Leap Into Literacy 4th Grade
February/March
Reading Workshop
Unit 4: Historical Fiction Clubs
In this unit students need to gather a lot of information, so details matter.
Some essential reading tools for this unit are:
- timelines
- graphic organizers
- list of characters
Book Club Constitutions
Suggested Ways to Organize Anchor Charts
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Accountable Talk Norms
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Two Reflective Teachers
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Writing Workshop
The " Big Ideas" of 4th Grade - Unit 4
The Literary Essay
Goal of Unit: To make reading a more intense, analytical experience for young people that allows them to advance an idea about literature
- Students receive many experiences writing arguments about texts
- Uses what they already learned in the opinion unit
- Central to Common Core Standards- and lays the foundation for them to meet the ambitious Common Core standards for fifth grade
Bend I:
- Students learn to "mine a text" for ideas about characters' traits, motivations, troubles, changes and relationships
- This work is closely linked to the work on essays prior to this unit in opinion writing.
- Students draft several essays about a familiar short text with a feedback cycle
Bend II:
- Students learn to think more interpretively about texts, analyzing characters, plot lines for complexities, lessons learned and overarching text complexities
- Launch a small sequence of work that aims to teachbout the power of high-interpretive readings
- Students think about favorite texts
Bend III:
- Students learn to compare and contrast analyses across two different texts
- Compare and contrast themes and topics across two texts with similar subjects
- Think about the subject and the author's treatment of that subject
- Students learn to write a compare-and-contrast evidence and cite text in a purposeful way
March 3, 2018: TC's Saturday Reunion!
On this day, over 125 workshops will be presented on topics such as: developing state of the art classroom libraries, supporting units of study, managing workshop instruction, teaching K-2 kids to write persuasive speeches and reviews, argument reading and writing, the best new fiction books, guided reading, phonics, writing about reading, using learning progressions to ratchet up the level of teaching, and more. See the TCRWP website for more information.
A Level Is A Teaching Tool, Not A Child's Label
Differentiate Your Reading Instruction
The research is compelling: When teachers differentiate reading instruction, students learn more. Reading instruction is most effective when it is adapted based on individual needs and interests. In this brief Heinemann video, co-authors Lynn Bigelman and Debra Peterson explain how pre-assessment can be used to group students for reading instruction.