Arendt, Mrs. / Reading & ELA

Reading

We will be reading novels and using the 5^th grade literature series throughout the school year. I love to read and equally enjoy teaching reading! I will assign a couple of projects this year that expose the students to different literary genres. These projects will be completed mostly at home but some time will be allocated for them in school. I will do my best to post the project packets and due dates up on our class website for ready access.

English Language Arts

Each week in English/Language Arts, students will have a combination of spelling, grammar and writing lessons. Regular homework will be assigned in both spelling and grammar. Please check your child's planner nightly to confirm what assignment(s) need to be completed. Homework will be posted on a homework board in the classroom as well as posted on the class website under: Daily Assignments and Classroom Calendar. If homework is not turned in by the due date, your child will be expected to stay after school for ELT (Extended Learning Time) to make up the assignment.

Spelling

There is a separate page on my website for Spelling lists and links to Spelling City and other useful websites. The following is an overview of how our Spelling program will run. We will operate on the six-day cycle (A - F day).

In order to better fulfill the requirements of the New York State Common Core Learning Standards (CCLS), the ABC team has made a few changes to our ELA program for the coming school year.

It is our plan to incorporate an even greater amount of time on writing and grammar than in the past. As a result, we have chosen 3-4 lessons from each Spelling unit that directly correlate to the CCLS instead of the typical 5 lessons plus a review unit. We feel this approach will benefit the students by allowing us to dedicate more time toward developing writing skills.

Our Spelling program will continue to run on a 6 day cycle (A day – F day) with Spelling tests being given on F days in Mrs. Arendt’s classroom and on B days in Mrs. Converse’s room. Please see the calendar schedule on our individual classroom websites for the exact dates of the Spelling tests. Test dates will also be clearly posted on the homework boards in our classrooms. Below is a list of the 5th Grade Spelling Units the ABC Team will cover this school year:

Unit	Lessons
1	1, 2, 5
2	8, 9, 10, 11
3	13, 15, 16, 17
4	19, 22, 23
5	26, 27, 28
6	31, 33, 34, 35

Writing We will be doing a lot of writing this year. I attended a month-long National Writing Project Writing workshop at Canisius College last summer and came away from the project filled with lots of great writing ideas!

We will be utilizing the East Aurora Writing Rubrics that are posted on my web page under Writing Rubrics. These rubrics incorporate the principles of both 6 Traits of Writing and Step Up to Writing.

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"If writing were an act of fairytale magic or a matter of wishing, the word process would never apply to what people do when they write." (Vicki Spandel - author of Creating Writers Through 6-Trait Writing Assessment and Instruction)

Writers understand that writing is a process involving multiple steps and plenty of time. An understanding of the process of writing is an important foundation for all young writers.

The Traditional Writing Process

Prewriting: Finding a topic, narrow it down, and mapping out a plan.
Drafting: Writers' ideas begin to come to life. Sentences and paragraphs begin to take shape.
Revising: Topics and ideas come into focus. Adding or subtracting single words, phrases or paragraphs.
Editing: Making a piece of writing more accessible to readers. Focus on punctuation, capitalization, grammar usage, paragraphing and spelling.
Publishing/Sharing: Not every piece of writing will reach this stage. This is reserved for carefully selected writing that has been carefully worked on in each step of the process.

Using Six Traits in the Writing Process

"The six-trait approach is meant to enhance and enrich a process-based approach to writing. Along with a wide set of options for revising, it gives students a language for talking and thinking like writers."

Ideas: Writing original thoughts about a specific topic and staying focused on the main idea. Through the use of clear descriptions, the writer paints a picture for the audience.

Organization: The logical and effective presentation of key ideas and details. Good organization keeps a piece of writing together and makes it easy to follow.

Voice: Sometimes called the "fingerprints of the writer on the page".

Word Choice: Refers to the language a writer chooses to express his or her ideas. Effective words are both clear and colorful.

Sentence Fluency: The rhythm and flow of language. Variety of sentence length and structure. Fluent writing is a pleasure to read aloud.

Conventions: Textual conventions cover anything a copy editor would deal with: spelling, punctuation, grammar and usage, capitalization and paragraphing.

Step Up to Writing
Students that are not well versed in sentence structure and basic paragraph development are instructed using elements from the Step Up to Writing Program.