Students explore the concept of identity and what makes a person who they are. By reading the texts Make Way for Dyamonde Daniel by Nikki Grimes and My Name is María Isabel by Alma Flor Ada, students explore some of the different aspects of a person's identity and how they should treat people who have different identities. In Make Way for Dyamonde Daniel, students see the importance of getting to know a person and not making judgments about a person based on aspects of their identity or their actions. In My Name is María Isabel, students learn about the importance of respecting and valuing people's names. Throughout the unit, students also have multiple opportunities to reflect on their own identities and learn about their classmates' identities. Based on Social Justice Standards: The Learning for Justice Anti-bias Framework (Learning for Justice), the unit strives to help students develop a positive self-identity while also affirming the dignity of other people to set the foundation for further units that explore diversity, justice, and action. 

This unit sets a strong foundation for reading, writing, and academic discourse. Through daily reading, discourse, and writing, students dive deep into characters and study how authors develop characters. Students learn that characters are nuanced and that character traits, feelings, and motivations directly influence a character's actions.  Students also learn how to prepare for class discussions, determining which evidence best supports a particular idea and how to elaborate on that evidence. By writing daily in response to the Target Task question, students begin to build their writing fluency, seeing the power of writing as a tool for understanding what they are reading. Using both core texts as a guide, students end this unit with a narrative writing project, writing about an experience that shaped who they were.

This unit challenges students to view history with a critical lens, and to notice how there is always more than one side to a story. The unit begins with the Mayflower and helps students develop an understanding of why so many colonists decided to leave England and travel to the New World. Students will explore the hardships faced by the colonists, both on the ship and once they arrived in the New World, and how the colonists persevered and relied on the geography and environment to meet their needs. Students will then learn about the Wampanoag, the people who were on the land before the Pilgrims arrived. They will learn about what the Wampanoag valued, how they viewed the Pilgrims, and how the arrival of explorers and settlers negatively influenced their tribe. Then, students will be pushed to analyze what really happened at the first Thanksgiving, and whose story is being told. Students will realize that the traditional story of the first Thanksgiving contains many myths that don't accurately reflect the Wampanoag and what really happened in 1621. 

Students think about the ways in which events are connected. When learning about historical events and reading historical texts, students explore how they can use chronology to explain the connection between events. Students review how to use cause and effect to explain what happened with particular events and why. Students read texts on similar topics that include multiple perspectives of a historical event, allowing students to compare and contrast texts and critically analyze the perspectives that are present in each text. 

When discussing the text, students continue to work on elaborating and supporting their own ideas, using examples and evidence to justify their own thinking. Doing so sets students up for success with discourse in later units when students are pushed to engage with the thinking of others. 

Students continue to build their fluency with writing daily in response to the text and crafting sentences that show a nuanced understanding of content. In the second half of the unit, students write informational paragraphs, including a topic sentence and supporting reasons and facts. The unit culminates with students researching, drafting and illustrating their own informational books to teach others the truth about Thanksgiving.

Students explore the power of oral storytelling in African-American and Hispanic cultures through reading and listening to a wide variety of folktales and stories that have been passed down within families and communities for generations. These stories serve as a launching point for students to explore and understand the world around them, to grapple with what it means to be a good person, and to consider what they can learn from the experiences of others. This unit, in connection with others in the course, will challenge students to think about the power of storytelling and the influence it can have on individuals and entire communities.

This unit focuses on helping readers see the connection between recounting stories, determining a central message, and using details to explain how the central message is conveyed. Through multiple readings of the same stories, students will be able to analyze and discover how messages are developed. Rereading the same folktale multiple times also supports students' fluency and vocabulary development. 

Students continue to work on sharing their ideas through discourse, focusing on how to provide evidence and examples to justify a particular idea or point. Being able to clearly articulate and support their own ideas sets students up for success in later units when they begin to build on to and critique the ideas of their classmates. 

Students continue to build their writing fluency by writing daily in response to the text. In this unit students learn how to brainstorm and write literary analysis/opinion paragraphs, focusing on how to write topic sentences that state an opinion and then how to determine evidence and reasons that support the opinion. The unit concludes with students writing their own folktales or stories, using the core texts and strategies learned in previous units as a guide.

In this unit, students explore the relationship between living things and their environment and how the environment can both positively and negatively impact a species’ ability to survive. Using the Next Generation Science Standards as a guide, students will learn about different species, what they need for survival, their life cycle, and how they have adapted for survival. Then students will be challenged to create arguments that explain why some organisms are able to survive well, some survive less well, and others can’t survive at all in certain habitats. Through this unit, along with others in the sequence, students will use the scientific information they learn to think critically about the world around them. 

The Science of Living Things texts were chosen as mentor texts for this unit because the author, Bobbie Kalman, uses text features and clear language to clearly communicate complex concepts about the animal kingdom, life cycles, and animal adaptations. Over the course of the unit, students will deepen their understanding of how Bobbie Kalman uses text features to not only organize information, but to help a reader learn new information and facts about a subject. Students will also explore how graphic features, such as illustrations and diagrams, help readers learn and understand scientific ideas and concepts. 

Students continue sharing and elaborating on their own ideas when discussing the text and  building on their classmates' ideas, seeking to genuinely understand what their peers are saying by asking questions, adding on, or engaging in multiple exchanges. Students continue to build their writing fluency by writing daily in response to the Target Task question. Across the unit, students also have multiple opportunities to work on brainstorming and writing strong opinion and informational paragraphs, focusing on strong topic sentences, supporting details, and transitions. 

In this unit, students read the core texts The Hundred Dresses and Garvey’s Choice as a way of exploring what it means to be accepting and tolerant of themselves and others. The Hundred Dresses challenges students to think about the different roles associated with bullying through the eyes of the narrator, who struggles with her own involvement with a classmate who is bullied. Garvey’s Choice illustrates the way others influence the way we see ourselves, both positively and negatively, and the power of accepting ourselves by tracing Garvey’s path to self-discovery and acceptance. Both texts are full of moments and messages that are easily relatable for students at this grade level. Therefore, it is our hope that the experiences of the characters in both texts will serve as a neutral launching point for deeper discussions about bullying, tolerance, acceptance, and forgiveness. 

The main focus of the unit is on identifying and tracing the central message across a longer text. Students will develop a deep understanding of each character’s thoughts, feelings, and motivations, which will help them identify and explain how the central message is developed and conveyed through the characters in each text. Students will also begin to understand how successive parts of a text build on each other to push the plot forward. Particularly with Garvey’s Choice, students will analyze the genre features of novels written in verse and how each part helps build and develop the central message. 

When discussing the text, students continue to work on engaging with the thinking of others by building on, and paraphrasing, questioning, and clarifying ideas to understand. At this point in the sequence, students should be able to write fluently in response to the daily Target Tasks to show understanding of the text. In this unit students return to working on writing strong literary analysis and opinion paragraphs, building on work done in previous units on topic sentences, supporting details, and strategies for elaboration. Students also have an opportunity to write a continuation of The Hundred Dresses, reinforcing the narrative writing work done in previous units.

In this unit, students will explore the meaning of true friendship by reading Charlotte's Web by E.B. White. Charlotte's Web, a classic novel written in 1952, clearly illustrates how difficult and scary it can be to make a friend, yet how rewarding a true friendship really is. Over the course of the novel, students will consider what it means to be a good friend, whether or not friendship is always easy, and whether or not conflicts and struggle are an important part of strengthening friendships. By deeply connecting with the characters, students will learn about the power of helping others, how creativity and determination can help solve problems, and people can and do change. Students will also begin to understand the cycle of life and beauty, and the emotional responses that come with death through the eyes of Wilbur. It is our hope that this unit, in connection with other units, will provide the foundation for developing empathy and understanding about true friendship and life.

Charlotte's Web was chosen not only because of the strong theme of friendship and life but because it is a classic in children's literature. Charlotte's Web was written in the early 1950s and contains messages and language that are more archaic than other texts in the sequence. Therefore, students will use what they learned in previous units about describing characters, determining messages, and character change to analyze messages, settings, characters, and language that are less familiar and relatable. The text also uses a lot of precise words and phrases to describe characters and settings, allowing students to analyze the author's use of language while practicing how to determine the meaning of literal and nonliteral language in context. 

When discussing the text, students will focus on critiquing and analyzing the reasoning of others. They will use what they learned from previous units on how to clarify and share their thoughts and how to engage with the thinking of others to push the discussion to a deeper level. In this unit, students will also have multiple opportunities to write literary analysis/opinion paragraphs, using what they learned from previous units about topic sentences, supporting details, and elaboration.