ELA/Writing: Quarter 1
Curriculum:
In the first quarter, ELA students will be reading and experiencing stories featuring characters and people gaining new perspectives. We will make connections to real life people and characters. Our first novel will be Flat Stanley by Jeff Brown. In this novel, we will study the main character as his world is flipped upside down when he is unexpectedly flatten by a bulletin board. We will also read an informational text titled If Your Name was Changed at Ellis Island to learn more about one of the specific waves of immigration and how immigration offered new perspectives.
The essential questions we will focus on are:
- How does location impact your perspective?
- How does culture shape your perspective?
- How do relationships shape your perspective?
- How does location, culture, and relationships shape your perspective?
Literary Skills: making inferences while citing text evidence, determining unknown words or phrases, studying characters, settings, and events, and determining and supporting a theme within a story.
Informational Skills: making inferences while citing text evidence, determining the main idea and details of a text, determining the meaning of unknown words and phrases, and distinguishing between firsthand and secondhand accounts using text evidence.
In writing, we will begin with informational and research writing. We will learn how to research, take notes, cite evidence, and create an informational piece about natural disasters.