In this unit, students read a collection of texts focused on what it means to be a good friend. This unit, in connection with beginning-of-the-year culture-building activities, will set a strong foundation for building social-emotional awareness as students navigate making new friendships within the classroom.

This unit will serve as the foundational unit for creating both a strong Read-Aloud culture and a strong culture of discourse. Building on what students learned in Kindergarten, students will practice asking and answering questions about key details in a text, particularly characters. Students will notice a character’s actions, motivations, and feelings and how they influence the sequence of events, while also making connections to their own lives and learning from the experiences of the different characters. Over the course of the unit, students learn how to use discussion and oral discourse to show their understanding of texts. Since this is the first unit of the year, the goal is to establish clear routines and procedures that allow students to share their thinking and ideas. 

Students begin to build their fluency with daily writing in response to the Target Task question, learning how to take their understanding of a story and transfer that into writing. In this unit, students also have their first chance to explore narrative writing by writing about a time they were a good friend. Since this is the first process writing project of the year, the focus is on generating on-topic ideas with a beginning, middle, and end. Students also learn what an opinion is, and write an opinion piece about what it means to be a good friend. 

This unit continues the yearlong exploration of what it means to be a good person in a community by pushing students to think about how the lessons and morals from traditional stories and folktales connect to their own lives and communities. The unit launches by listening to the book A Story, A Story, in which students see the power of storytelling, not only for entertainment, but also for learning valuable life lessons. Throughout the unit, students will explore lessons and morals about hard work, happiness, friendship, honesty, and humility. Through discussion and writing, students will be challenged to connect their own lives with the sometimes-abstract lessons and stories in order to build character and a strong community.

This unit builds on the foundation set in the Being a Good Friend unit. Students will continue to practice asking and answering questions about key details with partners, individually, and in discussion, although questions will require a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the text than in the previous unit. To understand the story, students will be pushed to notice a character’s traits and how a character’s traits influence their actions, and thus the sequence of events. In this unit students also explore the central message of a story. Being able to determine the central message of each folktale will help students answer the essential question of what we can learn from reading folktales.

 In this unit, students continue to use partner, small-group and whole-group discourse to show their understanding of texts. Building on the work they did in Being a Good Friend, this unit focuses on the structures needed for successful academic discourse, including following agreed-upon rules for discussions, asking and answering questions, using vocabulary, and producing complete sentences. The work in this unit sets students up for success in later units when they begin to engage with the thinking of their classmates.

Students continue to build their writing fluency by writing in response to the Target Task question. Over the course of the unit, students learn strategies for using complete sentences and are expected to use complete sentences orally and in writing when responding to the text. Students also continue their exploration of narrative writing by writing their own Anansi narrative that has a strong beginning, middle, and end. The unit culminates with students writing an opinion piece with a strong opinion and two to three details to defend if folktales are or are not just silly stories.

In this science-based unit, students begin their exploration of animals and animal adaptations. Over the course of the unit, students explore three main topics: how different animals use their body parts and senses in different ways to survive, the ways how the behavior of different animal parents and offspring help the offspring survive, and the similarities and differences among individual animals of the same kind. This unit is part of a larger progression in understanding animals and the animal kingdom. In Kindergarten, students learn about how animals meet their basic survival needs and how that varies depending on the season. In 2nd Grade, students learn about different habitats and how animals in the habitat rely on the environment for survival. Then in 3rd Grade, students study animal adaptations and the different ways animals adapt in order to survive, especially when threatened by environmental changes. It is our hope that this unit, in combination with others in the sequence, will help students develop a deeper understanding of the animal kingdom and life science.

In this unit, students begin to think about how details in an informational text are connected. While the standard does not explicitly name cause and effect, students are noticing how one event makes something else happen. Additionally, students build a deeper understanding of the connection between the illustrations and the text, and how illustrations help the reader learn more about a particular idea or topic. Students continue to follow agreed-upon rules for discussions, using specific vocabulary, asking and answering questions, and producing complete sentences. 

Students continue to work on building their writing fluency by writing daily in response to the Target Task question. Throughout the unit, students learn a variety of strategies for writing complete sentences and varying the types of sentences they are writing depending on the type of information they are sharing. Students also have opportunities to work on both their narrative and informational writing over the course of the unit. Students use their content knowledge about how animals use their color to survive to write a narrative with a clear beginning, middle, and end. Students also engage in two different research reports, learning how to research and share important facts about their chosen topics.

The goal of this unit is to help students understand that families come in all different shapes and sizes, and that no matter what a family looks like, all families love and care for one another. The world we live in is increasingly diverse, especially within family structures. As students are building their own identities, it is important for them to see mirrors of their own lives so that they can develop healthy identities, while also seeing windows into other lives so that they can embrace differences. Over the course of the unit, students will read stories that highlight a wide range of families and experiences, some of which may not be present in your school community. Ensuring that students see a wide range of families and experiences is crucial for helping students make sense of the world around them.

Students will continue their exploration of character by analyzing the characters’ feelings. In this unit, students focus on more nuanced feelings and explaining why a character feels the way they do. Many of the vocabulary words in this unit do not come directly from the texts, but instead offer more precise words students can use to articulate how a character is feeling. Students will also analyze character relationships and notice how relationships impact a character's feelings and actions, particularly in regard to family relationships. Noticing both character feelings and character relationships will help students determine the central message of the story. 

Additionally, students will be pushed to “read” the illustrations, noticing how illustrations in a text provide clues about events, settings, and characters. When discussing the text, students transition from focusing on clarifying and sharing their thoughts during a discussion to engaging with the thinking of others. Students learn how to build on others’ talk in conversations by responding to the comments of others and asking questions to clear up confusion about the topics or texts under discussion.

Students will continue to work on building their writing fluency by writing daily in response to the Target Task question. Over the course of the unit, students will learn different strategies for ensuring that they are using complete sentences and that they are varying the types of sentences that they are writing to convey different ideas and emotions. Students have a few opportunities to use what they learned in previous units about opinion writing, but the main genre-based focus of this unit is on narrative writing. Building on work done in previous units, students continue to write focused narratives with strong beginnings, middles, and ends that include specific details about what happened at each part of the narrative.

In this biography-based unit, students read and learn about a diverse assortment of artists and musicians. By reading a wide variety of biographies, students will be challenged to think about where people get their inspiration, and how a person’s decisions and actions can change his or her life, especially when facing instances of prejudice and discrimination. Students will also be challenged to think about how a person can be influential and how reading about other people’s lives can help them in their own lives. It is our hope that this unit will open students’ eyes to different life paths and passions, particularly those in the arts.

It is assumed that, by the time students engage with this unit, they are inquisitive consumers of an informational text, asking and answering questions about key details. In this unit, students focus on understanding connections between individuals, events, ideas, and information in a text to better understand a person’s life. While the standards do not name a particular way in which details may be connected, students are learning about cause and effect, chronology, and sequence when thinking about how different events in a person’s life are connected. Students also begin to think about reasons an author gives to support a particular point in a text, noticing details in both the text and the illustrations that support a particular point about the artist or their life. 

When discussing the text, students transition from focusing on clarifying and sharing their thoughts during a discussion to engaging with the thinking of others. Students learn how to build on others’ talk in conversations by responding to the comments of others. Students also learn how to ask questions to clear up confusion about the topics or texts under discussion. Both focuses allow students to get a deeper understanding of the content and their classmates’ ideas.

Students continue to build their writing fluency by writing daily in response to the Target Task question using a variety of simple and complex sentences to show a nuanced understanding of the content. Students also have chances to practice their narrative, informational, and opinion writing.

In this unit, students explore the power of books and reading. In the first part of the unit, students experience the joy that books and reading bring to people's lives, and learn about some of the different ways people access books, especially in places where books are hard to get. In the second part of the unit, students learn about a range of barriers people have faced when trying to learn how to read, both in the United States and around the world, and build an understanding of the steps people have taken individually and as part of a community to overcome those barriers. Students will discover that not all people have had equal access to education and that in many places, past and present, receiving a high-quality education has not been an easy feat. It is our hope that this unit will help open students' eyes to injustices connected with educational access and will inspire students to take action to help members of their community get access to books or education.

Students use everything they have learned from previous units to deeply analyze a text. When describing a character, students review how to notice a character’s actions, motivations, traits, feelings, and relationships in order to develop a nuanced understanding of the character and determine the central message of the story. When discussing the text, students work on using all of the strategies they learned in previous units to participate in an effective partner, small-group, or whole-group discourse. When building on others’ talk in conversations, students may begin to critique and analyze the reasoning of others as a way of continuing the conversation through multiple exchanges, however, the focus is still on building on and responding to others’ comments.

Students continue to practice writing fluently in response to the Target Task question, using a variety of simple and complex sentences to show more nuanced thinking and understanding of the text. Over the course of the unit, students have multiple opportunities to refine their opinion writing skills by writing opinion pieces that include a strong opinion, two to three reasons, and a sense of closure.