Curriculum

Language Arts

A variety of strategies and texts will be used to help students develop literacy skills. Language Arts includes reading instruction to develop decoding skills, fluency and comprehension strategies. Students will explore different types of writing: journaling, poetry, and expository. Students will have daily, guided practice applying reading and writing strategies. All of the strategies and goals taught during language arts will be reinforced across the curriculum.

Literacy Goals:

• Read for meaning

• Read to gather information

• Write to clarify comprehension

• Express ideas clearly when speaking and writing

• Listen actively

• Discuss literature and analyze the author’s message

Reading

We will explicitly teach students active reading strategies that will enable them to monitor their comprehension, take action when their comprehension breaks down, analyze texts beyond the literal meaning, and identify important information in informational texts.

Reading Goals:

• Demonstrate accuracy and fluency in reading

• Read a variety of genres including informational texts, chapter books, historical fiction and science fiction

• Identify and take notes on important information while reading fiction and nonfiction

• Read books at various reading levels (independent, instructional, and beyond with support)

• Analyze texts beyond the literal meaning

• Participate in student-led book discussions

Reading Strategies:

• Use known words to decode unknown words

• Take action when reading does not make sense (reread, read on, ask for clarification)

• Identify story elements and key events

• Analyze characters and their actions

• Identify important information and take notes

• Summarize fiction and nonfiction

Writing

We will instruct students how to use the writing process while working in a variety of genres including journaling, personal experience, biography, persuasive essay and blogging. We will explicitly teach writing strategies designed to help students generate ideas, elaborate, and improve the organization and clarity of their written pieces. Students will publish several pieces this year.

Writing Goals:

• Generate ideas and details

• Organize ideas

• Proofread for sense and mechanics

Writing Strategies:

• Plan a piece before writing

• Monitor writing for sense and elaboration

• Request feedback and apply it to writing

• Use evidence to support ideas

• Develop spelling strategies and keyboarding skills

To help students develop the quality of a written piece we will consider several traits of writing such as ideas, organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency, and conventions. Students will use writing rubrics, teacher-assessments and self-assessments.

Technology

Students will learn to use technology as a tool. In class they will practice basic word processing skills including creating, organizing and sharing documents online using Google Drive. In addition they will be taught strategies for using technology to gather information, collaborate, communicate, and display creativity through various apps. Most importantly, students will learn what it means to be a good digital citizen-to be safe, responsible and respectful online.

Social Studies

Students will benefit from a conceptual approach to studying history. By developing a rich understanding of major historical concepts through in-depth studies of selected historical events, students acquire a framework that can be applied to organizing and understanding events in the past, present, and future.

Conceptual Objectives

The five social studies lenses: social factors, technology, geography, economics, and government.

Big ideas:

• People take action to meet their (survival and social) needs.

• Geography and identity affect people’s actions.

• People’s actions have consequences.

First trimester topics - Students will review geography of North America, the colonization of North America, westward expansion, its affects on indigenous peoples and enslaved peoples.

Second trimester topics - Students will explore how different groups of Americans took action to meet their needs.

Third trimesters topics -- Students will take an in-depth look at the late 1800s and 1900s using the technology, economy, and social lenses to learn about industrialization and important economic and social consequences.