In English Language Arts Class, your child will be learning reading and writing skills. Please be aware that much of what students will do in ELA will be done through Google Classroom and Google Docs. Below, you will see a description of what students will be working on throughout the school year. Please understand that the timing may change depending on how slowly or how quickly we move through the material. It all depends on what the students need. You are encouraged to read the fifth-grade team weekly newsletters to keep up to date with what is being covered in our classes.
Daily Warm-Ups-Each class period will begin with a warm-up. These warm-ups will include standard based reading passages, vocabulary (academic vocabulary, Greek and Latin roots, prefixes and suffixes, determining the meaning of words using context clues), editing, parts of speech review, figurative language, and paired passage journal writing.
Focus on Reading-Using Journeys, students will get to have extra time with me to learn, review, and/or ptactice explicit reading skills and text structures. We will get to do this weekly as each homeroom rotates through during RtI/FlexTime.
First Quarter-Throughout the first quarter, the primary focus will be on paragraph writing, complete sentences, end mark punctuation, sentence structure and variety, and the parts of speech (this will be ongoing throughout the school year). The major assessment during the first quarter will be a personal narrative paragraph.
Second Quarter-Throughout the second quarter, students will examine plot structure in fictional text. They will read fictional text to identify the exposition, rising action, conflict, climax, falling action, and resolution in short stories. They will also examine the use of dialogue and determine the theme of the book. They will also be introduced to sensory details (also known as imagery) and see how effective similes and adjectives are when it comes to painting a picture with words. They will then put all of this together to write their own fictional narrative, I also plan to begin my figurative language unit this quarter and introduce students to the elements of poetry. They will end the quarter by writing their own newspaper story inspired balled poetry. This is one of my personal favorites. You will enjoy reading these poems! I also plan to have students compare informational text (auto biographies to biographies and newspaper articles to textbooks). I will also have students practice writing summaries with these pieces of text.
Third Quarter-This quarter will begin with an introduction to point of view. Students will learn the difference between first person, second person, third person limited, third person omniscient, and third person objective. They will complete a book study in which they will participate in Literature Circles and apply reading strategies, such as questioning, predicting, inferring, connecting, etc., and support their thinking with sufficient evidence from the text. From here, we will move into opinion writing. This will be our biggest paper of the year and will carry over into fourth quarter. During third quarter, the focus will be on identifying claims and contradictions by examining advertising techniques and packaging. We will also practice paraphrasing and quoting the text to help students avoid committing plagiarism. Students will continue with the argumentative writing unit by analyzing different points of views regarding the civilian use of drones. They will identify the author's purpose, claim, and word choices that helped to make the claim more clear. They will summarize the author's point of view and monitor their own thinking as they are introduced to new perspectives. From here, students will read articles to establish their own claim and collect evidence to support it. This will be the driving force behind the body of the opinion paper. They will also craft introductory and concluding paragraphs. This will be a five paragraph paper, but they will be given plenty of time, guidance, and support. Since this is a busy quarter, some of this will more than likely trickle into fourth quarter.
Fourth Quarter-The fourth quarter will include a research unit (I like to do this with Social Studies, so the topic will depend on what is being taught in that class at this time). Students will use their research findings to write a five-paragraph expository essay. I hope we will be able to end the year with a book study over Number the Stars and research the Denmark Resistance during the Holocaust if time permits. Since parts of speech will be taught throughout the year, the final assessment will be a "Parts of Speech Menu" project.