Language Arts
Winter 2024
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Skills Focus: finding and using reputable sources, note taking, organizing and planning outlines, 5-paragraph essay structure, sentence variety
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Writing:
Informational Writing: Topics of choice, biographies​
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Reading:
Biographies
Book Groups
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Word Study:
Students are learning about word parts, including root/base words, prefixes, suffixes, and greek & latin roots; as well as commonly confused spellings, such as homophones, "ough", "tion", "cion" and "sion" patterns
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Grammar:
Simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex sentences​
Verb-tense agreement
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Expository Writing
Fifth graders will write expository essays and paragraphs, both on topics of choice and from assigned prompts. Students will also craft opinion essays, narratives, and fictional pieces.
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Skills:
Note-taking, sorting and outlining information, formatting, sentence variety, text evidence.
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In addition to some self-selected writing topics, students will be exploring both the history and geography of the United States, writing essays and reports based on research and literature.
Some topics include:
Biographies of important women in history
Interactions between European settlers and Indigenous Nations
The impacts of the slave trade
The role of native peoples on the development of the United States
The meaning of freedom, who has it, and how its meaning changes over time
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Language & Grammar
Fifth graders are diving deep into grammar, punctuation, and mastering the sentence. From compound and complex sentence work to the many uses of the comma, students are learning to use their writing to clearly communicate their thoughts and ideas.
Spelling
Instead of weekly spelling tests and word lists, 5th graders are involved in word study.
Word Study
Students are given word lists that are centered around a specific pattern or meaning in words. Assessments are planned around units of word study, not on a weekly basis.
Active Learning
Students are given word sorts and asked to be active learners as they compare, contrast, sort/manipulate, and classify the words.
Personalized
Word patterns are chosen specific to the spelling development of the student. Baseline assessments are analyzed to determine the student's spelling stage and used to plan word study that meets their specific spelling development.
Better Spelling Leads to Better Reading
When students are taught how to break apart the meaning components of words (morphemes), like in the words transmit, homophone, and geologist, they are better equipped to comprehend texts they read.
Reading
Independent, Assigned, and Group Texts
Students are working on reading skills through three main avenues:
Independent Reading:
Every fifth grader is working to read 30 books by the end of the school year. Specific genres are assigned, while still allowing free choice for students to choose books that grab them.
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Assigned Reading:
On a daily basis, students are reading articles, text books, stories, or essays; these texts give content information, practice with specific reading or language strategies, and a basis for using text-evidence in their work.
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Group Reading:
Students are engaging in novel studies, in which they all read a text and then discuss story elements, language, writing styles, and their connections to the text.
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