By the end of the year, read and comprehend literature, including stories, dramas, and poetry, at the high end of the grades 4–5 text complexity band independently and proficiently.
| Name |
Description |
| Figuratively Speaking | In this lesson, students will be working with 5 types of figurative language, including similes, metaphors, idioms, personification, and alliteration. Students will work together to create anchor charts for each type of figurative language, and then work in small groups to identify figurative language examples in poetry. They will identify the type of poem they are reading as they are hunting for figurative language. Finally, students will complete an individual assignment to gauge mastery of the figurative language skills learned. |
| Utopias: Are Perfect Worlds Possible? | In this lesson students will use different reading strategies such as double-entry journals, text-dependent questions, graphic organizers, and class discussions to examine aspects of societies and determine the themes of the novel The Giver by Lois Lowry. They will use the experience with the novel to create their own utopias and advertise them in a student constructed brochure. |
| Dancing Minds and Shouting Smiles: Teaching Personification Through Poetry | Experiencing the language of great poets provides a rich learning context for students, giving them access to the best examples of how words can be arranged in unique ways. By studying the works of renowned poets across cultures and histories, students extract knowledge about figurative language and poetic devices from masters of the craft. In this lesson, students learn about personification by reading and discussing poems by Emily Dickinson, William Blake, and Langston Hughes. Then they use the poems as a guide to brainstorm lists of nouns and verbs that they randomly arrange to create personification in their own poems. |
| Esperanza Rising - Chapter 3 | Reading Chapter 3 from Esperanza Rising, by Pam Munoz Ryan, students will learn about thirteen year old Esperanza and her newly widowed mother as they are forced to leave their fairy tale existence at a ranch in Mexico, to live and work in a migrant worker camp during the Great Depression. Students will practice answering text dependent questions. |
| Name |
Description |
| "The Wizard of Oz" 5th Grade Unit | This is a fifth grade unit on the novel The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. The unit explores fantasy fiction, setting, effects of character decisions, plot, conflict, and theme. The student packet that accompanies the unit includes graphic organizers and worksheets to assist with reinforcing the unit concepts. |
| The Great Gilly Hopkins 5th Grade Unit | This is a fifth grade unit on the novel The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson. Several concepts are explored throughout this lesson, including plot, conflict, prediction, characters, theme, and relationships. The student packet and accompanying materials provide practice with these concepts. |
| The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe 5th Grade Unit | This is a fifth grade novel unit on The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis. The unit incorporates instruction relating to the novel's setting, characters, plot, and theme - as well as the basic elements of fantasy fiction. The student packet that accompanies the unit provides some additional structure for the lesson content. |
