1st quarter Reading and Writing goals

The Reader in You: Developing Characters (5 weeks)

Big Ideas of Unit:

• Readers will read multiple texts/excerpts and identify the characters, setting, and or events
• Readers will infer characters thoughts and feelings. Readers will support their inferences by quoting direct evidence from the text.
• Readers will identify how the character responds to challenges within a text.

Students will understand: ● how to identify the characters, setting, and or events from multiple texts/excerpts ● how to infer character's thoughts and feelings. ● how to support their inferences by quoting direct evidence from the text. ● how to identify how the character responds to challenges within a text. ● how figurative language affects the text

What is the author saying? How do I know? How do I ‘read between the lines'?

Establishing a  Writers’ Workshop (2 weeks)

Big Ideas of Unit

• Pre-write for narrative writing
• Spend time with exemplar texts dissecting their writing and comparing the exemplars while creating a rubric
• Small moments and developing characters through dialogue. Readers will identify how the character responds to challenges within a text.

Students will understand that… Writers use a writing process to develop writing pieces Writers use tools and routines to establish independence when writing Narratives can include both external or concrete details and internal thoughts and feelings to effectively convey the message Narrative writers reveal the most important part of the story by slowing down the action and including the characters' thoughts and feelings Writers use mentor texts to learn effective ways to begin a story Writers edit their writing to make it easier to read for their readers Writers can publish their edited writing in multiple ways

Why am I writing? For whom? How do effective writers hook and hold their readers?

Character-A-Palooza: Deepening Understanding of Characters (4 weeks)

Big Ideas of Unit:

•  Readers will identify character interactions within a text.
•  Readers will compare character interactions within a text.
• Readers will analyze character relationships and what it reveals about the characters.
• Summarize a text

Students will understand that… Characters respond to challenges in different ways, such as internally or externally the author shares specific details that help us compare and contrast characters, setting and events in a story or drama building meaning for the reader toward theme

In what way do different settings in the story affect the outcome? How do authors develop characters? (What specific evidence in the text supports my ideas?) How does dialogue help you understand characters and their actions?

Personal Narrative to Memoir Unit of Study  (6 weeks)

Students will understand that… memoirs are based on memories that focus on a relationship between the writer and a particular person, place, animal, or object. explain the importance of that relationship are limited to a single phase, time period, place, or recurring behavior can follow various structures are written in first person

What do our memories say about who we are or what we believe? Which memoir structure best matches the theme and intention of a writer? How do writers show their readers what is really important about their memoirs?