The curriculum plan provides a high-level overview of the recommended sequencing and pacing of topics, writing texts, and required texts for each grade and shows the four modules per year for each grade level. This curriculum plan aligns to the K-2 Language Arts Curriculum.

Meet savvy scientist and inventor Hedy Lamarr, also known for her career as a glamorous international movie star. Dubbed "The Most Beautiful Woman in the World," Hedy actually preferred spending time creating inventions in her workshop to strutting down the red carpet. Hedy co-invented the technology known as frequency hopping, which turned out to be one of the most important scientific breakthroughs of the twentieth century! Today's cell phone, computers, and other electronic devices would be more vulnerable to hacking without the groundbreaking system discovered by a world-famous actress and gifted inventor. The resource includes a lesson plan/book card, a design challenge, and copy of a design thinking journal that provide guidance on using the book to inspire students' curiosity for design thinking. Maker Challenge: Create small groups. Pass out one of the challenges listed in the lesson plan/book card to each group for them to come up with an invention that will solve the problem at hand.

In this science/history-based unit, students learn about the history of the earth by studying fossils and dinosaurs. In the first part of the unit, students learn about how fossils are formed and how paleontologists study fossils in order to learn about ancient history. In the second part of the unit, students study what makes dinosaurs unique and fascinating creatures by learning about various species of dinosaurs and how they adapted in order to meet their basic needs for survival. Students will also be challenged to think about what earth was like at the time of the dinosaurs and how learning about dinosaurs helps them better understand the earth’s history. In the last part of the unit, students read a collection of fiction texts, each with a unique perspective on what happened to the dinosaurs and if dinosaurs really are extinct. In this part of the unit, students should be pushed to use what they have learned from the informational texts in order to confirm or deny the statements the author makes in the fiction texts.

In reading, this unit exposes students to both informational and fiction texts. When reading informational texts, students will focus on explaining the connection between two or more pieces of information in a text, particularly in regard to retelling how fossils are formed or how scientists uncover fossils. Students will also be pushed to describe the relationship between the illustrations and the text in which they appear, specifically describing what new or additional information they learn from reading the illustrations. Additionally, students will continue to practice determining the main topic of a text and asking and answering questions about unknown words. When reading fiction texts, students will focus on retelling the story and making connections between the story and the facts they’ve learned from the informational texts.

In writing, students will continue to write daily in response to the text. Written responses should focus on including an inference or critical thinking that shows understanding of the text and/or question and on using more words than pictures to communicate the answer to a question. This unit also includes two longer writing assignments: one research writing assignment and one narrative writing assignment.

Frances Gabe detested housework, so she invented a contraption to free herself from this tedious task forever: a self-cleaning house! Gabe's wacky, wonderful home included almost 70 new patented inventions, from a soap-spraying sprinkler in the ceiling to a kitchen cabinet that washed, dried, and stored dishes all in one place. Though Gabe's invention didn't catch on, her determination and clever thinking remind us that we don't have to accept the world as it is; we can improve it using our minds and our own two hands. The resource includes a lesson plan/book card, a design challenge, and copy of a design thinking journal that provide guidance on using the book to inspire students' curiosity for design thinking. Maker Challenge: Frances Gabe created over 70 inventions because she hated cleaning. What is one thing you hate doing for chores? Develop an invention to have it clean itself.

A document is included in the resources folder that lists the complete standards-alignment for this book activity.

Amy Guglielmo, Jacqueline Tourville, and Giselle Potter tell the story of autism advocate Dr. Temple Grandin’s childhood and her quest to experience the sensation of a hug. The resource includes a lesson plan/book card, a design challenge, and copy of a design thinking journal that provide guidance on using the book to inspire students' curiosity for design thinking. Maker Challenge: Students will work to develop an assistive technology solution for people with autism. Alternatively, students may develop assistive technology solutions for students with differing abilities. Students are encouraged to work with peers in a local special education classroom to combine their love of technology and engineering to help positively influence their peers’ lives.

A document is included in the resources folder that lists the complete standards-alignment for this book activity.

This video is part of the Learn and Grow with WHRO TV series. Watch Dr. Karen Drosinos teach about identifying rhyming words and the letters f, h, and q.

Students listen to and read a nursery rhyme while practicing their voice to print match. Students identify rhyming words and learn the names and formation of alphabet letters from the poem.

This guidance document helps teachers understand the why, as well as the concrete what and how, of the ALL Block: the five components, how each component reinforces the work from the module lessons, how rotations work, what a day in the ALL Block looks like, and Frequently Asked Questions.

This unit is designed to develop foundational skills needed to prepare students for learning and making meaning of a variety of text types. The unit will provide students with opportunities to listen to and explore a variety of everyday print materials such as storybooks, poems, and informational texts to engage in interactive discussions of the messages and meaning of texts. This unit teaches students that they are readers and have a vital role in their classroom community.

Students will continue practicing routines necessary for learning:
• Working productively in the meeting area
• Working with a partner to Think-Pair- Share
• Book handling and learning about the parts of texts
• Selecting texts for independent reading
• Using everything in the classroom for reading support

This is the formal introduction to EL Education Language Arts Curriculum. It explains the structure of our program and lays out the principles behind our design. It includes our approach to addressing the Common Core ELA and literacy standards, and specifics about the key features of our comprehensive literacy curriculum (3 hours/day for K-2, 2 hours/day for Grades 3-5), as well as a description of the 3-5 Life Science Modules.

The K-5 Recommended Texts & Other Resources list contains books and other resources that have been selected by our experts to support research or read-alouds for each module.

In this blended unit students will review the parts of a story including characters, setting, beginning, middle, and end. Students will analyze a character based on their words, actions and thoughts. Students will describe complex characters, and identify character motivation giving supporting details from the text. They will explain how a character changes over the course of a narrative. Students will describe a setting and the events of a story using details from the text. Students will make inferences related to the details given in the story.

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 this unit, students are exposed to familiar stories with predictable patterns and illustrations. Exposure to predictable texts is incredibly important for beginning readers as they begin to explore the world of reading independently. Predictable texts are incredibly engaging for students, allowing them to anticipate words, phrases, and events on their own and better follow the storyline sequence of a story. The story patterns also allow students to try and read the stories on their own, using the repetitive texts and pictures as a guide for either reading or pretending to read the story. Predictable texts are also incredibly important for exposing students to phonological awareness concepts in context, particularly rhyme, rhythm, and fluency. In order for students to reap these benefits, however, they need to deeply engage with the stories. This means that the stories need to be read, reread, retold, and reread some more so that students are able to build the confidence they need to pretend to read or read the text on their own. Within the context of this unit, students are only exposed to the text once; therefore, it is the responsibility of the teacher to find ways to bring the stories to life in other parts of the day so that students are able to reap the rewards of engaging with predictable texts or, if necessary, to slow down the pacing of the unit in order to include multiple readings of a text.

In this unit, students begin a year-long exploration of the seasons and how weather, plants, and animals are different depending on the season by studying the beauties of fall and fall harvests. Students launch the unit by setting up an ongoing weather experiment in order to understand the patterns of fall and how weather changes during fall. While gathering ongoing data about the changing weather in fall, students will learn and observe what happens to leaves in the fall and notice the difference between various types of leaves. In the second half of the unit, students explore the different harvests of fall, particularly apples and pumpkins, and discuss the basic life cycles of both. This unit is a chance for students to stop and think about the changes that are happening in the natural world around them and why the changes happen. It is our hope that by the end of the year, after studying winter and spring in subsequent units, students will have a deeper understanding of the unique features of each season.

In this unit, students explore and experience the works of four award-winning authors and illustrators; Grace Lin, Yuyi Morales, Monica Brown, and Jerry Pinkney. Students learn about each author or illustrator’s life and his or her inspiration for becoming an author and/or illustrator. Students will think critically and make connections between the author or illustrator’s life and the stories he or she writes or illustrates, and how each author’s unique personality is reflected in the words or pictures. By studying a wide variety of authors and illustrators, it is our hope that the foundations will be set for a lifelong interest in reading and books. Author studies help students develop a deeper attachment to books while also noticing and identifying the many different ways in which authors write. It is also our hope that students will use the authors in this unit as writing mentors, mimicking the author’s style while also building confidence in their own writing and unique ideas. In future units and grades, students will read additional award-winning stories written or illustrated by the different authors and illustrators from the unit.

In this unit, students explore the beauties of winter. In the first part of the unit, students learn about how snow forms and the different types of snow that fall in the winter. In the second part of the unit, students explore how animals survive in the winter and the ways in which animals meet their basic needs, even when the ground is covered with ice and snow. In the last part of the unit, students read a variety of Jan Brett texts and use what they have learned about snow and animals to make inferences about what is happening with the different winter animals in the text. By the end of the unit, students should have a strong grasp of what makes winter unique and the different ways animals survive in the winter. Due to the timing of this unit, it is our hope that students will have plenty of opportunities to interact with the vocabulary and content in the natural world around them.

In this unit, students begin to explore African American history and the civil rights movement. Students will begin the unit by thinking about the ways in which people are similar and different, including skin color, and how those differences should not define who we are or how we are treated. In the second part of the unit, students will learn about the discrimination and injustices faced by African Americans leading up to and during the civil rights movement and why it was necessary to fight for change. They will learn about how communities came together to organize and stand up to injustice. Students will also explore how Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr.’s influential leadership influenced and inspired others to fight for change. It is our hope that this unit will help instill the values of diversity, justice, and action, and that it will serve as a launch for further discussions around discrimination, justice, and valuing individuals.

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. 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 this culminating unit, students learn about how to save the earth by reducing, reusing, and recycling. Over the course of the year, students studied the different seasons, learned about how animals and plants change and survive in different seasons, and explored some of the life cycles found in nature. Now, in this unit, students think about what they can do to make sure human waste does not hurt the environment. In the first part of the unit, students learn about waste, and why waste is a problem, especially plastic waste. Students then learn about options for limiting waste, including recycling, reducing, and reusing resources. In the second half of the unit, students read stories about different people from around the world who have found ways to reduce, reuse, and recycle waste. Using what they have learned in the unit, students will then make a plan for what they can do to create a healthy community and environment.