Curriculum
For each month you can find some questions to ask your child.
Hopefully this will engage your family in conversations that answer the timeless question
"what did you do at school today?" and maybe you get more than "nothing" in return!
Embedded Files
Curriculum Map
Curriculum Map
September Topics
Getting to Know You
Literacy centers that have you "taco the teacher" and answer questions that make you go "hmmm." What did you have in common with a friend on the venn diagram?
Genre Personality Quiz
We took a quiz to find books that we want to read. What's your genre personality?
MSMS PRIDE
We read aloud The Dot by Peter Reynolds which inspired MSMS PRIDE work and personal expression. How will you leave your mark?
Literary Elements
What are they and what do they look like in middle school? Where was your vocabulary word stuck to?
Word Roots ~ port
How many words should you know by grade 6? What's a strategy for increasing your word knowledge?
Scholastic Action
Did you read "Gold Curse" "Finding Hope in a War Zone," From Underdogs to Champions," or "Are These the Coolest Schools in America" Can you tell me what it was about and if you liked it?
October Topics
MCBA Book Tasting
Frizzy, Stella, New From Here, Thirst, We Could Be Heroes, How to Win a Slime War, Finally Something Mysterious, Oddball Histories: Pests and Pigeons, Falling Short, Future Hero, Stuntboy
Categories
Categories help us identify the main idea. What are some items that could be found in the same category?
Sentence Combining
Can you merge two sentences to create one new combined sentence? What are some interesting words you can use to combine two sentences?
Reading Fluency
Using the Reader's Theater :The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by S.Kayden. What role did you have? What is a headless horseman?
So many spooky two sentence horror stories were written. Which two sentence story creeped you out the most?
November Topics
Main Idea Slideshow
Some ideas are too detailed or too vague. What makes a main idea "just right?" Also, what was the getaway car that the characters used in the Ice Cream Heist?
Top-Down Webs
What are the 3 parts of a top-down web? What was the main idea of the Pixar short we watched?
Scholastic Action
Reader's Theater Stuffed
What was your role? What secret did the two characters keep? How did the story end?
Bloom's Questioning
How many levels of questions are there? Why do we bother having a level of "creating" questions?
Sentence Combining
What topic did you write sentences about during the slideshow? Can you remember two of the new sentences you created from the picture prompts?
Vocabulary Day!
Word Roots ~ hydra /mer/mar/aqua
What does "ten" mean? Can you explain how breaking a word into parts. helps you understand it better?
December Topics
Non-Fiction Scavenger Hunt
Can you find a heading and sub-heading? What's the difference? How do you read a graph, infographic and a map? How do know these features help us comprehend text?
Short Story
We read The Assist by Linda Sue Park and Anna Dobbin. Who made the assist in this story? What does a hero look like ? What's a fartlek?
Text Evidence
How does text evidence help us comprehend information at a higher level? Explain how you use "quotations" to support your ideas. What quote did you use in the "Game of Quotes?"
Inferencing
Sometimes we need to make connections between our life experience and new information to learn at a higher level. this is called an inference. What did you infer about the song lyrics in our lesson?
Pixar Short Summaries
Which Pixar shorts did you watch and how did you summarize them? Was it the Lost Letter, The Shorter Letter or The Christmas Star? If you watched more than one, which was your favorite and why?
January Topics
Resolutions
The word resolution can be broken into re-solu-tion and in its parts it means the act of fixing again. What resolutions did you set for your school year, your friendships, which bad habit are you going to break and what's a personal trait?
Seventy-Six Dollars and Forty Nine Cents by Kwame Alexander
This short story that is written in verse includes creative ideas of mind reading and middle school relationships. When was the first time Monk read other people's minds? If you had a superpower, what would it be and why?
Idioms
Figurative language that uses a combination of words that have a different meaning than when the words are used independently. Can you give some examples of idioms and their meanings?
Book Tasting
We tasted the next 13 MCBA books! They include; Alone, A Wolf Called Wander, Twins, Amari and the Night Brothers, Yummy, Prairie Lotus, Float, Dragon Egg Princess, Cece Rios and the Desert of Soul Rivera, I Survived The Nazi Invasion, Too Bright to See, Isla to Island, Roll With It and the new Steve Sheinkin graphic novel BOMB-Which book(s) are you most likely to read ?
February Topics
Summaries
Writing a clear and effective summary takes practice and an interesting topic. We will use articles from Scholastic Action as content to practice using strong topic sentences and transition words. Ask your child what article they summarized.
Questioning
Using Bloom's Taxonomy guidelines we practiced writing and answering questions. We used pictures from "things organized neatly." What picture did your group write about? What question did you write or answer?
Scholastic Action
In this month's edition we focused on responding to our reading in authentic ways. What story did you read? Who did you recommend the article to? What action or question did you have after reading? What was the exit ticket question and how did you vote?
Vocabulary Day
More work with word roots this month. What does "vis/ vid/aud" mean? When you did the word association activity with "phone" what was the most interesting word your partner wrote?
March Topics
Steve Sheinkin Vist
On March 14 we met the author of some great non-fction books. What is your favorite book? What did you learn from Steve Sheinkin?
Poetry- March Madness Style!
16 Poems go head to head to see which one will be the MSMS Poem of the Year!
Students read the poems and select their favorites while practicing skills of identifying mood, tone, and theme. The final poem is read and discussed, while students debate why it should be the winner!
Ask your child what their favorite it.
Point of View
A variety of centers such as writing a letter from the point of view of someone else trying to convince the school board to support their ideas, movie reviews, and guessing games help readers identify if a passage is 1st person, 2nd person, 3rd person limited, or 3rd person omniscient. Ask your child what they wrote their letter about.
Sijo Poetry Writing
We read the mentor text What Would You Save in a Fire? by Linda Sue Park. Answering this question through poetry and illustration was our class assignment. How many syllables does a "she-joe" poem have? What did you write about?
April Topics
Symbolism
Images represent ideas and feelings that can express our emotions more strongly than words. Using word wheels, pixar shorts, and emoji's readers practiced identifying and creating new symbols. Ask your child what was the symbolism in Spellbound?
Biography
Reading biographies gives us a better understanding of character traits, motivation and examples of how they change over time. We will read a few short biographies before working in groups to create a "body biography" project on one of the characters from our short stories. Ask your child which character they selected and who is in their groups.
Book Tasting
Round 3 in the Connors Learning Cafe offers readers another opportunity to check out some new novels and find some great options to read! Ask your child what books they "tasted?" :)
Author's Purpose
Authors write with a specific audience in mind. Their purpose for writing can be sorted into 3 categories. What are they? Can you give an example of one commercial you saw in class?
May & June Topics
Mystery
Who Done It? Is a question that drives many plots. Using Hyconrad Mini Mysteries, readers will identify the techniques the author uses to build suspense, red herrings (distractions) and character to help the reader solve the problem. Ask your child what mini mystery was their favorite?
One Pager
This collaborative project represents all the strategies, short stories, and activities we completed in our course this year. Students use images, text evidence and descriptions to create a one page representation of their learning this year. Ask to see your child's one pager!
Einstein Challenge
Supposedly, only 2% of the population could solve Albert Einstein's challenge in 1930's.This critical thinking activity forces readers to evaluate information and make an educated guess. Check out the link below for some digital versions of this game!
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