This unit serves as the foundational unit for establishing both classroom culture and the routines of the Fishtank ELA block. In this unit, students discover what it means to be part of a classroom community and how they can make it a fun place. Over the course of the unit, students explore hopes and dreams, how to be polite and treat others with respect, and why it’s important to be proud of themselves and who they are. The unit gives students a chance to project their own feelings onto characters in order to make sense of how they are feeling. Through a variety of extension activities, students will be pushed to think about how they can use what they learned from the characters in their own lives and in the classroom community. The final products of many of the lessons and activities should be displayed and reinforced daily as student-friendly reminders of what it means to be part of a joyful community. 

The unit's main reading focus is on setting up the routines of a successful Fishtank ELA block. Students will learn what it means to actively participate in a Read Aloud, how to listen to other students in the class, how to interact with and practice vocabulary, and how to write in response to the text. Since this is the first unit of the year, the goal for discourse is to begin to establish clear routines and procedures that allow students to share their thinking and ideas.

Additionally, students will begin to learn about the importance of asking questions in response to a text and how questioning and being inquisitive is an important part of learning and exploring the world around them. Since this a short unit that primarily serves as a welcome to school unit, all reading, discourse, and writing focus areas from this unit spiral in the next unit: Noticing Patterns in Stories.

In this unit, students are exposed to familiar stories with predictable patterns and illustrations. Exposure to predictable texts is incredibly important for beginning readers as they begin to explore the world of reading independently. The story patterns allow students to try and read the stories on their own, using the repetitive texts and pictures as a guide for either reading or pretending to read the story. Predictable texts are also incredibly important for exposing students to phonological awareness concepts in context, particularly rhyme, rhythm, and fluency. 

For students to reap these benefits, they need to deeply engage with the stories. This means that the stories need to be read, reread, retold, and reread some more so students can build the confidence they need to pretend to read or read the text on their own. Within the context of this unit, students are only exposed to the text once; therefore, it is the responsibility of the teacher to find ways to bring the stories to life in other parts of the day so that students are able to reap the rewards of engaging with predictable texts or, if necessary, to slow down the pacing of the unit in order to include multiple readings of a text.

Students will continue to be challenged to ask and answer questions about the texts they read daily, the focus from the previous unit: Welcome to School. Students will begin to work on retelling what happens to the characters in the story, using key details from the text and illustrations. Students will learn that characters are the people, animals, and creatures in a story and that characters, just like people, can think, feel, or act. Additionally, students will explore how authors and illustrators use illustrations and repetition to help a reader understand the main events in a story. Students will learn how to closely “read” illustrations for subtle clues about character feeling or foreshadowing clues for what is going to happen next in a story.

In this unit, students continue to learn how to use discussion and oral discourse to show their understanding of texts. Students build on the work they did in the previous unit–Welcome to School–and continue to focus on the structures needed for successful academic discourse, including following agreed-upon rules and speaking audibly.

In this unit, students will continue to write daily in response to the text with a focus on using words and pictures to correctly answer the question. Students will also begin to explore opinion writing by writing about which book from the unit is their favorite. 

In this unit, students begin a year-long exploration of the seasons and how weather, plants, and animals are different depending on the season by studying the beauties of fall and fall harvests.. This unit is a chance for students to stop and think about the changes that are happening in the natural world around them and why the changes happen. It is our hope that by the end of the year, after studying winter and spring in subsequent units, students will have a deeper understanding of the unique features of each season.

This is students’ first introduction to informational texts and reading to learn information. Because the subject matter relates to students’ daily lives, they should be challenged to ask questions and make connections between what they are reading and learning and what they are seeing outside. Students will also begin to explore the idea of a main topic, identifying key details that tell more about the main topic. Additionally, students will begin to think about how details are connected. When discussing the text, students continue to work on clarifying and sharing their thoughts about texts read or information presented orally by asking and answering questions. Students also begin to learn strategies for continuing conversations through multiple exchanges.

Students continue to build their writing fluency by writing daily in response to the Target Task question. Students begin to learn strategies for how to craft different types of sentences, learning how to construct simple sentences orally and in writing, if they are ready. Students also begin to write informational texts by adding details to their drawings in order to explain key facts. 

In this unit, students explore and experience the works of four award-winning authors and illustrators; Grace Lin, Yuyi Morales, Monica Brown, and Jerry Pinkney. Students will think critically and make connections between the author or illustrator’s life and the stories he or she writes or illustrates, and how each author’s unique personality is reflected in the words or pictures. By studying a wide variety of authors and illustrators, we hope that the foundations will be set for a lifelong interest in reading and books. In future units and grades, students will read additional award-winning stories written or illustrated by the different authors and illustrators from the unit.

This unit builds on Welcome to School, Noticing Patterns in Stories, and Celebrating Fall and assumes that students are inquisitive consumers of text, asking and answering questions while listening to and enjoying a story. Students will continue to work on retelling a story, including key details about the setting, characters, and major events. Students will also continue to be challenged to "read" the illustrations and think about how the illustrations help a reader better understand what is happening in the story. At the end of this unit, students should also be able to clearly articulate and define the role of the author and illustrator and why they are both important. 

To build speaking and listening skills, students continue to work on clarifying and sharing their thoughts while engaging with the thinking of others. Students practice continuing the conversation through multiple exchanges, asking and answering questions and requesting clarification if something is not understood.

Students continue to work on building writing fluency by writing daily in response to the Target Task question. Students learn strategies for crafting statements and questions orally and in writing, and practice using end punctuation when writing statements or questions. In this unit students return to opinion writing, continuing to work on crafting opinions. After learning about each author or illustrator, students will write a letter to the author/illustrator explaining which book was their favorite. Additionally, students will begin to explore narrative writing, narrating a single event, with a beginning, middle, and end..

In this unit, students explore the beauties of winter. Students learn about how snow forms and the different types of snow that fall in the winter,how animals survive in the winter, and the ways in which animals meet their basic needs, even when the ground is covered with ice and snow. By the end of the unit, students should have a strong grasp of what makes winter unique and the different ways animals survive in the winter. Due to the timing of this unit, it is our hope that students will have plenty of opportunities to interact with the vocabulary and content in the natural world around them.

This unit is predominantly a collection of informational texts and builds on skills and strategies from earlier units. At this point, it is assumed that students are inquisitive consumers of text and are able to ask and answer questions about a text in order to deepen their understanding of the content. Students will continue to focus on finding the main topic and supporting details, but with an added emphasis on using diagrams and information to identify key details.

Students will also focus on learning new words, and using those words when talking or writing about the text. 

In this unit, students practice using all of the strategies from previous units to hone in on their speaking and listening skills. Students continue to work on continuing a conversation through multiple exchanges, requesting clarification when needed, and speaking audibly. Solidifying these speaking and listening skills sets students up for success in later units. 

Students continue to build writing fluency by writing daily in response to the Target Task question. Students learn how to write complete sentences and use correct ending punctuation. Building on work done in previous units, students also continue to explore narrative writing, writing a short narrative focusing on retelling what happens in the beginning, middle and end. Students also continue to refine their informational writing skills, using informational writing as a way to solidify their understanding of new information. 

In this unit, students begin to explore African American history and the Civil Rights Movement. Students will begin the unit by thinking about the ways in which people are similar and different, including skin color, and how those differences should not define who we are or how we are treated.Students will then learn about the discrimination and injustices faced by African Americans leading up to and during the civil rights movement and why it was necessary to fight for change. They will learn about how communities came together to organize and stand up to injustice, including how Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr.’s influential leadership influenced and inspired others to fight for change. It is our hope that this unit will help instill the values of diversity, justice, and action, and that it will serve as a launch for further discussions around discrimination, justice, and valuing individuals.

Students are challenged to think about how authors include specific reasons and illustrations to help the reader understand a particular idea or point in the text. Students also continue to explore how details are connected, and how understanding the connection between details helps the reader understand the text. When participating in discussions, students use all of the strategies from previous units to hone in on their speaking and listening skills, focusing on continuing a conversation through multiple exchanges.

Students continue to work on building writing fluency by writing daily in response to Target Tasks. Students practice producing simple sentences, using conjunctions to expand sentences, and using different types of sentences depending on what they are writing. Across the unit, students also have multiple opportunities to build on what they learned in previous units to write informational pieces, naming and then including some information about a topic. 

In this science-based unit, students begin to build respect for and understanding of living things by studying the life cycles of different plants and animals. Students continue their exploration of seasons by learning what makes spring the season of growth and the different characteristics of living, nonliving, and dead things. Students observe and learn about plants and what seeds need in order to grow into a plant,the process in which tadpoles turn into frogs and caterpillars transform into butterflies, and how birds grow and change inside of an egg. Throughout the unit, students should be challenged to think critically about how the life cycles of plants and animals are similar and different, and what all living things need in order to thrive and survive.

Students continue to use all of the strategies learned in previous units to understand an informational or literary text. Students build on those understandings by noticing the sequence of events, particularly in informational texts. Because students read a variety of texts on the same topic, students also begin to think about the ways in which texts on the same topic can be similar and different. 

Students continue to build writing fluency by writing daily in response to the Target Task. Additionally, throughout the unit students engage in both narrative and informational writing, By this point in the year, students should be using a combination of drawing, dictating, and writing, with more of an emphasis on drawing and writing. 

In this culminating unit, students learn about how to save the earth by reducing, reusing, and recycling. Over the course of the year, students studied the seasons, learned about how animals and plants change and survive in different seasons, and explored some of the life cycles found in nature. Now, in this unit, students think about what they can do to make sure human waste does not hurt the environment. As students learn about why waste is a problem, they explore options for limiting that waste and read stories about people who have found ways to reduce, reuse, and recycle waste.

Students focus on identifying the reasons an author gives to support points in a text, describing the connection between individual events and ideas, and identifying basic similarities and differences between two texts on the same topic. Students explore a variety of texts, including more dense informational texts, poems, and narrative nonfiction as part of this unit. 

Since this is the culminating unit of the year, the majority of speaking and listening and writing work should be a review for students. Students should be able to continue conversations through multiple exchanges with minimal support or prompting from the teacher. Students should also be able to write an answer to the Target Task question, with more of an emphasis on writing and drawing than on dictating at this point. Students should also be able to use simple sentences both orally and in writing to answer the Target Task question. Additionally, students have opportunities to refine their informational and opinion writing.