Curriculum Connection
K-5 ELA- January 2024
Kindergarten ELA
Foundational Skills
Print Awareness: Recognize, name and print upper and lowercase letters
Phonological Awareness: phoneme isolation, distinguish syllables, phoneme addition/deletion
Phonics: short e, g, d
Fluency: Read text with appropriate rate and expression
Language: Identify and analyze descriptive words and phrases
Reading Unit 4: Reading For Information
As kindergartners begin the informational unit, they will learn to study what topics their books are teaching them about, how to raise questions and wonderings about the information, and how to study pictures and photographs to get more information about the topic of the book.
Students will learn to not only use the word-solving skills that they have been learning across the year, but to pay particular attention to times when they are reading and parts or words seem confusing. Lessons will focus on how to learn and think about new words and important words about the topic.
Writing Unit 4: How To Books
In this unit, the genre of how-to writing weaves together drawing (with labels of course) and writing, and it has a hands-on, action-oriented feel.
Writing Unit 4: How To Books- Learning from a Mentor
1st Grade ELA
Foundational Skills
Phonological Awareness: phoneme categorization, phoneme blending, and phoneme substitution
Phonics: long i (final -e), long e (final -e), long u (final -e)
Fluency: Read orally to build fluency. Read with speed and good pacing. Read with sufficient accuracy and fluency to support comprehension.
Language: VCe syllables, contractions with not
Reading Unit 4: Readers Get To Know Characters in Books
In Topic 2, Students will learn the difference between reading and close reading. They will learn to reread in order to learn more about the story and characters. Also, children will learn how to determine lessons that characters learn. Children might compare and contrast lessons a character learns in one book with lessons characters learn in other books.
Unit 4: Nonfiction Chapter Books
This unit takes children on a writing journey that builds in sophistication. It begins with instruction in how to make a basic type of information book- a picture book- and ends with children creating multiple information chapter books, filled with elaboration, interesting text elements, and pictures that supplement the teaching of the words.
Topic 1 will spotlight using a teaching voice and writing a lot, so that each page teaches new and interesting information. Writers will also learn how to answer readers’ questions and to use those questions to add and subtract information. Children will also self-assess against the Informational Writing Checklist.
Writing Unit 4: Nonfiction Chapter Books
In Topic 2 students will progress toward writing chapter books, which gives them opportunities to work on structuring their texts. Children’s writing will slow down during this bend because the books they will be producing will become longer and more ambitious. Students will also work on adding common elements found in information books: how-to pages, stories, introductions, and conclusions.
2nd Grade ELA
Foundational Skills
Phonological Awareness: Blend and Segment; Add, Delete and Substitute Sounds
Phonics: Complex Vowel Teams, Syllable Patterns (oo, ui, ew, ue, u, ou, oe, u_e, (w)a, al, aw, au)
Fluency: Build Automaticity; Read Texts with Fluency and Purpose
Language:
● Benchmark: adding suffixes; compound words, contractions
● Mentor Sentences: adverbs
Reading and Writing Unit 4: Gem Units
Recommitting to Reading:
The reading unit is a chance for teachers to reflect on and respond to the needs of students. Teachers will design lessons on a variety of topics in order to refocus and recommit students to the rigorous reading work that will take place second semester.Recommitting to Writing and Cursive Handwriting:
The writing unit is a chance for teachers to reflect on and respond to the writing needs of students. Teachers will design lessons on a variety of topics in order to refocus and recommit students to the writing that will take place second semester.
Students will also learn basic cursive letter formation.
Reading Unit 5: Getting to Know Characters in Series Reading Clubs
Series books are designed to hook kids into characters and familiar adventures. Children inevitably fall in love with the recurring characters, who somehow always find themselves in challenging predicaments and situations, yet exhibit reassuringly predictable behaviors and beliefs. Once hooked, children will read and read, finding it easier to push their thinking past where they’ve been now that they are in familiar terrain. Kids will eagerly apply newly learned skills to the series they are in; thus their understanding of prediction, character development, and patterns will grow.
The club work in this unit is an ideal match for series book reading; not only will children relish the chance to talk to club mates about the adventures of a beloved cast of characters, they will also inevitably stretch one another’s thinking, landing on bigger ideas as a group than they would were they to read these books on their own.
Writing Unit 5: Opinion Writing: Writing About Reading
3rd Grade ELA
Reading Unit 3: Character Studies
One of the first goals of the unit is that students learn to make careful, close observations of characters, and then draw on their insights to craft theories and predictions. A second goal of the unit is that children gain an understanding of the ways in which all stories are structured: a character faces trouble that grows bigger and reacts to it, eventually finding a way to resolve the trouble and learn lessons. Once children have a sense of how all stories go, they can tackle a third goal: to think comparatively about characters in different books, noticing similarities and differences between these characters’ struggles, motivations, reactions, and the lessons they learn.
Writing Unit 3: Changing the World
Third graders are full of opinions and are eager to persuade others. This unit channels those opinions into writing that can make a difference. In this unit, students learn to introduce topics, support these by listing reasons, using transition words to connect the various parts of their pieces and to conclude. This unit moves writers from writing opinion speeches to forming cause groups to support various causes. Across the unit, there is a focus on considering audience and considering word choice in light of audience.
This unit has two major goals. The first is to help writers live more wide-awake lives, taking in all that is happening around them--injustices, small kindnesses, and so on--and writing about these in ways that move others to action and new thinking. The second major goal is to help writers become increasingly more adept at opinion writing in ways that provide the beginning steps for more formal essay writing.
4th Grade ELA
Reading Unit 3: Reading History
Overview of Unit:
This is a unit on researching history. As the second of the two nonfiction reading units for fourth grade, a focus will be on moving the fourth-graders along the continuum of skill development in reading nonfiction. This unit builds on the work of the first fourth-grade nonfiction study in Unit 3 and guides students to learn to read like historians. This unit is also timed to go along with the Bringing History to Life writing unit (Unit 5). You should start this reading unit about a week before you start the writing unit for the reading to support the writing.
The Lucy Calkins 4th grade spiral Reading History uses the American Revolution as the historical time period students learn about as they learn to read history. This choice matches with the Missouri Learning Standards shift of the American Revolution from 5th grade to 4th grade. With the new Missouri Learning Standards, the American Revolution is only taught in 4th grade. We know that some 4th grade teachers chose to allow each student to choose their own period in history to research and for many students this was the time period they read about in their historical fiction book club. The historical fiction unit now follows this unit, so teachers will need to consider this change in deciding whether or not to allow students to choose any time period.
Writing Unit 3: Bringing History to Life
Aligning Grade 4 History Reading and Writing Units: A User's Guide
This guide is helpful when learning helpful hints to teach these units together.
This unit is meant to go hand in hand with Reading Unit 5 “Reading History”. In both of these units you will choose whether or not to focus on the American Revolution, Westward Expansion, or if you will let students choose a historical time period to investigate.
The Lucy Calkins 4th grade writing spiral Bringing History to Life uses the American Revolution as the historical time period students learn about as they learn to read history. This choice matches with the Missouri Learning Standards shift of the American Revolution from 5th grade to 4th grade. With the new Missouri Learning Standards, the American Revolution is only taught in 4th grade. Park Hill will be adopting our new social studies curriculum that uses these standards in 2018-2019 (piloting being done in 2017-2018). We know in the past many 4th grade teachers have opted to focus this unit and the Bringing History to Life writing unit around Westward Expansion. That is certainly still an option. You will need to choose which passages and resources you will use from your Westward Expansion mentor texts for each lesson. We also know that some 4th grade teachers chose to allow each student to choose their own period in history to research and for many students this was the time period they read about in their historical fiction book club. The historical fiction unit now follows this unit, so teachers will need to consider this change in deciding whether or not to allow students to choose any time period.
5th Grade ELA
Reading Unit 3: Argument and Advocacy: Research and Debatable Issues
Writing Unit 3: The Research-Based Argument Essay
Jennifer Wiley: K-2 Curriculum Specialist
Email: wileyj@parkhill.k12.mo.us
Website: www.parkhill.k12.mo.us
Location: 7703 Northwest Barry Road, Kansas City, MO, USA
Phone: 816-359-6253
Twitter: @icjenwiley
Kim Fette: 3-5 Curriculum Specialist
Email: fettek@parkhill.k12.mo.us
Website: parkhill.k12.mo.us
Location: 7703 Northwest Barry Road, Kansas City, MO, USA
Phone: 816-359-5750
Twitter: @kimElemCoach