Kindergarten
MARBLEHEAD PUBLIC SCHOOLS
ELA CURRICULUM
Grades K - 5
Kindergarten
“Reading aloud motivates children to want to learn to read, extends their oral language, and gives them opportunities to connect new information to what they already know.”
Debbie Miller, Reading with Meaning
The goal in Kindergarten is to develop emergent literacy skills and joy for reading, writing, listening, and speaking. Teachers engage in daily interactive reading of a variety of books. Reading to children helps develop listening comprehension, oral language, vocabulary, concept development, story structure, and background knowledge about the world.
Teachers read predictable books with repeated patterns, rhythms, rhymes, and pictures. Children listen to the stories and then read with the teacher. Often the story is a Big Book so students can see the print and track it as the teacher reads. Students are given opportunities to talk about the book, act it out, retell the story, and reread on their own, developing oral language. Children write in response to reading to develop content and writing process. To write words, first it may be a letter that stands for a word or phrase, but with practice and encouragement students include more and more sounds in their temporary spelling.
Phonemic awareness develops as students become aware that language is made up of individual words that consist of individual sounds. Teachers help develop phonemic awareness by reading rhyming books, charts, poems, and other books such as Dr. Seuss books that “play” with language. Teachers help students listen for rhyming words and individual sounds at the beginning and ending of words. Students are encouraged to generate words that begin and end with a given sound. Classroom environments are print-rich and include books, charts, posters, word walls, alphabet letters and pictures, and student work. Students work individually, with a partner, or in a small group or large group, depending on interest and need.
A child-centered literacy curriculum enables each child to develop competencies at one’s own pace. The Kindergarten program provides students with the solid foundation for literacy success.
Kindergarten literacy skills and understandings
Primary literacy goals
By the end of the year:
Reading
Students begin to learn reading comprehension and writing, and will understand the nature of written English and the relationship of letters and spelling patterns to the sounds of speech.
Writing
Students will convey thoughts and feelings and respond to reading through drawing, labels, phrases, dictation, and temporary spelling.
Core Books and Authors
• Author Eric Carle
• Author Lois Ehlert
• The Snowy Day by Keats
• Mother Goose rhymes
Additional Reading
• Read-alouds of all kinds
• Poetry and songs
• Folktales
• Nonfiction, especially related to dinosaurs, space, nature, and community
• Independent choices
• Leveled books
Reading Skills and Understandings
• Demonstrate enjoyment of literature and poetic language.
• Understand concepts of print.
• Respond to oral reading with the strategies of proficient readers.
• Focus on predicting, making personal connections, making connections to other literature, and asking questions.
• Identify main characters, setting, sequencing of beginning, middle and end of story, main ideas, and story problem.
• Choose reading as a way to enjoy free time.
• Participate in shared reading activities and discussions.
• Read or retell books and nursery rhymes.
• Recognize fantasy and reality.
"Oral language as the primary support for thinking leads naturally to
written communication, which, in turn, helps beginning readers expand their thinking."
~ Fountas and Pinnell, Teaching for Comprehending and Fluency, 2006
Writing Skills and Understandings
• Illustrate and tell a story.
• Engage in emergent writing including temporary spelling.
• Generate writing/ illustrating on personal topics and prompts.
• Write name, upper case letters, and lower case letters.
• Explore varied genres: retelling, personal narrative, poetry, letters, journals.
Language and Word Study
• Know and apply sounds, letters and some words.
• Participate in shared and interactive activities with alphabet, phonics, names, simple words.
• Recognize some common words and word parts.
• Take turns and follow directions.
• Learn alphabet.
• Develop listening skills and discussion skills.
Learning Activities
• Big books
• Phonemic awareness/Phonics- 20 minutes a day
• Discussions and sharing
• Reading journals
• Guided reading
• Early leveled books
• Read alouds
• Shared reading
• Partner reading
• Independent reading
• Retelling
• Storytelling
• Mini-lessons on decoding, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension
• Word wall
• Word play
Assessments
• Teacher observation, using anecdotal records
• Discussion
• Developmental Reading Assessment - Benchmark level 2 (June)
• Running records
• Reading conferences
• Reading response journals
• Letter ID and sound (Clay) Oct., Jan., June as needed
• Rhyming assessment, spring
• Hearing sounds in words (Clay) June
• Fundations phonemic awareness and phonics assessments
• Portfolio
Teacher Resources
• Fundations phonemic awareness, phonics, spelling, and handwriting resource
• Letter and word building materials and activities
• Reading with Meaning text and strategies by Debbie Miller
• Writing process materials
• Units of Study across the Year in a Primary Writing Workshop: Grades K-2 by Lucy Calkins
• Classroom and school library; book room for leveled guided reading texts
First Grade Language Arts
“Through explicit instruction, modeling, guided practice, and discussion, teachers create a climate and culture of thinking and learning.” ~ Debbie Miller, Reading with Meaning
The primary goal in first grade is teaching children to read and write. Since reading and writing develop simultaneously, students are immersed in listening to and reading stories, and responding in drawing and writing. Children read and discuss specific elements of fiction and nonfiction. They are engaged in oral discussion and written responses which enhance their abilities as readers, writers, and communicators. Students are surrounded by a print-rich environment of books, charts, posters, word walls, labels, poems, and student work. Children read with the whole group, in small groups, with partners, and independently. They are grouped and regrouped flexibly to meet individual needs.
Decoding is a major focus of the reading program. Students are taught to use phonics, meaning, and structural cues to figure out unknown words. High frequency sight words are displayed and practiced using a word wall. Students learn strategies to derive meaning from print: making predictions based on pictures and prior knowledge, and making personal connections to the text. Students read books by authors Cynthia Rylant and William Steig, and Lobel’s Frog and Toad books, as well as daily selections at their instructional reading levels.
Students write stories and respond in writing to reading and in social studies, science, and math. They learn that writing is a process, and teachers help them brainstorm, organize ideas, revise and edit. Handwriting instruction is provided. Children work on spacing between words and on writing simple sentences. They spell using phonetic patterns and progress to using conventional spelling for common word patterns and common sight words.
First grade literacy skills and understandings
Primary Literacy Goals
By the end of the year:
Reading
Students will exhibit positive attitudes toward reading; understand concepts of print, words, and simple spellings; respond to oral and independent reading with the strategies of proficient readers of predicting, making connections, asking questions, and self-monitoring; read independently through DRA level 16 by the end of year; and understand author’s message, character, setting, problem, and beginning, middle, and end of a story.
Writing
Students write multiple sentences on self- selected and assigned topics; begin the writing traits of ideas, organization, voice, sentence fluency, word choice, conventions, and presentations; and begin simple revision and editing.
Core Books and Authors
• Author Cynthia Rylant
• Author William Steig
• Frog and Toad books by Lobel
Additional Reading
• Other stories by Arnold Lobel
• Fairy Tales and folktales
• Read-alouds of all kinds
• Poetry, songs, readers’ theatre
• Fiction and non-fiction features
• Independent choices
• Leveled books
Reading Skills and Understandings
• Demonstrate enjoyment of literature and poetic language.
• Understand concepts of print.
• Respond to oral reading with the strategies of proficient readers.
• Focus on the reading strategies of making predictions based on pictures and prior knowledge, and making personal connections to the text.
• Identify main characters, setting, sequencing of beginning, middle and end of story, main ideas, and story problem.
• Choose reading as a way to enjoy free time.
• Participate in shared reading activities and discussions.
Learning Activities
• Discussions and sharing
• Guided reading
• Leveled texts
• Read-alouds
• Shared reading, partner reading, independent reading
• Mini-lessons on metacognitive strategies
• Mini-lessons on authors, stories, and nonfiction
• Mini-lessons on decoding, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension
• Reading journals
“It is essential that children are deeply involved in writing, that they share their writing with others, and that they perceive themselves as authors.”
~ Lucy Calkins, Units of Study across the Year in a Primary Writing Workshop: Grades K-2
Writing Skills and Understandings
• Write multiple sentences on self-selected and assigned topics.
• Use a variety of writing genres in fiction and nonfiction.
• Begin to practice the traits of good writing: ideas, organization, voice, sentence fluency, word choice, conventions, and presentation.
• Begin to revise and edit.
• Genres: personal narrative, simple report, poetry, letters, journal entries
• Use shared writing across the curriculum, centers, and writing workshop at least 30 minutes a day.
Language
• Learn sounds, letters, and words.
• Spell some common words.
• Know nouns and proper nouns, pronouns, verbs, and adjectives.
• Use basic capitalization and punctuation.
• Understand and use new vocabulary.
• Listen and speak appropriately in discussions.
Assessments
• Developmental Reading Assessment- benchmark level 16 (June)
• Running records, ongoing
• Reading conferences
• Reading response journals
• Excerpts from Clay’s Observational Survey in September and as needed
• Writing conferences
• Written work in folders
• Rubrics from Traits; checklists
• Self evaluation forms
• Discussions, sharing
• Portfolio
• Fundations phonics assessments
• Spelling assessments
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Teacher Resources
• Language Arts Curriculum Notebook
• Fundations phonics, spelling, and handwriting resource
• Other phonics materials
• Rebecca Sitton’s High Frequency Word List
• Guided Reading, Fountas and Pinnell
• Word Matters, Fountas and Pinnell
• Reading with Meaning text and strategies, Debbie Miller
• Units of Study across the Year in a Primary Writing Workshop: Grades K-2 by Lucy Calkins
• Write Traits resources and rubrics
• Book room of leveled readers
• School and classroom library
• District-created spelling handbook
• Grammar continuum
• Word wall
• Pocket charts
• Word building activities
Grade 2 English Language Arts
“Active, thoughtful, proficient readers construct meaning by activating relevant prior knowledge, visualizing, inferring, questioning, determining importance, synthesizing.”
~ Debbie Miller, Reading with Meaning
The primary goal is to develop independent strategic readers and writers who acquire a life-long love of reading. Learning takes place in a classroom that is rich in literature, charts, poems, and student writing.
Students use strategies of asking questions, predicting, and making text-to-self, text-to-text and text-to-world connections, and focus on the strategy of visualizing. Teachers constantly assess to differentiate instruction.
Literacy is developed through shared reading and teacher read-alouds. All students read books by authors Patricia Polacco and David Adler, fables, Just So stories, pourquoi tales and trade books. Teachers read aloud daily to model effective decoding and comprehension strategies. Guided reading is an essential component. Students with similar needs in decoding and comprehension are grouped together to read the same text at their instructional level. Children also read independently each day to practice and internalize comprehension strategies, and to read for pleasure and gain information.
Students write daily for a variety of purposes: responding to literature in a journal, explaining a strategy to solve a math problem, recording observations about a science experiment and creating written biography reports. In addition, children develop pieces of creative writing with teacher guidance, revising and editing before the pieces are “published.”
Second grade is a year of solidifying decoding skills, and expanding comprehension and writing strategies that allow students to become more independent readers and writers.
Second grade literacy skills and understandings
Primary Literacy Goals
At the end of the year students will:
Reading
Students will exhibit positive attitudes toward reading; understand concepts of print, words, and simple spellings; respond to oral and independent reading with the strategies of proficient readers of predicting, making connections, asking questions, self-monitoring and visualizing; and understand author’s message, character, setting, problem and beginning, middle, and end of a story.
Writing
Students write paragraphs and sometimes multiple paragraphs on self-selected and assigned topics, and begin to practice the traits of good writing: idea development, organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency, conventions, and presentation.
Core Authors
• Patricia Polacco
• David Adler
Additional Reading
• Fables
• Just So stories
• Pourquoi tales
• Poetry and songs
• Nonfiction, including biographies
• Readers’ theatre
• Independent choices
Reading Skills and Understandings
• Read independently through DRA level 28 by end of year.
• Understand biographies, fairy tales, pourquoi tales, fables, and procedures.
• Exhibit positive attitudes toward reading.
• Participate in shared reading activities and discussions.
• Demonstrate enjoyment of literature and poetic language.
• Respond to oral reading with the strategies of proficient readers.
• Focus on the reading strategies of making predictions based on text evidence, making connections to the text, and visualizing.
• Identify main characters, setting, sequencing of beginning, middle and end of the story, main ideas, and story problem.
• Choose reading as a way to enjoy free time.
• Participate in shared reading activities and discussions.
Learning Activities
• Discussions and sharing
• Reading response journals
• Guided reading with leveled texts
• Read-alouds
• Shared reading, partner reading, independent reading
• Mini-lessons on story terms and reading and writing strategies
• Writing workshop, and publishing and presenting work
Assessments
• Running records
• Developmental Reading Assessment-benchmark level 28 (June)
• Gates MacGinitie Reading Test – fall
• Teacher observation
• Rubrics
• Reading conferences
• Reading response journals
• Book talks, reports, presentations, discussions
• Written work
“We need to open the door to possibilities in writing, giving students topic choices, teaching them skills, showing them how to work through problems to arrive at solutions. We need to show students the steps that successful writers follow so they can follow these steps in their own work.”
~ Ruth Culham, Six plus One Traits of Writing for Primary Grades
Writing Skills and Understandings
• Write paragraphs (often multiple paragraphs) on self-selected and assigned topics.
• Begin to practice the traits of good writing: idea development, organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency, conventions, and presentation.
• Write in varied genres including pourquoi tales, procedures/ directions, narratives, and poetry.
• Begin to revise and edit.
Language
• Learn and use spelling of common words and patterns.
• Identify noun, proper noun, pronoun, verb, and adjective.
• Continue to use conventions of basic capitalization and punctuation.
• Begin to use comma, apostrophe and quotation marks.
• Give explanations.
Teacher Resources
• Language Arts Curriculum Notebook
• Guided Reading by Fountas and Pinnell
• Reading with Meaning by Debbie Miller
• Classroom and school library of trade books, picture books, and leveled books
• Book room with leveled readers for guided reading instruction
• Units of Study across the Year in a Primary Writing Workshop: Grades K-2 by Calkins
• Write Traits text, resources, and rubrics
• Write Source resource
• Grammar continuum
• District-created spelling resource
• Dictionary and thesaurus
• Rebecca Sitton’s High Frequency Word List
• Word Wall
• Pocket charts
• Word building materials
• Fundations phonics, spelling, and handwriting resource
• Word Matters by Fountas and Pinnell
• Cunningham’s Making Words
• Daily Oral Language (Great Source)
Grade 3 English Language Arts
“Intermediate grade students use literacy in many ways to make sense of the world. Intermediate students know more about the possibilities in reading and writing. They have begun to develop voice.” ~ Fountas and Pinnell, Guiding Readers and Writers,
Grades 3 - 6
In third grade, emphasis is placed on students becoming purposeful, metacognitive readers. Students practice the reading strategies of making connections, formulating questions, visualizing, and summarizing as they read from several genres. They clarify their understanding of text through oral discussions and writing in response to reading. All third grade students read Sarah Plain and Tall and Charlotte’s Web, in addition to various trade books.
Teachers read aloud daily to model effective word analysis and comprehension strategies and to expose students to rich vocabulary and new knowledge. Guided reading is core: students with similar needs in decoding and comprehension are grouped together to read the same text at their instructional level. Students read independently for a sustained amount of time each day to practice and internalize comprehension as well as to read for pleasure and information.
Students write within several genres, including poetry, narratives, journal entries, descriptive paragraphs, simple reports, and personal letters. Students write a well-developed paragraph with an opening sentence, supporting details, and closing sentence. Students answer questions supported by evidence from the text.
Children participate in small group, student-led discussion groups. They learn to ask meaningful questions that help construct meaning. They verbalize their ideas and opinions backed with relevant information from the text. Students learn that discussions enhance their reading and writing abilities.
Third grade literacy skills and understandings
Primary Literacy Goals
By the end of the year:
Reading
Students will identify the basic facts and main ideas in a text, including nonfiction, and use them as the basis for interpretation. They will demonstrate understanding of story plot and author’s message. In addition, students will identify personality traits of characters and the thoughts, words, and actions that reveal their personalities.
Students will read independently in chapter books at or beyond DRA Level 38 at the end of the year.
Writing
Students will write with a clear focus, coherent organization, and sufficient detail.
They will demonstrate an understanding of the writing process by independently writing a story in response to a story prompt and they will choose a topic, use a story or topic chart to plan, and use checklists to revise and edit.
Core Books and Authors
• Sarah Plain and Tall and other books by Patricia MacLachlan
• Charlotte’s Web and other books by E.B White
Additional Readings
• Nonfiction, especially related to social studies and science
• Tall tales, folktales, biographies, realistic fiction, fantasy
• Poetry, letters, plays, readers’ theatre
Reading and Literature Skills and Understandings
Understanding a Text (Standard 8)
• Retell the events of a story in sequence.
• Identify narrative elements of character, setting, and plot.
• Form questions about a text and locate facts/details to answer those questions.
• Distinguish cause from effect.
• Distinguish fact from fiction.
• Identify main ideas and supporting details.
• Identify foreshadowing clues as the parts of a text that help the reader predict what will happen later in a story.
• Identify sensory details in literature.
• Identify the speaker of a poem or narrator of a story.
• Understand characteristics of different genres including animal fantasy, historical fiction, folktales, tall tales, biographies, nonfiction, and poetry.
• Begin to identify and use knowledge of common textual features of title, headings, key words, paragraphs, table of contents, glossary, and picture captions.
Comprehension Strategies
• Visualizing
• Predicting
• Questioning/ Wondering
• Self-monitoring
• Making Connections
• Making Inferences
• Determining Importance
• Summarizing
Learning Strategies
• Reading workshop including mini-lessons on story plot, genre, authors, reading strategies
• Reading and conferring, and sharing and/ or responding in reading response journal
• Guided reading with leveled books
• Independent reading workshop, including individual teacher-student conferences
• Literature circles
• Shared reading; partner reading; read-alouds
• Readers’ theater; special events such as dramatic presentations
• Author visits
Assessments
• Running records
• Developmental Reading Assessment (DRA)- as needed
• Gates MacGinitie Reading Test – fall
• MCAS Reading - March
• Teacher observation
• Rubrics
• Reading conferences
• Reading response journals
• Book talks, reports, presentations, discussions
• Written work
Resources
• Language Arts Curriculum Notebook
• Guiding Readers and Writers, Grades 3-6 by Fountas and Pinnell
• Reading with Meaning by Debbie Miller
• Classroom and school library
• Book room with leveled texts in varied genres for guided reading instruction
• Daybooks of Critical Reading and Writing by Spandel
• Author videos and web sites
• Poetry resources
• Charts, poems, and songs
• Plays and readers’ theatre
Writing Skills and Understandings
• Students will write for different audiences and purposes.
• Students will show improvement in organization, content, paragraph development, level of detail, style, tone, and word choice (diction) in their compositions after revising them.
• Students will use knowledge of standard English conventions in writing, revising, editing.
• Students will organize ideas in writing in a way that makes sense for their purpose.
• Students will write a response to a main point of a reading passage, such as answering these types of Open Response questions:
Harriet Quimby worked hard to reach her goals. Name two of her goals.
Explain how she reached each of these goals. Use important information from the selection.
Describe how the gardener’s feelings toward Munchkin changed from the beginning to the end of the story. Use important information from the story in your answer.
Learning Strategies
• Writing process ongoing, 3 times or more per week, plus subject area writing
• Write Traits rubric areas of idea development, voice, organization, word choice, sentence fluency, conventions, presentation
• Writing for Open Response questions
• Core writing genres: explanations, paragraphs, personal narratives, directions, poetry, letters (3 – 6 weeks for each genre); journal responses all year
Assessments
• Write Traits rubric
• MCAS rubric for Open Response questions
• Report Card rubric
Teacher Resources
• Write Traits rubric and binder of support materials
• 6 + 1 Traits of Writing: Grades 3 and Up by Ruth Culham
• Grammar continuum and resources
• Folders, portfolios
• Flip chart for modeled and shared writing
• Graphic organizers
Language Skills
Vocabulary and Concept Development (Standard 4)
Students will understand and acquire new vocabulary, and use vocabulary correctly in reading and writing.
• Determine the meanings of unknown words by using their context.
• Use the context of the sentence to determine the correct meaning of a word with multiple meanings.
• Recognize that words are constructed of many parts: letters, syllables, root words, prefixes, and suffixes.
• Recognize that prefixes can change the meanings of root words (for example, agreeable/disagreeable, happy/unhappy, tell/retell).
• Identify roots of words (for example, -graph is a common root in autograph, photograph, biography).
• Recognize that many English words have Greek or Latin roots.
• Recognize that some words and phrases have both a literal and a non-literal meaning (for example, take steps).
• Identify playful uses of language (for example, riddles, crossword puzzles, tongue twisters).
• Determine the meanings of words using a beginning dictionary.
• Identify and apply the meanings of the terms antonym, synonym, and homophone.
Grammar and Usage
• Distinguish between a statement and a question.
• Identify four basic parts of speech: noun, pronoun, verb, adjective.
• Identify correct mechanics (e.g., end marks, capitalization, and comma in dates).
• Use correct spelling for commonly used words and new spelling words
taught in relation to writing and direct instruction, ongoing, at least 15 minutes a day.
Teacher Resources
• Word Matters by Fountas and Pinnell
• Phonics resources
• Write Source materials
• Rebecca Sitton’s High Frequency Word List
• Daily Oral Language (Great Source)
• Making Big Words by Cunningham
• Grammar continuum and resources
• District-created spelling handbook
• Spelling materials and activities
• Dictionary, thesaurus
Writing: Student work
from 2006 MCAS Reading (Grade Three):
Her goal was to fly an airplane. She practices and found a good instructor that gave her lessons. Her goal was to get across the English Channel. She was brave and determined, she knew how to fly well, and she had a compass.
(Original student errors not corrected.)
The gardener’s feelings about Munchin cange at the end of the story because at first, the gardener thinks that the dog is a little pest. Only because he keeps ruining the gardener’s flowers. Right now you can tell that Munchin is one of those dogs who lies to get himself in trobble. But then he saves the gardener from getting snakebite. So I think the gardener feels happy that Munchin saved him from the snake. That’s how the gardener learns to like Munchin as a hero. At the end, the gardener gives the ribbon to Munchin. Just because he earned it.
Third grade writing looks like:
My Apple Tree
There is a very peaceful tree in my front yard. The tree is not yet full grown, it is about 5 feet tall. I can almost touch the top. The tree has bumps on the bark and in the spring it blossoms. One day my tree will grow into a big apple tree and I will be able to pick apples from it.
When I was 5 my dad and I planted the tree. I remember it turning from a little seedling, to a little plant to a big plant, to what it is now, a little tree. It was so exciting to see it grown bigger and bigger every day. I can’t wait for it to become a tremendous apple tree.
On Halloween we love to decorate the tree by putting Halloween decorations on the tree. I love how it looks but I am afraid the tree might snap its branches from the weight of a giant spider and two vampires. Luckily it never did and I hope it never will. I am always thinking of what it would be like for the tree’s branches to snap and the tree to fall down. I hope no Halloween decorations ever wreck my tree.
In some of the winters my tree grew snowballs! Well, it didn’t really grown snowballs I had made snowballs and stuck them on the tree. My brother takes advantage of the tree and whenever we have a snowball fight my brother cheats by building in his fort around the tree. This winter we’ve had no snow so my brother can’t throw any snowballs at me (yes!).
Right now my tree is still in my front yard and I hope it will stay there forever. I hope even when I’m older I’ll always see it every morning when I go to school. Even when I’m in college I hope the tree will be in that same spot until the end of the end of the world.
Grade 4 English Language Arts
“The experiences and the meaning students bring to their reading are the key to their ongoing development . . . The goal is to achieve consistent progress by knowing where to meet them as readers and knowing where to take them next.”
~ Fountas and Pinnell, Guiding Readers and Writers, Grades 3 - 6
As students enter the intermediate grades, there is an increased emphasis on independent application of a variety of literacy strategies as they construct meaning from a variety of texts. Teachers model the more sophisticated comprehension strategies of inferring and determining importance in text. Students implement these strategies in a controlled situation with the teacher guiding their application, then independent use.
Students are also expected to use the strategies of good readers of making predictions, making connections, visualizing, asking questions, inferring and synthesizing as they read independently. Students are engaged in guided reading and shared reading. During guided reading, small groups of students read books at their instructional levels; during shared reading, all students read the same book with varying amounts of support. All students read Number the Stars by Lowry and Shiloh and other books by Naylor, and read at their independent reading level daily.
While experiencing a variety of writing experiences, fourth grade students focus on writing different types of paragraphs and multi-paragraph personal narratives. Writing instruction emphasizes the writing process, with brainstorming, drafting, revising, editing and publishing. Students develop appropriate graphic organizers to plan their thoughts before writing, and revise for clarity of ideas, paragraph organization, topic sentences, supporting details, and conclusions; they edit for conventions of spelling and punctuation.
Fourth grade literacy skills and understandings
Primary Literacy Goals
By the end of the year:
Reading
Students will read for comprehension, interpretation and main idea. They will identify basic facts and main ideas in a text and will use them as the basis for interpretation. Students will apply knowledge of theme in a work and provide evidence from the text to support their understanding.
Writing
Students will demonstrate an understanding of the writing process by writing a response to a descriptive writing prompt that is effective in topic development; uses striking language, effective organization, economy and effectiveness of supporting detail; and is fairly free of conventions errors in sentences, spelling, and punctuation. Students will write a focused paragraph on a key element of a reading passage, using strong supporting examples from the passage.
Core Books and Authors
• Number the Stars by Lowry
• Shiloh and other books by Naylor
Additional Reading
• Supplemental novels, including animal and modern fantasy, realistic fiction, mystery, and historical fiction
• Nonfiction to support social studies and science topics; current events; biographies
• Letters, poetry and folklore
Reading and Literature Skills and Understandings
• Identify main idea and supporting details.
• Identify personality traits of characters, and how their thoughts,
words, and actions reveal their personalities.
• Retell the events of a story in sequence.
• Understand plot and character development.
• Identify foreshadowing clues as the parts of a text that help the reader predict what will happen.
• Identify sensory details in literature.
• Identify the speaker of a poem or narrator of a story.
• Identify narrative elements of plot, character, setting, and conflict.
• Form questions about a text and locate facts/details in order to answer those questions.
• Distinguish cause from effect.
• Distinguish fact from fiction.
• Describe how main characters change over time.
• Identify themes in stories, poems, and folktales including fables and myths.
• Students will identify, analyze, and apply knowledge of the characteristics of different genres, especially realistic fiction, mystery, historical fiction, and nonfiction, including biography.
• Students will continue to analyze poetry for main idea, inference and literary devices, and how literary devices add meaning.
Poetry (Standard 14)
Identify and respond to the effects of sound, figurative language, and graphics in order to uncover meaning in poetry: sound (alliteration and rhyme scheme: free verse; couplets; A, B, A, B); figurative language (metaphor, simile); graphics (capital letters).
Teaching Strategies
• Reading workshop, including direct instruction mini-lessons on authors, genres, reading strategies, literary elements; guided practice; independent reading with teacher-student conferences to assess comprehension; whole class and partner sharing
• Teacher teaches, then gradual release of responsibility
• Literature Circles
• Guided reading with leveled books
• Whole class books
• Read-alouds
• Storytelling and special events such as author visits
• Readers’ theater and other dramatic presentations
• Independent reading, including teacher-student conferences
Comprehension Strategies
• Visualizing
• Questioning/ Wondering
• Making Connections
• Predicting
• Making Inferences
• Determining Important Ideas
• Understanding Text Structure
• Summarizing
• Synthesizing
Assessments
• Rubrics
• Reading journal responses
• Book talks, reports, presentations
• Discussions
• Anecdotal notes
• Running records, as needed
• Written work
• MCAS
Teacher Resources
• Guiding Readers and Writers, Grades 3 – 6 by Fountas and Pinnell
• Reading with Meaning by Debbie Miller
• Mosaic of Thought by Ellin Oliver Keene
• Subjects Matter by Harvey Daniels
• Reading Workshop materials including conferring sheets for anecdotal notes
• Reading response journals
• Daybooks of Critical Reading & Writing by Spandel
• Classroom library, school library, grade four book room
• Internet
• Write Traits rubric and resources
• 6 + 1 Traits of Writing: Grades 3 and Up by Ruth Culham
• Grammar continuum and resources
• District-created spelling handbook
• Spelling and phonics resources
• Portfolios and writing journals
• Graphic organizers and literature templates
Writing Skills and Understandings
• Use the writing process and the traits (Six plus One Traits) of high quality writing.
• Revise for idea development, organization, sentence structure, word choice and voice.
• Edit for conventions of correct spelling, punctuation, and use of homonyms.
• Write the MCAS long composition on a response to a descriptive writing prompt that is effective in topic development; uses striking language, effective organization, economy and effectiveness of supporting detail; and is fairly free of conventions errors in sentences, spelling, and punctuation.
• Write in these varied genres:
Different types of paragraphs: descriptive, informational
Essays and personal narratives
Poetry, letters, journals
Research and simple reports linked to social studies/science
Fable, mystery, or folktale narrative writing
• Students will write a response to an Open Response question that is a clear, complete, accurate description of a main point of a reading passage and that includes important details from the passage.
• Students will use the research process to research a topic and share a presentation to an audience.
Writing Assessments
• Written work
• Rubrics
• Portfolios
• Presentations
• Discussions, sharing
• MCAS
Grammar and Language
• Identify four parts of speech: noun, adjective, verb, adverb.
• Determine the meanings of unfamiliar words using context clues.
• Determine meanings of unfamiliar words using knowledge of
common Greek and Latin roots, suffixes, and prefixes.
• Determine pronunciations and meanings of words, as well as alternate word choices and parts of speech, using a dictionary.
• Expand sentences (for example, by adding modifiers or combining sentences).
• Identify past, present, and future verb tenses.
• Recognize that a word performs different functions according to position in a sentence.
• Identify simple and compound sentences.
• Identify correct mechanics (for example, apostrophes, quotation marks, comma use in compound sentences, paragraph indentations) and correct sentence structure (for example, elimination of fragments and run-ons).
Writing: Student work
In the article "Bringing Back Salmon," the students raise salmon eggs.
a. Describe how the students cared for the eggs.
b. Describe how the eggs hatched.
c. Describe how the students knew when to release the eggs into the creek.
Support your answers with important details from the article.
When the kids first got the babies they had to take care of them in a special way. First they put the eggs in a tank and put it in the refrigerator. Every day they checked on them. They had to put the tank in the refrigerator because the fish could only be in cold water. When they hatched they released in a chemical called enzyme. This chemical weakens the egg and then the salmon wiggle out. The kids knew when to let them go because of there sacs. The sacs are on there bellies and are like energy food to help them grow. When the sacs were gone and the salmon started to eat sea plants and small sea animals they knew it was time to let their baby salmon go.
(Original student errors not corrected.)
In the passage “The Photograph”:
a. Explain why the photographs are important to Mamá.
b. Explain why the photographs are important to the speaker, her son.
A. They were important to Mama because she got to see all the pictures of her special part with 15 year old girls with the babies, the weddings, the birthdays, graduations, dances with live rock music and baptisms. You know how sometimes you forget what you look like when you are young. Well Mama didn’t because she had all the pictures of her with small shoulders inside her white dress, her serious mouth and her beautiful dancing eyes. She is one lucky mama because she has so many memories of her and all her different activities.
B. The photographs were important to the speaker, her son, with all the pictures glued on one by one he could see her reliving being 15 again step by step (picture by picture). He had been watching the whole time and the mother never knew her son saw her become 15 “again. I guess it will always stay his little secret.
Composition: Think about your favorite thing to do in your free time. Maybe you like to pretend, play sports, read, play a musical instrument, dance, or do something totally different. Write a story about a fun time that you had doing your favorite thing. Give enough details to show the reader what happened and why it was fun. (Original errors are included.)
In my free time, It’s real fun to play baseball. One time I played and it was fabulous. I will tell you this story. We played a great game of waffle ball with my big brother Chris. I also played catch with him too. After we did those two things, we pitched to each other. That day was really fun. Baseball can be really awesome.
Another way to play baseball is wiffleball. There was a ton of home runs. While our parents were inside, they watched the Red Sox on NESN. The told us who was up at bat, and then we would bat like them. When we hit a foul ball, we would try to dive and catch them. It is really fun when you call cherry picking which means if it hits the roof and you catch it the batter is out. It is fun to dive in foul territory. Once it hit’s the side of the house . It was fantastic. Playing waffle ball is great.
Playing catch is terrific. Sometimes we play unbelievable catches. It is when you do dives to catch the ball One time I did a full extention dive and I caught it but I landed my head right on the fence. It wasn’t pretty after that. Next we did pop-ups. We threw them so high it looked like a tiny white dot in the clear blue sky. After that we did a long toss. We were about 60 yards away from each other. We pretended that the person without the ball was the catcher and the other person was the outfeilder trying to get the invisible runner out at home plate. Playing catch can really get you in shape for the upcoming baseball season. Playing catch is really amazing.
Do you think playing catch is fun? Well then you should see pitching. We did a pretend game. I catched while my brother pitched. Chris pitches 1 inning with a invisible batter. Then we switch off innings. It’s a really fun being catcher. We have our own catchers mitt. Sometimes when it hits the palm of my hand it really hurts. That is why I sometimes use batting gloves. underneath it. When I am pitching I have 4 pitches. Knuckelball, (I don’t use it often) fastball, circle change upon a pitch I made up. Pitching is a blast, you can’t deny it.
Boy, it can’t get better than this. All that waffleball has made my legs tired. And the catch made grassstains (my mom going to get so mad!) The pitching has worn out my aim. After all that stuff, we went in and watched the Red Sox game with a ice cold glass of fresh lemonade. Baseball is like heaven.
2006 20-point MCAS composition, Marblehead
Writing is effective in developing ideas, topic development and organization, uses striking language and is fairly free of errors in conventions.
Grade 5 English Language Arts
"A reader needs to engage a variety of complex strategic actions simultaneously to process a text well. ~Fountas/Pinnell, Teaching for Comprehending and Fluency, 2006
Students develop higher level reading strategies such as making inferences, synthesizing information, and determining important information in text. Teachers model these strategies with a variety of texts across disciplines and work with students to guide them to gain meaning as they read.
Reading and writing are often linked to content curriculum to reinforce understanding, and to gain information. Independent reading remains an integral aspect of the curriculum with classroom teachers working closely with students to ensure appropriate selections. Teachers confer with students on an ongoing basis to check and deepen comprehension.
Students continue to participate in either small guided reading groups or literature circles, where they read instructional level texts with the teacher, or in a reading where everyone reads the same text with varying support. All students read Hatchet, Bridge to Terabithia, and The Fighting Ground. Students engage in discussions to collaborate, stretch ideas, clarify understanding, and respond to reading in response journals.
Students develop more sophisticated writing through independent and teacher-directed revising and editing.
Children engage in short story fiction writing and expository writing across the curriculum. Students use varied sentence structure, transitional words, rich vocabulary; and edit for punctuation, spelling, and grammar. Emphasis is on identifying key ideas in nonfiction and multi-paragraph expository writing.
Fifth grade literacy skills and understandings
Primary Literacy Goals
By the end of the year:
Reading : Understanding a Text (Standard 8)
Students will identify basic facts, main ideas and supporting details in a text and use these as the basis for interpretation. Students will identify and draw conclusions from the author’s use of description of setting, characters, and events, as well as identify and draw conclusions from the author’s use of sensory details.
Writing
Students will write with a clear focus, strong idea development, coherent organization, sufficient detail, and without errors in conventions such as spelling, punctuation, sentences, and paragraphing. The Write Traits rubric guides writing development.
Core Books and Authors
• Hatchet, and other novels by Gary Paulsen
• Bridge to Terabithia, and other novels by Katharine Paterson
• The Fighting Ground by Avi
Additional Reading
• Short stories
• Novels within various genres
• American folklore
• Nonfiction including social studies, science, and current events
• Poetry
• Drama and readers’ theatre
Reading and Literary Analysis Skills and Understandings
• Reflect on readings, justifying with evidence.
• Understand point of view, plot, character, setting, conflict, and theme.
• Respond to poetry: rhythm, rhyme, imagery, and idea.
• Identify features of genres, especially realistic fiction, historical fiction, and nonfiction.
Comprehension Strategies
• Visualizing
• Predicting
• Questioning/ Wondering
• Making Connections
• Making Inferences
• Determining Importance
• Understanding Text Structure
• Synthesizing
Learning Activities
• Reading workshop or literature circles are ongoing, minimum three times per week;
each book, author, or topic: 3-6 weeks
• Reading strategy instruction across the curriculum
• Book clubs, book circles, book discussions
• Reading Workshop journals
• Plays
• Research, presentations
• Field trips
Specific Reading Skills Taught
Theme: Students will identify, analyze, and apply knowledge of theme in a literary work and provide evidence from the text to support their understanding. (Standard 11)
Apply knowledge of the concept that theme refers to the main idea and meaning of a literary passage or selection.
Fiction: Students will identify, analyze, and apply knowledge of the structure and elements of fiction and provide evidence from the text to support their understanding. (Standard 12)
Identify the elements of setting, characterization, conflict, and plot structure.
Identify personality traits of characters, and how their thoughts, words, and actions reveal their personalities.
Describe how main characters change over time.
Nonfiction: Students will identify, analyze, and apply knowledge of the purposes, structure, and elements of nonfiction or informational materials and provide evidence from the text to support their understanding. (Standard 13)
Identify and use knowledge of common textual features (for example, title, headings, key words, captions, paragraphs, topic sentences, table of contents, index, glossary).
Identify and use knowledge of common graphic features (for example, charts, graphs, maps, diagrams, captions, illustrations).
Identify common organizational structures (e.g. chronological order, cause and effect).
Identify and summarize main ideas, supporting ideas, and supporting details.
Poetry: Students will identify, analyze, and apply knowledge of the themes, structure, and elements of poetry and provide evidence from the text to support their understanding. (Standard 14)
Identify and respond to the effects of sound, figurative language, and graphics in order to uncover meaning in poetry: sound (alliteration and rhyme scheme: free verse; couplets; A, B, A, B); figurative language (metaphor, simile); graphics (capital letters).
Genre: Students will identify, analyze, and apply knowledge of characteristics of different genres. Identify the characteristics of various genres (for example, poetry, informational and expository nonfiction, dramatic literature, fiction, subgenres of fiction such as mystery, adventure, historical, or contemporary realistic novels and short stories). (Standard 10)
Myth, Traditional Narrative, and Classical Literature: Students will identify, analyze, and apply knowledge of the themes, structure, and elements of myths, traditional narratives, and classical literature and provide evidence from the text to support their understanding. (Standard 16)
Compare different versions of the same story from traditional literature (for example, American folktales).
Identify common structures of traditional literature (for example, that characters or story elements often come in threes, such as three bears, three sisters, three wishes, or three tasks; or that there are magic helpers, such as talking animals, fairies, or elves).
Identify common stylistic elements in traditional literature (such as repeated refrains, similes, hyperbole).
Drama: Students will identify, analyze, and apply knowledge of the themes, structure, and elements of drama and provide evidence from the text to support understanding. (Standard 17)
Identify and analyze structural elements unique to dramatic literature (for example, scenes, acts, cast of characters, stage directions).
Identify and analyze the similarities and differences between a narrative text and its film or play adaptation.
Assessments
• Rubrics
• Reading journal responses
• Book talks, reports, presentations
• Discussions
• Anecdotal notes
• Running records, as needed
• Written work
• MCAS
"Students should become comfortable with pre-writing techniques, multiple strategies for developing and organizing a message, a variety of strategies for revising and editing, and strategies for preparing products for public audiences and for deadlines."
~ National Council of Teachers of English: "Beliefs about the Teaching of Writing"
November, 2004
Writing Skills and Understandings
• Students will write for different audiences and purposes.
• Demonstrate improvement in organization, content, paragraph development, level of detail, style, tone, and word choice (diction) in compositions after revising them.
• Use knowledge of standard English conventions in writing, revising, and editing.
• Organize ideas in writing in a way that makes sense for their purpose.
• Write in varied genres, including the short story, paragraphs of many kinds, personal narrative, poetry, letters and journals.
• Use writing workshop to revise.
• Use the writing process and the traits of high quality writing using the Six plus One Traits.
• Revise for idea development, organization, sentence structure, word choice, and voice.
• Edit for conventions.
• Research and take notes using print and electronic media.
Writing Assessments
• Written work
• Rubrics
• Portfolios
• Presentations
• Discussions, sharing
• MCAS
Teacher Resources
• Grade five book room
• Prentice Hall anthologies
• Classroom and school library
• Professional resources (Fountas and Pinnell, Daniels, Harvey, Goudvis, Keene, and others)
• Write Source writing process and genre resource
• Six plus One Traits of Writing text by Culham
• Write Traits kit with lessons and rubrics
• Lessons That Change Writers by Nancie Atwell
• Texts and resources by Graves, Calkins
• Grammar continuum and resources
• Spelling and vocabulary resources
• Daily Oral Language (Great Source)
• Writing journal
• Portfolios
• Graphic organizers
• Literature templates
• Selected films
• Internet
Research
• Students will gather information from a variety of sources, analyze and evaluate the quality of the information they obtain, and use it to answer their own questions.
• Students will develop and use appropriate rhetorical, logical, and stylistic criteria for assessing final versions of their compositions or research projects before presenting them to varied audiences.
Language
Vocabulary and Concept Development (Standard 4)
Students will understand and acquire new vocabulary and use it correctly in reading and writing.
• Determine the meanings of unfamiliar words using context clues (for example, definitions, examples, explanations in the text).
• Determine the meanings of unfamiliar words using knowledge of common Greek and Latin roots, suffixes, and prefixes.
• Determine pronunciations and meanings of words, as well as alternate word choices and parts of speech, using a dictionary and thesaurus.
English Grammar and Usage (Standard 5)
• Identify basic parts of speech: noun, pronoun, verb, adverb, adjective, conjunction, preposition, interjection.
• Expand sentences (for example, by adding modifiers or combining sentences).
• Identify past, present, and future verb tenses.
• Recognize that a word performs different functions according to position in a sentence.
• Identify simple and compound sentences.
• Identify correct mechanics (for example, apostrophes, quotation marks, comma use in compound sentences, paragraph indentations) and correct sentence structure (for example, elimination of fragments and run-ons).
Formal and Informal English (Standard 6)
• Students will describe, analyze, and use appropriately formal and informal English.
• Write stories using formal language in prose.
Style and Language (Standard 15)
• Students will identify and analyze how an author’s words appeal to the senses, create imagery, suggest mood, and set tone, and will provide evidence from the text to support their understanding.
• Identify sensory details, figurative language, and rhythm or flow when responding to
literature.
Fifth grade writing looks like:
Open Response
Explain how the establishment of the thirteen colonies influenced the beginning of democracy in America.
(Original student errors not corrected.)
The establishment of the thirteen colonies influenced the beginning of democracy in America in many ways. For the most reason people came to America to get what they wanted and for a life. Most people wanted freedom of religion, a say in government, and their own land. The 2 proprietors of New Jersey, John Berkly and Sir George Carteret, knew that people wanted freedom of religion, a say in government, and their own land, so Berkly and Carteret promised all of that to get people to come to their coloney.
Freedom religion was one of these things people wanted, so it was promised. This made people want to go live in the 13 colonies, so they could choose who and how they wanted to worship. This made it so that people weren’t forced to worship in a certain way. The people who went to the 13 colonies had freedom, rights, and protection of religion.
People were promised a say in government. That means they were able to speak how they thought their government should be run. People were able to tell people their ideas on leaders and how your colonie that you live in should be governed. Some people were even aloud to vote. If you were able to speak your thoughts maybe others will like your ideas.
You were able to own your own land. People like this, so it was garunteed. This was huge as the average person in Europe did not own their own land, so people came over to America wanting their own land. Land in America was sold cheaply, making more people come to the 13 colonies.
The thirteen colonies were influenced a lot and became wealthy as people came to get what they were promised. Most everyone who came to America got what they wanted, a life, a new start, and freedom. This made a huge influence on the thirteen colonies.
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