for them to experience a comfortable and engaging invitation into their literacy-rich environment. The start of each new school year provides opportunities for your student to be a a part of a community of learners who respect, listen to, share, and respond to the thoughts and ideas of others.
Readers of all ages are drawn to fiction, and it may very well be the genre students are most likely to choose as they search through a library or bookstore. Fiction stories are typically the stories your student will be most familiar with. These are the stories they remember hearing when they were younger—the stories told and retold from generation to generation, from one culture to another. Each story takes you on a journey, an adventure, and an experience with memorable characters and events. The world is full of stories, and through stories we learn about ourselves and others.
Nonfiction is a rich, engaging genre offering a variety of topics that will entice any reader! Students will spend a great deal of time in school (and their lives outside of school) reading nonfiction, from newspaper articles to textbooks, from recipes to biographies, from travel brochures to informational web sites. Reading nonfiction is empowering. So often students feel like "experts" on the topics or subjects they have read about. Nonfiction reading sparks students' curiosity and opens their eyes to new worlds and different points of view. Nonfiction has so much to offer readers and is an essential genre to study.
The poet Julia Cunningham says, "Poetry is, to me, a place to be. Walk with your words into these secret, mysterious, and magic places where poems lead you." Poetry is a rich and engaging genre that invites readers to study and appreciate the beauty and functions of language. It awakens their sense of the many extraordinary things they can notice in their everyday world. The genre of poetry allows readers to create new and surprising images while also uncovering meaning and exploring emotions. Through the use of rhyme, imagery, and figurative language, readers are exposed to literary devices that remain in our thoughts and create opportunities for reflection and celebration. Poetry offers something for readers of all ages and interests, and it exercises all of our imaginations. What greater joy can young readers experience than discovering something new about themselves, or their world, through reading? Poetry does this. It is the natural bridge between cognitive learning and personal expression.
Key Ideas and Details:
Quote accurately from a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text.
Determine a theme of a story, drama, or poem from details in the text, including how characters in a story or drama respond to challenges or how the speaker in a poem reflects upon a topic; summarize the text.
Compare and contrast two or more characters, settings, or events in a story or drama, drawing on specific details in the text (e.g., how characters interact).
Craft and Structure:
Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative language such as metaphors and similes.
Explain how a series of chapters, scenes, or stanzas fits together to provide the overall structure of a particular story, drama, or poem.
Describe how a narrator's or speaker's point of view influences how events are described.
Integration of Knowledge and Ideas:
Analyze how visual and multimedia elements contribute to the meaning, tone, or beauty of a text (e.g., graphic novel, multimedia presentation of fiction, folktale, myth, poem).
(RL.5.8 not applicable to literature)
Compare and contrast stories in the same genre (e.g., mysteries and adventure stories) on their approaches to similar themes and topics.
Range of Reading and Level of Text Complexity:
By the end of the year, read and comprehend literature, including stories, dramas, and poetry, at the high end of the grades 4-5 text complexity band independently and proficiently.
Key Ideas and Details:
Quote accurately from a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text.
Determine two or more main ideas of a text and explain how they are supported by key details; summarize the text.
Explain the relationships or interactions between two or more individuals, events, ideas, or concepts in a historical, scientific, or technical text based on specific information in the text.
Craft and Structure:
Determine the meaning of general academic and domain-specific words and phrases in a text relevant to a grade 5 topic or subject area.
Compare and contrast the overall structure (e.g., chronology, comparison, cause/effect, problem/solution) of events, ideas, concepts, or information in two or more texts.
Analyze multiple accounts of the same event or topic, noting important similarities and differences in the point of view they represent.
Integration of Knowledge and Ideas:
Draw on information from multiple print or digital sources, demonstrating the ability to locate an answer to a question quickly or to solve a problem efficiently.
Explain how an author uses reasons and evidence to support particular points in a text, identifying which reasons and evidence support which point(s).
Integrate information from several texts on the same topic in order to write or speak about the subject knowledgeably.
Range of Reading and Level of Text Complexity:
By the end of the year, read and comprehend informational texts, including history/social studies, science, and technical texts, at the high end of the grades 4-5 text complexity band independently and proficiently.