Every year our school puts together what we call a "Literary Magazine" in which every single student gets to publish a piece of writing. This year, since we adopted Lucy Calkins and our kids have written so much the Literacy Team decided to have kids polish off their favorite pieces and submit them for the… Continue reading Usage and Mechanics
Category: 5th Grade
Literary Essay
Literary EssayWe are just about to finish up our third writing unit from Teacher's College/Lucy Calkins, so I wanted to share how it went, what we did, what worked and what (definitely) did not work!This quarter we focused on writing Literary Essays, which, before working my way through this unit, I could not have explained… Continue reading Literary Essay
Word Reference Materials
We just finished up a two week unit on Word Reference Materials that I wanted to share with you all! We started the unit off by talking about what Word Reference Materials are and then taking a closer look at dictionaries, glossaries, and thesauruses (that's a fun one to say). We discussed what each one… Continue reading Word Reference Materials
The Research Based Argument Essay a.k.a. Opinion Writing
We just finished up our second Lucy Calkins unit! This one was, "The Research-Based Argument Essay", which is quite a mouthful so I just call it "Opinion Writing". This unit was really fun because the kids got to pick sides and argue, which are two of their favorite things to do! 🙂 The first bend… Continue reading The Research Based Argument Essay a.k.a. Opinion Writing
Prefixes, Root Words, & Suffixes
This year I am really trying to step up my game with vocabulary instruction. My students are almost 100% English Language Learners, so it is super important for me to provide them with explicit vocabulary instruction. On top of simply learning new words, we are going to be studying Greek and Latin roots, prefix, and… Continue reading Prefixes, Root Words, & Suffixes
Figurative Language, Text Features, and a Celebrity Visit
September is over! Can you believe it? We are officially done with our first month of school AND I'm halfway done with conferences!!! It's going to be a well-deserved, long weekend before we get back to work and don't have another day off until Veteran's Day. Over the past eight days of school we have… Continue reading Figurative Language, Text Features, and a Celebrity Visit
Main Idea & Details
Before we left for vacation, I was able to squeeze in a week and a half of Main Idea & Details practice. Since I used to teach Kindergarten, I tend to think that it's best to introduce a strategy by modeling, guide students as they practice using it on their own, and then give them… Continue reading Main Idea & Details
Teaching To The Test-Taker 