What We're Learning

Each day, students practice skills in four areas: Foundational Skills (decoding, phonics), Reading & Responding (reading and using comprehension strategies to understand a text), Grammar/Spelling (word usage), and Writing. Together, these abilities form a skilled and confident reader and writer.


UNIT 1

 

Getting Started:

• Vowels (a, e, i, o, u, r-controlled, different spellings) & Digraphs

• 'Alice in Wonderland'

Lesson 1:

• Prefixes (dis-, non-, un-, re-), endings (-ed and -ing), homophones & homographs, suffixes (-ly, -y, -less, -ion, -tion)

• 'Ava & Pip'

• dis-, non-, un, re- words

Lesson 2:

• Endings (-ed, -ing)

• 'Louis Braille's Gift to the Blind'

• -ed, -ing words

Lesson 3: 

• Homophones & Homographs

• 'Charlotte's Web'

• Homographs & Homophones

Lesson 4:

• Suffixes (-ly, -y, -ful, -less), /er/, /ar/, /or/ words

• 'Seeds of Change'

• -ly, -y, -ful, -less words

Lesson 5: 

• Suffixes (-ion, -sion, -tion, -ity), consonant + le syllables

• 'Nelson Mandela'

• -ion, -sion, -tion, -ity words

Lesson 6:

• Review Lesson 1 Concepts

• 'More Than a Game'

• Unit 1 Spelling/Vocabulary/Grammar Review

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UNIT 2

Lesson 1:

• Regular and irregular comparatives and superlatives, range of meaning

• 'The Discovery Fair'

• Comparative and superlative words

• Script to Screen writing

Lesson 2:

• Greek roots "phon" and "graph"; prefixes "auto-" and "tele-"

• 'Rudy Goldberg's Bright Idea'

• "phan" and "graph" words; tele-, auto- words, direct objects

Lesson 3: 

• Latin roots "tract," "sign," "dic," "man"; synonyms/antonyms

• 'My Brother's Flying Machine'

• Words with Latin roots "tract," "sign," "dic," "man", capitalization

Lesson 4:

• Regular plural nouns

• 'Godspeed, John Glenn'

• Regular plurals, sentence types/simple sentences

Lesson 5: 

• Irregular plural nouns

• 'To Space and Back'

• Irregular plurals & conjunctions

Lesson 6:

• Review Lesson 2 Concepts

• 'An Out-of-This-World-Experience'

• Unit 2 Spelling/Vocabulary/Grammar Review

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Unit 3

Lesson 1:

• Open and hyphenated compound words

• 'The Unbreakable Code'

• Open and hyphenated compound words, compound subjects and predicates

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Lesson 2:

• Suffixes '-ment,' '-al,' '-ial'

• 'Ben and the Emancipation Proclamation'

• Suffixes '-ment,' '-al,' '-ial', compound sentences

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Lesson 3:

• Suffixes '-able,' '-ible,' Latin Root 'port'

• 'Fiona's Lace'

• Suffixes '-able,' '-ible,' Latin Root 'port', run-ons and sentence fragments

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Lesson 4:

• Latin Root 'mob,' 'mot,' 'mov'

• 'Hope and Tears: Ellis Island Voices'

• Latin Root 'mob,' 'mot,' 'mov', plural nouns

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Lesson 5:

• Prefixes 'over-,' 'under-,' 'sub,' 'inter'

• 'My Diary from Here to There'

• Prefixes 'over-,' 'under-,' 'sub,' 'inter', subject/verb agreement

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Lesson 6:

• Review Unit 3 concepts

• 'Fish for Jimmy'

• Unit 3 Spelling/Vocabulary/Grammar Review