After reading “The Most Dangerous Game” students will comb through the text to pull out the best examples of imagery from the story. They will work together in groups of three to collect five examples (per person) of imagery. Students must be able to see each other’s examples, so they don’t repeat them, but also help each other identify which imagery is being documented.

Week 10, Day 1---Week 11, Day 5
Narrative Writing Unit 1
Learning to Write Narratives
Chart: Narrative Checklist Sample
Post Texts 12–14 around the room and give each pair 3 copies of the narrative checklist. Partners read three passages and use the narrative checklist to determine which narrative is better.
Pair up pairs and have each group of 4 share which piece they believed was the strongest and why. Stress that students should use the checklist in their explanation.
Narrative Graphic Organizer
Students will work in groups of four to add at least two more events and the related details to the graphic organizer. Each group will use one copy of the graphic organizer.
Create anchor chart: Ways to Introduce the Topic in a Narrative:
Direct statement
Question
Description of snapshot in time
Fact or detail

Week 20, Day 1---Day 5
Narrative Writing Unit
"This week we will be writing personal narratives using Judy Moody Saves the World to help us get ideas. Think about the narrative checklist to guide your discussion."
Narrative Checklist Sample
Narrative Graphic Organizer
Ways to establish the situation in a Narrative
Direct statement
Question
Description of snapshot in time
Words and phrases
Dialogue

Natural disasters such as volcanoes, earthquakes, hurricanes, and wildfires happen all over the world. Understanding how natural disasters happen and why helps children feel less anxious and more prepared. Therefore, this unit focuses on teaching students the science behind each natural disaster while also explaining what to do if they live in an area prone to a particular natural disaster. Over the course of the unit, students hear about many famous natural disasters, but the unit places more of an emphasis on how the disasters happen rather than exploring the devastation or destruction caused by previous natural disasters. The unit provides many opportunities for students to learn more about recent natural disasters, including a culminating research project.

The texts in this unit were chosen because of their wide variety of text features, content, and accessibility. Over the course of the unit, students will read texts that are very technical and rely heavily on text features, diagrams, and illustrations, as well as texts that are written as informational narratives. Students will be challenged to think about the structures the authors use to help the reader interact with and learn the content. Additionally, students will learn the importance of referring to specific details from the text and using those details to explain and teach back the newly learned material. This unit serves as the foundation for building strong reading habits and routines and setting high expectations for text consumption. Clear models should be included in the unit to help students build a deeper understanding of how to actively read and annotate informational texts for key ideas, text features, and vocabulary. This unit also serves as a launching point for strong discussions. Students will frequently be challenged to debate questions from the text; therefore, strong habits of discussion need to be introduced over the course of the unit.

In this unit, students explore the meaning of family, community, and identity by reading the core text One Crazy Summer. Through the eyes of eleven-year-old Delphine, readers experience life in Oakland, California, in 1968, the height of the Black Panther movement. Delphine and her two younger sisters, Vonetta and Fern, spend a summer in Oakland visiting their estranged mother who sends them to spend their days at a camp run by the Black Panthers. Over the course of the summer, the girls learn about what it means to be part of a revolution, what the Black Panther Party was fighting for, and why the Black Panther Party was important during this time period. Through it all, they build confidence in themselves and their relationships with others as they learn to challenge and respond to social issues in the community. It is our hope that this unit, in conjunction with others in the series, will help students understand the way experiences shape our identities and beliefs, and how children can help bring about change in the community.

In reading, this unit continues to build on reading strategies and skills covered in previous units. It is assumed that students are able to quote or paraphrase accurately from the text, interpret figurative language, and summarize sections of the text. These skills should continue to be spiraled throughout the unit; however, the main focuses for this unit are determining theme and analyzing how it is developed over the course of the novel or poem, analyzing point of view and the impact it has on the way events are portrayed, and comparing characters and their responses to situations.

Week 13, Day 5---Week 14, Day 1
Opinion Writing Unit: Book Review
"The last time you wrote a book review, I modeled how to complete the graphic organizer. However, today I am going to plan the beginning of our book review very quickly and spend the rest of our time together showing you how to use the graphic organizer to write a book review. We know planning is the first stage in the writing process. We are going to write our book review on Miss Rumphius."
visual: Book Review Graphic Organizer
visual: Book Review Checklist Sample
frame for writing a book review

Week 24, Day 1---Day 5
Opinion Writing Unit
We often think about making good choices.
Today we are going to use a graphic organizer and the opinion checklist to plan this opinion piece
Book Review Graphic Organizer
Opinion Checklist Sample
Today we are going to write to convince people that either it is easy to make the right choice or that sometimes it is hard to make the right choice.
Strong words:
I strongly believe
From my point of view
It’s my belief
Based on what I know
I am convinced
Speaking for myself
I am confident that
Ways you can end an opinion piece: reinforcement, lasting thought, quotation, question.
Students will work on revising, editing, peer revising and editing, and finishing up their final copy.

This lesson focuses on a family depicted in a work of art. Students practice using vocabulary related to people and families. Activities emphasize oral and written descriptions of the people portrayed in the work of art, using possessive adjectives. Students are challenged to infer what the relationships are between figures depicted and what individuals are doing, based on such clues as their pose.

This lesson focuses on people doing leisure activities as depicted in a work of art. Students practice using vocabulary related to people and leisure. Activities emphasize oral and written descriptions of the people portrayed in the work of art, using action verbs. Students are challenged to infer what leisure activities individuals are doing based on such clues as their pose.

This lesson focuses on people at work depicted in a work of art. Students practice using vocabulary related to people and work. Activities emphasize oral and written descriptions of the people portrayed in the work of art, using job-related vocabulary and adjectives to describe feelings. Students are challenged to infer what job individuals are doing, based on such clues as their pose.

PERSIAN Catch Up@the Café is designed to help you practice Persian language reading and listening comprehension on your own time. It’s intended for English speaking intermediate Persian learners to brush up on your language skills before moving on to an advanced course: i.e., some existing Persian is required.

An adaptable writing frame for teacher to comments; self evaluation and an indicator of whether the work was independent, shared or teacher assisted etc.

In this unit, students grapple with common second grade themes through reading the easily relatable series Pinky and Rex. Through connecting with Pinky and Rex, students will learn that it’s okay to be different and to be proud of who they are, no matter what others may think. Students will also learn about what it truly means to be a good friend and how friends can support and stick up for one another in a variety of ways. They will also see that it’s okay for boys and girls to be friends, even best friends. This unit builds onto multiple units from first grade in which students learned what it means to be a good friend and a good person. It is our hope that this unit deepens the understandings developed in previous grades by giving students characters to connect with. These connections are especially important for students who are struggling with some of the same issues and aren’t sure how to process or talk about them.

In reading this unit is a transition from units that were predominately read aloud into a unit that is almost entirely shared or independent reading. Pinky and Rex are perfect texts for second graders, not only because of the important themes they teach but because of the way in which James Howe develops character and plot over the course of the series. As readers, students will be challenged to notice the descriptive details James Howe includes to show how characters feel in response to different problems and challenges. They will also be challenged to notice how a character’s dialogue shows what they are truly feeling and how the different “said” words James Howe includes deepens that understanding. Students will also begin to analyze why certain words in a text are written in italics and what that shows about how a character is feeling. This deep dive into character will allow students to truly understand the characters and the lessons that they are learning. By reading four books in the series, students will also have the chance to see how characters develop over the course of multiple texts. By the fourth text, students will have a deeper, more nuanced understanding of all three characters.

This three-week module, centered on a focal case, represents the second part of the Department‰ŰŞs introduction to the challenges of reflection and action in professional planning practice. As such, it builds on the concepts and tools in 11.201 and 11.202 in the Fall semester. Working in teams, students will deliver a 20-minute oral briefing, with an additional 10 minutes for questions and comments, in the last week of the class (as detailed on the assignment and posted course schedule). The teams will brief invited guests (‰ŰĎbriefees‰Ű) taking the roles of decisionmakers. DUSP faculty and fellow students may also be in attendance.

A 2nd grade STEM unit on biodiversity. Students will learn about habitats and their biotic and abiotic components and needs to create and implement a plan/device to increase the biodiversity of the urban school garden.

In this unit, students explore how plastic pollution is choking the world’s oceans. Students learn about the history of plastic, how plastic ends up in the ocean, how plastic in the ocean impacts the ecosystem, and why it’s so hard to remove plastic from the ocean once it’s there. In the second half of the unit, students explore a variety of solutions for reducing plastic waste and reducing the amount of plastic that ends up in the ocean. Students will learn about large policy-based changes that can be made and also explore smaller voluntary actions they can take that will make a difference. Finally, students end the unit doing a research project aimed at educating others about the dangers of plastic and its impact on the environment.

In reading, this unit serves as the foundational informational unit of the year. Students will be challenged to explain the relationship between two or more scientific ideas, determine the meaning of domain-specific words, and understand the reasons and evidence the author uses to support a particular point. Since this is the first informational unit, routines and procedures for active annotation, discussion, and writing about reading should be introduced so that students are able to show understanding of the text and standards in multiple modes.

An online interactive resource for children to explore and learn from visual art through quizzes and games. You can test your memory with lace, create a colourful fruit poster, paint a Paul Henry skyline, or try your knowledge with a quiz.

This fun interactive encourages looking and responding to visual art and enables the child to look at and talk about works of visual art through strengthening their vocabulary.

In this unit, students explore the power of reading and writing around the world. Over the course of the unit, students will grapple with and explore the power involved with education and reading, and why so many people across the world seek the power to read. Students will also discover that not all people have equal access to education and that in many places receiving a high-quality education is not an easy feat. As a connection to the informational unit on continents, when the setting is clearly defined by the author either in the author’s note or directly in the text, make sure to reference it and challenge students to notice features of the culture or country. It is important to note that many of the texts in this unit are fiction; therefore, large generalizations about an entire culture or country should not be made based on the books alone. Students should, however, be challenged to think about the ways in which the author portrays the characters’ struggles and desire for education and what we can learn from the characters’ experiences. It is our hope that this unit, in connection with other units in the sequence, will begin to open students’ eyes to the world around us and the ways in which values are similar and different around the world.

In reading, it is assumed that students are inquisitive consumers of the text and are able to retell stories, including key details, using both the illustrations and words as a guide. Therefore, in this unit students will be pushed further to notice more nuanced central messages, particularly related to the idea of education and reading. Students will also be pushed to notice the words and phrases an author includes to suggest feeling and appeal to the senses. In Unit 3, students were exposed to the skill of compare and contrast by comparing and contrasting similar versions of the same story. In this unit, students will be pushed to the next level by comparing and contrasting more nuanced experiences and messages across multiple stories.

In writing, students will continue to write daily in response to the text. In every piece of writing, students should be expected to correctly answer the question and provide details from the text to support their answer. In this unit, students will begin to learn how to explain their evidence and thinking in a way that shows a deeper understanding of the question or text. By the end of the unit, most students should be able to score a 3 on the Reading Response rubric.

Given a Bingo Board, students will expand their knowledge of prefixes, suffixes, and root words by playing bingo.

Week 19, Day 4
Amelia and Eleanor Go for a Ride
Today’s book is about two very famous women. One of them was Amelia Earhart, one of the first women ever to become a pilot. The other was Eleanor Roosevelt, who was married to President Franklin Roosevelt. The book was written by Pam Muñoz Ryan. It was illustrated by Brian Selznick.
Introduce Book and Preview Technical Vocabulary
Teach Text Structure
Model a Comprehension Strategy and Ask Questions During Reading
Engage Students in Discussion
Update Text Structure Anchor Chart
Teach Sentence Composing
Assign or Model Written Response
Review and Share Written Responses
*Planning Notes
Although nonfiction, this book has few content area terms. We have chosen to focus instead on Tier 2 words.
After reading the book, you will need to decide whether or not to reveal the untimely death of Amelia Earhart.
The Author’s Note in the back of the book provides details you may want to share. There is also a photograph of the two women, and you may wish to compare it with Selznick’s illustrations.
Have available a map of the Potomac and Chesapeake Bay area to display or project. You can teach a bit of geography by pointing out some of the places mentioned.