Culminating Activity: Reading and Writing Identity (5 day lesson plan)

Day 1. Memoirs: Some of you may be thinking that this is the same as a personal narrative, but memoirs are more about looking back and reflecting as we did at the beginning of class. Narratives tell a story, but memoirs show how the event impacted the author’s life.
Characteristics of memoirs:
-Use 1st person point of view
-Use true accounts of actual events
-Describe any conflicts faced by the author
-Include the author’s feelings about the situation or event
Students will work on planning their memoir.

Day 2. Students will work on their memoirs, then share with partners.

Day 3. Finish draft
-Revise and edit your paper
-Peer revise and edit (if finished early)
-Revise some sentences to make them showing sentences
Narrative Checklist Sample
Third Grade Editing Checklist

Day 4. If you have access to technology, students could create a digital book, PowerPoint, or a different digital display.
Students will peer edit and then work on their memoir project.

rDay 5. Students will move freely around the room to read each other’s memoirs. If your class needs more structure, set a time to indicate a rotating schedule.

Week 34, Day 1---Day 5
Cumulative Task: Reading and Writing Identity
"The personal narrative you will be writing will be a reflection of how you have changed as a reader and writer this year. It’s going to be like a year in review, so you will create a mini book as part of the memoir project."
Grade 4 Narrative Checklist Sample
If you have access to technology, students could create a digital book, PowerPoint, or a different digital display.

This unit challenges students to view history with a critical lens, and to notice how there is always more than one side to a story. The unit begins with the Mayflower and helps students develop an understanding of why so many colonists decided to leave England and travel to the New World. Students will explore the hardships faced by the colonists, both on the ship and once they arrive in the New World, and how the colonists persevered and relied on the geography and environment to meet their needs. Students will then learn about the Wampanoag, the people who were on the land before the Pilgrims arrived. They will learn about what the Wampanoag valued, how they viewed the Pilgrims, and how the arrival of explorers and settlers negatively influenced their tribe. Then students will be pushed to analyze what really happened at the first Thanksgiving, and whose story is being told. Students will realize that the traditional story of the first Thanksgiving contains many myths that don't accurately reflect the Wampanoag and what really happened in 1621.

Celebrate the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day by exploring the Earth Day 2020 campaigns as well as demonstrating what you know and can do to Inform, inspire, and Activate Others!!! BrainVentures are engaging & interactive, digital, enrichment activities meant to supplement your standard aligned curriculum. They can be used as indepent or collaborative practice as well as remotely or on campus.

This unit is focused on three classic fairy tales: The Three Little Pigs, The Three Bears, and Little Red Riding Hood. With each fairy tale, students are first exposed to the classic version, familiarizing themselves with the basic plot and lessons. Then students explore the ways authors change setting, characters, and plot while still maintaining the overall essence of the classic story. Some of the changes the authors make reflect the nuances of different cultures and environments, while others are made for entertainment and humor. Either way, students will explore the idea that different authors can use their own perspective and culture to shape the stories they write or retell. By reading multiple versions of the same classic fairy tale, students will also be able to grapple with the bigger lessons of each tale—the importance of not talking to strangers, how hard work and patience pay off, and the importance of respecting others’ property and privacy. Over the course of the unit, students will be challenged to think about how each of these unique themes is portrayed and how in each different version of the fairy tale the characters may learn the lesson in slightly different ways. It is our hope that this unit, in connection with others in the sequence, will help students see the power of storytelling and how simple stories can be changed and improved based on an author’s ideas and preferences.

In reading, this unit builds directly onto the reading strategies from unit 2. Students will continue to be pushed to be inquisitive consumers of text, asking and answering questions about characters, setting, and plot as they listen to and engage with a text. Students will also continue to work on retelling stories and including key details. Similar to units 1 and 2, students will continue to think deeply about characters and setting and how the details an author includes in the illustration and text help a reader better understand both. Because most of the focuses for this unit are a repeat of similar focuses from units 1 and 2, students should be pushed to a much higher level of rigor and understanding than in previous units. One new focus of this unit, however, is on comparing and contrasting the adventures and experiences of characters in stories. Students will be asked at multiple points to use information they have learned about key events, characters, and setting to compare and contrast different versions of the classic fairy tale. Students should be pushed beyond just superficial comparisons across the different stories. At the end of the unit, students will also have a chance to retell and act out the different fairy tales, putting their own “artistic” spin on the fairy tale.

In writing, students will continue to write daily in response to the text. In unit 2, students began to write answers that correctly answered the questions using facts. In this unit, students will be pushed to continue to focus on correct answers that may show some level of inferential or critical thinking. Students will also begin to learn how to include details from the text in their answers. At this point in the year, it is not important that students have the best evidence but rather that they are including some details that support the answer to the question in one way or another. Structure and grammar feedback during this unit should be based on assessment data from units 1 and 2.

Students will explore social issues that plague our society and the world to find an issue they are passionate about or are interested in learning more about.Through a process of questioning, students will develop research questions that they will seek the answers to by conducting research of a variety of sources both in print and digital.Students will create a blog site to share their research findings and write 8 blog posts, each focusing on answering a different question or aspect of their social issue, using evidence from credible sources. Their blogs will be published and shared with an authentic audience.

In this unit, students build a deeper understanding, appreciation, and respect for the wide variety of religions found in the world by reading two core texts: What Is Religion? and One World, Many Religions: The Ways We Worship. In today’s society, illiteracy regarding religion is widespread and fuels prejudice and bullying. The negative impacts of religious illiteracy and intolerance can be minimized by teaching religion in a non-devotional, academic perspective. Therefore, this unit challenges students to build a broader awareness and understanding of religion by exposing students to a diversity of religious views and educating students about some of the most common religions. It is important to note that this unit is not intended to promote the acceptance of one particular religion or serve as a place to practice religion. Instead, it is our goal that this unit will help students better understand the differences and similarities among the religions and cultures of their classmates, and begin to appreciate and respect differences in religion.

As readers, this unit challenges students to synthesize information across two texts to build a deeper understanding of a topic. Students will analyze how authors support points, what structures they include to emphasize key ideas, and how different texts provide different perspectives and information about similar topics.

In this unit, students explore the relationship between living things and their environment and how the environment can both positively and negatively impact a species’ ability to survive. Using the Next Generation Science Standards as a guide, students will learn about different species, what they need for survival, their life cycle, and how they have adapted for survival. Then students will be challenged to create arguments that explain why some organisms are able to survive well, some survive less well, and others can’t survive at all in certain habitats. Through this unit, along with others in the sequence, students will use the scientific information they learn to think critically about the world around them.

The Science of Living Things texts were chosen as mentor texts for this unit because the author, Bobbie Kalman, uses text features and clear language to clearly communicate complex concepts about the animal kingdom, life cycles, and animal adaptations. As readers, students will be challenged to constantly ask and answer questions about key details in the text, explicitly referring to the text to support an answer or a question. Over the course of the unit, students will also deepen their understanding of how Bobbie Kalman uses text features to not only organize information, but to help a reader learn new information and facts about a subject. Students will also work on using context clues to figure out the meaning of genre-specific vocabulary, find the main idea of a section, and explain cause and effect in relation to scientific concepts.

This presentation will explain why we cite our sources when using research in our writing. It will touch on the concept of plagiarism and academic honesty, as well as overview the consequences for when we fail to properly credit our sources. APA will not be the focus of this presentation, but will be mentioned along with other common citation styles.

FreeReading is an open source instructional program that helps educators teach early literacy. Because it is open source, it represents the collective wisdom of a wide community of teachers and researchers. FreeReading contains Writing Activities, a page of activities to address important writing skills and strategies.