Overcoming Learning Challenges Near and Far

What is Module 1 All About?

This module uses literature and informational text to introduce students to the power of literacy and how people around the world overcome learning challenges. It is intentionally designed to encourage students to embrace a love of literacy and reading.

In Unit 1, students begin to build their close reading skills; they hear stories read aloud, read works in their entirety, and read more challenging excerpts closely. Throughout their readings, students determine the gist, identify the central message, and consider what key details convey that message in the text.

In Unit 2, students consider how geography and where one lives in the world affects how one accesses books. Students continue building knowledge and vocabulary related to world geography as they study excerpts from My Librarian Is a Camel by Margriet Ruurs, which describes how librarians overcome geographic challenges to get children books. Students apply their learning by writing a simple informative paragraph about how people access books around the world, focusing on the role of specific librarians or organizations they studied.

Finally, in Unit 3 students focus more on what it means to be a proficient and independent reader. They continue to read literature about characters who are motivated to learn to read and overcome struggles to do so. Students assess their challenges as readers, and identify strategies to overcome those challenges. This unit includes a heavy emphasis on building reading fluency. Students write a reading contract in the form of a three-paragraph informative essay, in which they describe two of their learning challenges and some strategies to overcome those challenges. As part of the final performance task, they make an eye-catching reading strategies bookmark to help them remember those strategies as they read independently throughout the rest of the year.

Central to EL Education curriculum is a focus on “habits of character” and social-emotional learning. Students work to become effective learners, developing mindsets and skills for success in college, career, and life (e.g., initiative, responsibility, perseverance, collaboration); work to become ethical people, treating others well and standing up for what is right (e.g., empathy, integrity, respect, compassion); and work to contribute to a better world, putting their learning to use to improve communities (e.g., citizenship, service). In this unit, students work to become ethical people, treating others well and standing up for what is right (e.g., empathy, integrity, respect, compassion). They practice respect, compassion, and empathy in response to the potentially diverse views of different students after reading the texts, and integrity when completing research reading for homework each night.

For this first module, students focus is on:

I work to become an ethical person:

— I show empathy.

— I behave with integrity.

— I show respect.

— I show compassion.

Big Ideas & Guiding Questions

• Why are education, books, and reading important?
  • Education, books, and reading are important because they help us learn about and make sense of the world, and escape into the lives of other people and other worlds.
• How can I overcome learning challenges?
  • I can overcome learning challenges by being an effective learner: taking initiative and responsibility, persevering, and collaborating.

Performance Task

Reading Strategies Bookmark

In this performance task, students synthesize their thinking about their reading challenges and possible strategies to overcome those challenges by creating an eye-catching bookmark listing the strategies described in their End of Unit 3 Assessment reading contracts. The strategies are written in bullet points so students can access them quickly when reading.