ELA
Reading Workshop
Across our district, our readers participate in reading workshop, read-alouds, small group instruction, independent reading and book clubs. Our goal is to create lifelong readers who are confident and independent. Students in all of our classrooms have access to a wide variety of high quality middle grade and young adult literature and have the opportunity to read a wide range of topics, authors, genres, and text. During reading workshop, students are taught explicit strategies to apply to their independent reading.
As part of reading workshop, students curate a variety of resources using digital tools to gather and share information, and make meaningful learning experiences for themselves and others.
Fifth Grade Reading Workshop
Upper middle grade readers are considering complex character traits, including the ways in which pressures, other characters, and setting influence those traits. They continue to build on their understanding of theme by noticing how characters may drive a theme or author's message. Readers also determine central and main ideas in nonfiction texts and supporting details. This includes analyzing author's craft to understand word choices, tone, perspective, and how authors advance their point of view.
READING UNITS OF STUDY INCLUDE:
Fantasy: Students will engage in routines and structures to help build a sustainable community of readers. Fifth graders will read literature through the lens of Fantasy Fiction, and work through the writing cycle to create a narrative with fantasy elements. Readers will also investigate complex character traits, setting, and theme.
Informational: Fifth grade readers determine central ideas and supporting details in nonfiction texts. They read critically, synthesizing across texts and analyzing informational texts that contradict each other.
Realistic Fiction: Fifth grade readers investigate complex character traits, setting, and theme in fiction texts.
Writing Workshop
Writing workshop encourages writers to practice work that is similar to the work of professional authors. Students choose their own topics, issues, and stories to write about and move through the writing process to produce and “publish” a variety of genres throughout the year. Students study high quality published middle grade and young adult literature, in addition to real-world texts like newspaper or magazine articles. Students receive explicit instruction in writing strategies to navigate through the writing process. Utilizing various writing tools, writers create a number of texts. When in a writing Unit of Study, students have time to write every day.
In writing workshop, students learn to communicate clearly and express themselves creatively for a variety of purposes using the technological platforms, tools, styles, formats, and digital media appropriate to their goals.
5th Grade Writing Workshop
Fifth grade students will write in a variety of genres, including narrative, informational, and argument texts. In their argument writing, students explain a topic and stake out a position that can be supported by a variety of trustworthy sources. Each part of the text builds a part of the argument and leads to a conclusion. In their narrative writing, students compose stories that have tension, resolution, and realistic characters, and also convey an idea, lesson, or theme. In their informational writing, students convey ideas and information about a subject in a well-structured text. Writers incorporate arguments, explanations, stories, or procedural passages.
WRITING UNITS OF STUDY INCLUDE:
Argument Writing: Fifth-grade writers craft essays that make arguments about topics of interest. They learn strategies to gather, analyze, and explain evidence from the text to support their claims.
Fantasy Writing: Fifth writers create fictional stories centered around fantasy. They will take what they have learned are components of fantasy through their reading work and incorporate them into short stories. Writers develop strategies to manage pace in their storytelling, elaborate on important scenes, and deepen insights.
Research-Based Information: Fifth-grade writers learn ways to research and write informational essays, books, and digital presentations or websites to teach their readers about a topic, using increasingly sophisticated ways to draw on and structure information to explain a topic.
