ELA

Writing

We are going to begin with weekly paragraph writing to work through the writing process and get students back in the swing of things. Below will be the topics of the papers we are writing throughout the year. When a bolded topic is added to the list, that will be the current paper that we are writing.

Current/Completed Writing Topics

Creative Writing

Animal for a Day

Narrative Writing

Personal Narrative

Informative Writing

Opinion Paper

Grammar

Grammar practice for 5th grade will be completed using a program called Mentor Sentences. We will be reading a picture book every week and examining a "good sentence". As we learn what makes a good sentence, we will be dissecting the sentence and imitating the sentence from the picture book, learning to add details from the story to make the sentence even better. At the end of the week, students will be given the sentence again, as a quiz, and asked to fix any mistakes they find in it, along with showing how they can apply the focus skill of the week.

Daily Spiral Language Review

Students are to complete the spiral review before the language lesson for the day.

Students are encouraged to ask questions before we go over the problems in language for the day. Problems will be gone over in class and students will keep track of the problems they answer correctly and tally their progress at the end of the week.

Students will be given the opportunity to ask questions prior to going over the review. This will work on their taking responsibility for their learning and track their growth of their skills.

Writing

Fifth grade will be doing a lot of writing this year. The hope is to utilize our Chromebooks and Google Accounts to draft, revise, edit, and publish papers. Students will be writing every day, starting with a journaling topic and then learning the skills to write in a variety of genres and look back to improve their own writing.

Spelling

Tests are going to normally be taken every Friday with Pretests on Thursday.

All the lists for the year can be found on the following doc. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fRLqEX6y1HK-kaYu1zDb4vHhVMCAwRXVeCxTptG2GN8/edit?usp=sharing

Students can play games to practice their Spelling words at the following link.

The Writing Process

Prewriting—is the act of warming up for writing.

Examples of Prewriting: Making lists

Create clusters

Discussing with others

Looking through Magazines

THINKING

Rough Drafting—is the act of writing without stopping. Not the final copy (there will be many rough drafts).

Revising—is the act of enhancing one’s writing.

Examples of Revision: Changing the beginning

Focus on one part

Changing the ending

Add a section

Delete a part (pruning)

Change the order (re-sequencing)

Change the genre

Change the point of view

Change the tense

Editing—(Proofreading)—is the act of making corrections in grammar and spelling; making the story “reader friendly.”

Publishing—is the act of making a finished product of one’s writing; to make it presentable to the public.

Writing Traits

Ideas: The meaning and development of the message

Organization: The internal structure of the piece

Voice: The way the writer brings the topic to life

Word choice: The specific vocabulary the writers uses to convey meaning

Sentence fluency: The way the words and phrases flow throughout the text

Conventions: The mechanical correctness of the piece

Presentation: The overall appearance of the work