This parent guide supports parents in helping their child at home with the 5th grade ELA content.

Students will research and report on a school system of a foreign country that they choose based on a typical school lunch.  Near the end of Unit 6 teachers will introduce students to multiple cultures by showing them typical school lunches (see website under technology accessories).  Students will base their decision of what country’s school system to look into solely on the lunch example.  

In this lesson, students analyze the ways in which Draper creates the first-person narrator of Melody and the effects these choices have on the story and the reader. Melody has cerebral palsy; instead of asking students to research about the condition before reading, this lesson invites students to learn about it through the narrator herself in the context of her story. Students meet to discuss the narrator at several pre-determined discussion points and eventually write a brief analysis of the narration.

Students read a passage from Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson and rewrite the passage changing it from first person to third person narration.

This resource, Character Perspective Charting, is an instructional method designed to reflect the actual complexity of many stories and is a practical instructional alternative to story mapping. This strategy delineates the multiple points of view, goals, and intentions of different characters within the same story. By engaging in Character Perspective Charting, students can better understand, interpret, and appreciate the stories they read.

In this lesson, students will see how artistic materials can extend knowledge. This lesson provides opportunities for students to explore and experience the meaning potential of everyday writing and drawing tools in their own writing. The lesson can adapted for older students.

This inquiry leads students through an investigation of the experiences faced by immigrant groups who traveled to New York throughout the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Read the explanation the ancient Greeks had for earthquakes.  Then read the explantion we use today.  Then compare the two.  

In this lesson, students will look behind the story at the historical, social, and cultural circumstances that shape the narrative throughout Esperanza Rising. The lesson also invites students to contemplate some of the changes Esperanza undergoes as she grows into a responsible young woman and the contradictions that she experiences.

In this lesson, students will examine the various cultural aspects of those enslaved, such as the important roles played by family names, food and religion, in shaping their identities.  Students will also explore how those same aspects continue to shape our own cultures today.

In this exercise, students will compare two books of the same genre and similar topics using questions that require students to demonstrate understanding of a text by referring explicitly to the text as the basis for answers.

Students determine how culture influences a group of people’s involvement with horses and write a story in response to the video.

Students will read a description of and passage by Albert Payson Terhune, events, questions, vocabulary, definitions, text excerpts, and a writing prompt. Students will write short answers, quotations to support a main idea, and an essay. This resource supports English language development for English language learners.

This activity asks students to imagine what it would be like to live as a worker, specifically as a child worker, in the U.S. Industrial Revolution—a time of great technological progress though often at the cost of workers’ rights. As students read, they take notes on the way the text is written—such as point of view, tone, and word choice—and how this narration effects the overall meaning.

 Students will listen to the book The Most Magnificent Thing by Ashley Spires and then collaboratively work together to make a doll that talks using the Scratch program and a Makey Makey. (These two tools were introduced and taught prior to this lesson.)

Students will learn how point of view can change and in what way point of view can be used in text to influence events.

Students read a passage from Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson and rewrite the passage changing it from first person to third person narration.

This course was created by the Rethink Education Content Development Team. This course is aligned to the NC Standards for 5th Grade ELA. 

This teachers guide for Searching for Silverheels by Jeannie Mobley includes a prereading activity, discussion questions, and writing and research activities for after reading.

In this lesson, students explore how to write from an object’s perspective. The teacher uses a picture book, Dear Mrs. La Rue, to introduce the idea of writing from a non-human’s perspective. A mini-lesson follows in which students work together to define the word "perspective." Students collaboratively write and share a short example of writing from a pencil sharpener’s perspective. Students ultimately write their own stories from an object’s perspective after reading the model story. This lesson takes multiple days as students prewrite, draft, revise, edit, and publish their stories.