This year's writing Focus: 

Reading and writing are closely aligned and are connected throughout our learning.

Students will be working on a variety of writing genres. These are the following writing genres:

Volume 1 - Kick-off 

Volume 2 - Writing as a Naturalist (information)

Volume 3 - Writing Fan Fiction (fiction)

Volume 4 - Writing to persuade, argue, and advise (opinion)

Volume 5 - Test Taking as a Genre (Test preparation)

Volume 6 - Poetry to Fight Injustice (Poetry)

Volume 7 - Writing on-the-scene accounts (information)

(Note: We have previously taught cursive and will continue to teach it this year. Students will spend some time typing this year, but they will spend much more time writing on physical paper with a pencil.)

this year's Spelling focus

Spelling lists are often practiced and retained only long enough to pass a quiz or test, with few exceptions. We focus on teaching skills that guide ALL learners to stronger spelling skills that transfer to writing (and sounding longer words out during reading times) long after any assessments. *That includes students with difficulties due to challenges like dyslexia. 

Students will learn the following spelling skills: 

UNIT 1: Hyphenated Compounds

UNIT 2: Comparative Suffixes -er, -est

UNIT 3: Challenging Plurals

UNIT 4: Long and Short a Patterns in Accented Syllables

UNIT 5: Long and Short e Patterns in Accented Syllables

UNIT 6: Long and Short i Patterns in Accented Syllables

UNIT 7: Long and Short o Patterns in Accented Syllables

UNIT 8: Long and Short u Patterns in Accented Syllables

UNIT 9: Ambiguous Vowels (oy/oi, ou/ow) in Accented Syllables

UNIT 10: More Ambiguous Vowels (au, aw, al) in Accented Syllables

UNIT 11: Words with r-Influenced a in Accented Syllables

UNIT 12: Words with r-Influenced o in Accented Syllables

UNIT 13: Words with w or /w/ Sound before the Vowel

UNIT 14: Schwa + r Spelled er, ir, ur in First Syllable

UNIT 15: Schwa + r and r-Influenced e in Accented Syllables er, ear, ere

UNIT 16: Unaccented Final Syllables -cher, -ture, -sure, -ure

UNIT 17: Unaccented Final Syllables -en, -on, -ain, -in

UNIT 18: Unaccented Final Syllables -et, -it, -ate

UNIT 19: Adding Inflectional Endings to Words Ending in -y

UNIT 20: Unaccented Initial Syllables a-, de-, be-

UNIT 21: Spellings with qu

UNIT 22: Silent Consonants t, g, w, k, h, gh

UNIT 23: Consonant Digraphs ch, gh, ph, sh

UNIT 24: Consonants c, s, t with Vowel i

UNIT 25: Prefixes ex-, non-, in-

UNIT 26: Prefixes uni-, bi- tri-

UNIT 27: Prefixes pre-, fore-

UNIT 28: Suffixes -ful, -less, -ly, -ness

UNIT 29: Suffix -y with No Change, e-Drop, and Doubling

UNIT 30: Homographs

UNIT 31: Homophones

UNIT 32: Spelling i before e Except after c