January Read Aloud

This month, our read aloud unit will be renamed, Interpretive Literacy. Through the use of complex texts, students will work in small groups with a teacher to practice the skills necessary to understand these challenging texts. This unit will focus on The Human Impact on Animals. This unit will incorporate skills and concepts covered across multiple subjects including; social studies, science, reading as well as mathematics through the use of complex texts.

What are complex texts?

Complex texts are literary and informational texts that include literary techniques that require a certain skill set in order for comprehension. Many of these texts are Non-Fiction, a genre that students aren’t as familiar or comfortable with as they are with fiction-genre texts.

Here is a list of the complex texts we will cover throughout this unit. Keep in mind that we will be spending multiple days on each text.

1)   “Animals in Crisis… Are People to Blame”

2)   “People Can Sicken Animals” by Amanda Leigh Mascarelli

3)   “Polar Bears in Danger”

4)   “Gorillas in Danger”

Students will learn to read a complex texts and identify difficulties. Some of which include:

·      Unknown words or phrases

·      Long, hard sentences

·      Figuring out who is telling the story or who wrote the text

·      Weird, short sentences

·      Weird punctuation in a sentence- hyphens or dashes

·      Abbreviations

·      Complex sentences that list 3 or more items with commas

·      Identifying cause and effect

·      Understanding the main idea of a poem

·      Figurative language: similes, metaphors

Students will practice these skills during the read aloud period with the teacher. Students will also be provided with a strategy chart, with examples included. This will allow them to apply these strategies to other texts.

Through this unit teachers will also review the proper way to answer short response questions using details from the text. Your child will be expected to follow these guidelines to answer short response questions in class and for homework as well.

Below is the short response rubric we will utilize to assess the short responses from each text. This is the same rubric that the state will use when scoring the student’s test. Students have interpreted the rubric to make sense of it They each have a copy of the state rubric as well as the interpreted rubric.

January Writer's Workshop

Persuasive Essay 

Writing 

While children mature as writers, it's important to give them the opportunity to write using a variety of formats. Persuasive writing helps students formulate specific reasons for their opinions, and provides an opportunity to research facts related to their opinions. As students develop an understanding of how writing can influence or change another's thoughts or actions, they can begin to understand the persuasive ideas they are exposed to through television commercials, advertisements, the Internet, and other resources.

During this writing unit, we also guide students to analyze examples of persuasive writing and understand author’s purpose. Before writing a persuasive essay, students work on understanding how persuasion is used orally in everyday life by practicing convincing speeches about something that is important to them.

Furthermore, students will be learning how to use specific text evidence to support their opinion about topics. Along with interviewing people about their topics and including direct dialogue from the interviewee to better support their idea.