Units of Study

This year, we will be using the Readers and Writers workshop model for reading and writing instruction. We will also be using Power of Patterns, as our grammar curriculum. In addition to the units of study, students will learn strategies from Jennifer Seravellos Writing Strategies and Reading Strategies books. Below is a glance at our tentative curriculum map for the year. 

Deep Character Study 

In this unit, students will help kids learn how to study and understand characters. The effects of settings on a character, how they react, how they motivate how different characters react to setting. Themes, what themes do characters learn, how do they help us understand theme. Our anchor text for this unit will be The First French Kiss. 

Writing: Personal Narrative 

In this unit, students will narrow in on a personal life experience to write their own narrative. We will work to narrow in on the details of a the small moment that tells a personal narrative. Students will perfect skills in developing character, and using dialogue and setting to draw readers in. 

Reading: Social Issues Book Club 

In the first bend, students will study social issues as they relate to both individuals and groups. Beginning with relationship issues, students study how power, perspective, and conflicts affect characters. Students will analyze the complex dynamics between characters, to consider cause and effect and to weigh and evaluate interactions amongst characters. In the second bend, students focus on issues that are more systematic in nature. Students notice when issues seem to be related to groups that a character is part of, bucause of that character's gender, or clss, or race, or age, among other qualities. Students then learn about how group issues are often related to powerr issues. We will read alound "Inside Out," by Francisco Jimenez from The Circuit. The final bend has students deepening their own connectsion they make to literature. In this bend, we will focus on poetry to analyze parts of a text that resonate and effect student's own lives.