All curriculum is directly tied to the Common Core Curriculum Frameworks and preparation for the PARCC test.
During the upcoming week students will start our second novel of the year entitled Pharaoh's Daughter. The novel is set in ancient Egypt and focuses on the struggles of one family and the conflicts between the Hebrew and Egyptian people. For ELA we will look at Pharaoh's Daughter to work on identifying character traits, character identity, motivations, character change, narrative writing, and argument writing. We will also look at the novel for content related purposes in Social Studies. The book is historical fiction and does not focus on religion beyond the beliefs of Egyptian and Hebrew cultures that connects to our Ancient Egypt and Ancient Israel Social Studies units. During the past month we have focused on preparing for our upcoming novel study by examining short stories for character traits, motivation, and change. Students are currently focused on narrative writing. Students read a short excerpt from the novel Fever 1793 performed an analysis of the characters and setting and are writing a narrative extension of the story with the focus of staying consistent with the character traits and setting provided in the original story.
Our vocabulary unit continues marching forward as well. The vocabulary is based on Greek and Latin roots used in the English language. The purpose of the exercise is to help students decode words they are unfamiliar with by looking at prefixes, suffixes, and common roots. Students will follow a similar routine every week in order to build their vocabulary and there will be a short homework assignment related to vocabulary most nights of the week. Each Friday students will have a vocabulary quiz on the words studied during the course of the week. Any school week that has at least four day in it will have vocabulary words barring unusual circumstances.
At this point we have studied fourteen Greek and Latin roots including man (hand), ped (foot), spec (see), dict (speak), ject (throw), miss (send), port (carry), sect (cut.), cred (belief), graph (write), jur (law), ben (good), mal (bad), and scrib, script (write). We are also continuing to analyze prefixes and suffixes to add to our word wall. Knowledge of common prefixes and suffixes helps students decode words and establish meaning while reading.
Our second year long unit will be our writing unit, which will always be closely linked to our content unit. Our current focus is on narrative writing and we will also be working on argument writing as we start Pharaoh's Daughter.
Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns!
Thank you!
Doug Kershaw
6 Orange ELA & Social Studies
During the upcoming week students will start our second novel of the year entitled Pharaoh's Daughter. The novel is set in ancient Egypt and focuses on the struggles of one family and the conflicts between the Hebrew and Egyptian people. For ELA we will look at Pharaoh's Daughter to work on identifying character traits, character identity, motivations, character change, narrative writing, and argument writing. We will also look at the novel for content related purposes in Social Studies. The book is historical fiction and does not focus on religion beyond the beliefs of Egyptian and Hebrew cultures that connects to our Ancient Egypt and Ancient Israel Social Studies units. During the past month we have focused on preparing for our upcoming novel study by examining short stories for character traits, motivation, and change. Students are currently focused on narrative writing. Students read a short excerpt from the novel Fever 1793 performed an analysis of the characters and setting and are writing a narrative extension of the story with the focus of staying consistent with the character traits and setting provided in the original story.
Our vocabulary unit continues marching forward as well. The vocabulary is based on Greek and Latin roots used in the English language. The purpose of the exercise is to help students decode words they are unfamiliar with by looking at prefixes, suffixes, and common roots. Students will follow a similar routine every week in order to build their vocabulary and there will be a short homework assignment related to vocabulary most nights of the week. Each Friday students will have a vocabulary quiz on the words studied during the course of the week. Any school week that has at least four day in it will have vocabulary words barring unusual circumstances.
At this point we have studied fourteen Greek and Latin roots including man (hand), ped (foot), spec (see), dict (speak), ject (throw), miss (send), port (carry), sect (cut.), cred (belief), graph (write), jur (law), ben (good), mal (bad), and scrib, script (write). We are also continuing to analyze prefixes and suffixes to add to our word wall. Knowledge of common prefixes and suffixes helps students decode words and establish meaning while reading.
Our second year long unit will be our writing unit, which will always be closely linked to our content unit. Our current focus is on narrative writing and we will also be working on argument writing as we start Pharaoh's Daughter.
Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns!
Thank you!
Doug Kershaw
6 Orange ELA & Social Studies