Reading: Building a Reading Life and Realistic Fiction

We will begin this unit by learning about the routines and procedures of Reading Workshop.  After, we will dive deep into the genre of Fiction and we will learn strategies that assist us in understanding characters, utilizing comprehension strategies and fostering stamina, fluency and decoding.

Writing: Personal Narrative

This unit focuses on the genre of Personal Narrative.  Personal narrative stories are told from a first person point of view and detail events that have been experienced firsthand.  We will develop elaboration techniques such as dialogue, action, narration and thoughts/feelings and we will focus on telling a cohesive, sequential story.  

Math: Numbers to 10,000

Numbers to 10,000 is the title of our first unit.  This unit explores the concepts of place value, ordering, comparing, reading and writing numbers up to 10,000.  We will move from the concrete, to the pictorial and, finally, to the abstract conceptualization of these numbers through a variety of manipulatives and mathematical tools.

Social Studies: Geographic Tools

This first unit centers on concepts related to Geographic Tools. We will develop an understanding of the uses of maps and be able to answer questions about geography. We will learn to analyze and interpret information from a variety of maps that all have different functions and purposes.

Science: Paleontology and Geology

The title of our first unit is Paleontology and Geology.  This unit allows students to explore rocks, minerals, and fossils and discover what clues they give us into geology/the history of life on earth. We will use engineering and classification skills to generate big ideas about geology/fossil identification.