In this science-based unit, students begin to build respect for and understanding of living things by studying the life cycles of different plants and animals. In the first bend of the unit, students continue their exploration of seasons by exploring what makes spring the season of growth and the different characteristics of living, nonliving, and dead things. In the second part of the unit, students observe and learn about plants and what seeds need in order to grow into a plant. In the third part of the unit, students observe and learn about frogs and butterflies and the process in which tadpoles turn into frogs and caterpillars transform into butterflies. In the fourth part of the unit, students learn about birds and how birds grow and change inside of an egg. The unit culminates with students studying different ways humans change the environment and coming up with solutions for ways to reduce human impact on the environment. For each bend of the unit it is incredibly important that students are able to participate in hands-on labs and activities that help them see and observe the life cycles in action. Therefore, there are multiple project days within the unit. After the projects and labs have been set up, students should be pushed to predict, observe, record, and explain the changes that they notice. Throughout the unit, students should be challenged to think critically about how the life cycles of plants and animals are similar and different, and what all living things need in order to thrive and survive.

In reading, this unit serves as a chance to review all previously taught reading strategies. With that said, one main focus of the unit is on describing the connection between ideas or pieces of information, particularly in regard to sequencing. Another focus is on describing the relationship between illustrations and the text in which they appear, and using the illustrations to deepen understanding of key details in a text. When the text demands, students should also be challenged to ask and answer questions about key details, identify the main topic, ask and answer questions about unknown words, identify the reasons an author gives to support points in a text, and compare two texts on the same topic. If there are other strategies from the year that students are struggling with, plan strategic places over the course of the unit to spiral in and remediate the strategies so that students are prepared for first grade.

In writing, the main focus of this unit is on ensuring that all students are scoring a 3 or a 4 on the reading response rubric. Therefore, targeted whole-group and small-group mini-lessons should be planned based on student needs.

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.

Explain how authors Reynolds and Kiely use figurative language and word choice to provide insight into characters’ emotions.

Explain how events and lines of text reveal characters’ perspectives of themselves and others in All American Boys.

Apply some of the storytelling strategies they studied in All American Boys to a narrative.

Interpret an experience of fear, anger, or forgiveness through a free verse poem.

Plan and outline a free verse poem that explores fear, anger, or forgiveness.

In this unit, students apply what they have learned about the research process from Unit 2 to research and write an essay about a freaky frog of their choice as part of their performance task for this module. Students begin this unit by choosing a frog to study and reading informational texts to gather information about their frog and its unique adaptations. Students build on their learning about informational writing from Unit 2 to plan and draft an essay, discussing what makes an essay more complex than a paragraph.
For the mid-unit assessment, students will draft the second proof paragraph to their own essay. Then through mini lessons and peer critique, students will continue to draft, revise, and edit their writing. Finally, in the end of unit assessment, students incorporate teacher and peer feedback to revise their essays on demand. The unit ends with students compiling their writing from across the module to create the final performance task, a book about freaky frogs.
W.3.2, W.3.4, W.3.5, W.3.6, W.3.7, W.3.10, L.3.1d, L.3.1e, L.3.1i, L.3.1j, and L.3.6

Overview: Week 1, Day 1
Learning to Write Sentences
Students will work in partners or small groups to generate oral sentences. Tell students that they will share their sentences.

This issue of the free online magazine, Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears, explores how elementary teachers can move from a study of the weather at home to the weather of the polar regions through hands-on activity, reading, and discussion.

This unit serves as the foundational unit for establishing both classroom culture and the routines of the literature block. In this unit, students discover what it means to be part of a classroom community and how they can make the classroom community a fun place to be. Over the course of the unit, students explore hopes and dreams, how to be polite and treat others with respect, and why it’s important to be proud of themselves and who they are. The unit gives students a chance to project their own feelings onto characters in order to make sense of how they are feeling. Through a variety of extension activities, students will be pushed to think about how they can use what they learned from the characters in their own lives and in the classroom community. The final products of many of the lessons and activities should be displayed and reinforced daily as student-friendly reminders of what it means to be part of a joyful community.

In reading, the main focus of the unit is on setting up the routines of a successful literature block. Students will learn what it means to actively participate in a Read Aloud, how to listen to other students in the class, how to interact with and practice vocabulary, and how to write in response to the text. Students will also learn and practice strong habits of discussion, particularly the structures for Turn and Talks: tracking, voice, and focused bodies. Additionally, students will begin to learn about the importance of asking questions in response to a text and how questioning and being inquisitive is an important part of learning and exploring the world around them.

In this unit, students read a collection of texts focused on building an understanding of what it means to be a good friend. This unit, in connection with beginning-of-the-year culture-building activities, will set a strong foundation for building social-emotional awareness within students as they navigate making new friendships within the classroom. This unit will also serve as the launch unit of the year-long theme: what it means to be a good person within a community. Over the course of the year, students will deepen their understanding of what it means to be a good person and grow up in different communities, part of which involves being a good friend.

This unit will serve as the foundational unit for creating a strong read aloud and discussion culture. Building on what students learned in K2, students will practice asking and answering questions about key details, particularly characters, in partners, individually, and through discussion. Students will also learn and practice strong habits of discussion, particularly structures for turn and talks, tracking, voice, and focused bodies. Additionally, students will be challenged to think about characters, what they are like as a person, and what they learn in the story, by noticing the details an author includes in the words and the pictures. Unlike kindergarten units, in this unit students will begin to build connections across texts and build a deeper understanding of the unit theme of friendship.

In writing, students will write daily in response to the text. The focus for this unit is on building student stamina and routines in regard to writing about reading. In Kindergarten, students wrote daily in response to the text, with an emphasis on both the illustration and words. Over the course of the unit, students should begin to focus more on the words they are writing and less on the illustration to convey ideas about the text. However, they should always be encouraged to start with a quick sketch to get their ideas down.

What's in the Bag? invites primary students to play with vocabulary common to their environment.

In Grade 4 Fiction, students grapple with the overarching question of how a person develops values, identities, and beliefs. In this unit students dig deeply into how families shape a person’s identity, values, and beliefs and how relationships with others can change a person’s identity. Students will also explore what it means to have good fortune and how a person’s view on fortune varies depending on his/her values and beliefs. It is our hope that this unit, in connection with other units from the entire year-long sequence, will help build a deeper understanding of how we become who we are and the positive and negative factors that influence us along the way.

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon was chosen as an engaging text to help build excitement at the beginning of the year, while simultaneously allowing for deep discussions about character, setting, vocabulary, and the larger theme of identity. Over the course of the novel, the author, Grace Lin, includes lots of detail and description to reveal information about characters and how they change based on experiences and relationships. Students will be challenged to notice the details that Grace Lin includes and analyze how the details build to support a deeper, more nuanced understanding of characters. Grace Lin also includes lots of powerful vocabulary and figurative language as a way of helping readers visualize exactly what is happening in the story. Students will be challenged to figure out the meaning of unknown words and figurative language and analyze why the author made particular word choices. In this unit students will also begin to use summarization as a strategy to track the plot of a longer text.

In this unit students will explore the difficulties of having a learning disability and how a learning disability influences the way a person feels about themselves by reading the core text, The Wild Book. Throughout the unit students will be challenged to think about multiple thematic topics—believing in ourselves, accepting differences, persevering through challenges, and trusting in family during difficult times. Exploring the themes will allow students to develop a deeper appreciation for people’s unique differences and struggles and learn to accept everyone for their strengths. It is our goal that this unit, combined with others in the curriculum, will help students see the world as a diverse place, not just in terms of race but also in terms of abilities, and that no matter what, everyone can be successful.

The text, The Wild Book, was chosen not only for its powerful themes but because Margarita Engle, the award-winning Latina author, uses verse to bring to life a difficult historical period in Cuba. The book tells the story of Margarita Engle's grandmother who grew up in Cuba during a time of lawlessness. Margarita Engle tells her grandmother's story in a way that helps readers build empathy and understanding of the hardships our ancestors may have faced. Simultaneously, students also see the power of poetry and its influence on Cuban culture in the early 20th century. Seeing that despite the hardships the country faced, it was also a place of artistic beauty.

This unit builds on previous units in which students have learned the features of poetry; however, in this unit students begin to see poetry as not just stand-alone poems but as an art form in which a poet can express himself or herself freely. When discussing and writing about poetry, students should be able to refer to the specific structural elements of a poem and explain how the elements enrich the text. This unit also challenges students to deeply analyze how authors develop theme within individual poems and also across a longer work. Students will analyze how characters are developed, how word choice and imagery are used to bring power and meaning to different verse, and how the author uses varying experiences to reveal theme. Doing deep text analysis of the poems on an individual level and also on a more broad level will help students understand the power of the various themes and how the author develops them.