Enduring Understandings - important ideas that students should carry with them years beyond the instruction received this year.

• Effective readers use different strategies and skills to understand a variety of texts.

• Effective readers are independent learners who use critical thinking skills.

• Effective readers are able to select and use relevant information that requires evaluating a variety of sources.

• Effective readers know that literature provides an understanding of human experience.

• Effective writers utilize the writing process to organize and strengthen all modes of writing.

• Effective writers practice and use editing skills for self and peer writing evaluation.

• Effective writers use conventions correctly.

• Effective writers write in complete sentences varying sentence structure and length using appropriately punctuated, dependent clauses.

• Effective writers identify and use the parts of speech correctly.

• Effective writers know their audience and purpose.

Essential Questions - most important “big picture” questions students should be able to answer after completing learning activities.

• What is text?  How do we apply different strategies and skills to understand a variety of texts?
• How do we communicate?  What is effective communication?  Why does effective communication require a process?
• What is standard English?  Why do we need to know and use standard English rules?
• How do we apply stylistic elements and appropriate formats?
• What is critical thinking?  How do we think critically in our lives?
• What is responsible research?  What makes information relevant?
• How do I use information?
• What is literature?
• How can we make personal connections through literature?
• What makes us human?

Standards
  Highest Frequency Standards  High Frequency Standards  Other Standards & E-skills

Reading

1c/1f/4e. Determine the main idea or essential message in a text/Find support in the text for main ideas/Explain the  text's main point and use relevant details to support the explanation.

1i.  Use context clues to determine the meaning of unfamiliar words.

4d. Make predictions, draw conclusions, and analyze.

5a. Use organizational features of printed text to locate information.

6b. Use literary terminology accurately (setting, character, conflict, plot, resolution, dialect, point of view).

6c. Apply knowledge of literary techniques (foreshadowing, metaphor, simile, personification, onomatopoeia,          alliteration, flashback).

    1d.  Make reasonable inferences from information that is implied but not directly stated.
    1g. Use words recognition skills (roots, prefixes, suffixes) to comprehend text.
    4a. Recognize an author's or speaker's point of view and purpose.
    5c. Paraphrase, summarize, and synthesize information about a topic in a variety of ways (ex. Graphic organizers).

    6a/6d. Read, respond to a variety of fiction and poetry/ Read, respond to, and discuss literature that represents points of  view from places, people, and events that are familiar and unfamiliar.

        1a. Compare and contrast fiction and poetry texts with similar characters, plots, themes.
        1b. Summarize fiction and poetry.
        1e. Infer by making connection between separated sections of a text.
        4b. Use reading to solve problems and answer questions.
        5f. Locate meanings and pronunciations of unfamiliar words using dictionaries, glossaries, and other sources.

Writing

  2a. Write in a variety of genre - narrative/descriptive, business letters, expository, persuasive.
  2b. Develop ideas and content with significant details, examples, and/or reasons.
  2c. Organize ideas so that there is an inviting introduction, logical arrangement of ideas, and a satisfying conclusion.
  3a. Identify parts of speech, such as nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, conjunctions, prepositions, and

                   interjections.
 3b. Use standard English usage in writing, including subject/verb agreement (pronoun referents, modifiers, homonyms, and homophones).
  3c. Write in complete sentences. 
  3d. Use paragraphs correctly so that each paragraph is differentiated by indenting or blocking and includes one major but focused idea.
  3e. Use conventional spelling in published work.
  3f.  Punctuate correctly (for example:  apostrophes, quotation marks, end marks, and commas).

     2d. Use transitions to link ideas.
     2e. Plan, draft, revise, and edit for a legible final copy.
     2f. Use a variety of sentence structures with varied length.
     2g. Write with a voice appropriate to purpose and audience.
     2h. Choose a range of words that are precise and vivid.

Lessons