ELA

In fifth grade, students will be immersed in various genres of text in order to strengthen their reading comprehension. The ELA period will be broken up into several components including Reading Workshop, Writing Workshop and Word Work.

Key Words to be used throughout the year in ELA:

Identify, clarify, evaluate, analyze, describe, summarize, feedback, criteria, Criteria for Success, critique, formulate, draw conclusions.

Current Units of Study

Reading: Argument and Advocacy

Unit 4 is all about researching a debatable topic! Students are reading to identify reasons “for” and “against” an issue by setting aside their opinions and suspending their judgments. From there, students are learning to prepare a strong claim, counterclaims and rebuttals to engage in meaningful debates in the classroom.

Research-Based Argumentative Essay

Roosevelt's writers have just begun working in unit 4 which focuses on writing a Research-Based Argumentative essay. During the first bend of our writing unit, students will learn how to pull evidence out of an informational text, in order to support a claim/opinion. They will learn how to rank information so that they present the strongest pieces of evidence that support their claim. During the first writing piece, texts/video/media are selected for them. They will be reading and writing about whether schools should sell chocolate milk. At the end of this bend students will write a letter to Mrs. Grier trying to persuade him to either sell or not sell chocolate milk in the school cafeteria.

Writing Goals

Improve quality of writing.
Strive towards independence.
Good writers call upon skills learned in previous units to plan and develop their essay.
Good writers consider both positions on a topic.
Good writers use evidence to support their position.
Good writers rank evidence to support their claim.
Good writers include counter arguments in their research-based argumentative essays.

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