Writing
1st nine weeks
Unit 1: Narrative Craft: The focus of the Narrative Unit will be developing a community of young writers. Students will work hard to generate writing ideas based on personal experiences. Students will lean heavily on what they know about how stories go to write personal narratives. They will develop their ideas using sensory details. Also, children practice their skills of editing and revising while thinking about an audience for their writing.
2nd nine weeks
Unit 2: Informational Writing: In this unit students will write to teach about multiple topics they are familiar with. Students will then shift to writing chapter books with a focus on structure and elaboration. At the end of the unit, students will pick a text from the beginning of the unit to revise using mentor text and focusing on elaboration.
3rd nine weeks
Unit 3: The Research-Based Argument Essay: In the Research Based Argument Essay unit students will focus on expressing their opinions about topics that matter through argument writing. Students will use research to support their claim and work to find strong evidence to support their thinking.
4th nine weeks
Unit 4: Fantasy: In this fantasy writing unit students will take all they have learned from the narrative writing unit and build upon it to plan, develop, and draft two fantasy stories. In Bend I, students will collect ideas and develop a plan for a fantasy story. In Bend II, students will choose a seed idea and take it through the writing process.In the third bend students will draft a new story idea and focus on revision to make it stronger. In the final bend, students will pick one of the two drafts and prepare for publication. Students will end the unit with a celebration!