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

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.

Lyman Frank Baum (1856-1919), also known as L. Frank Baum, was an American author, best known for his children’s books. Baum is the author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and its sequels. He wrote 14 novels in the Oz series. In this excerpt from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Dorothy and her friends arrive at the Emerald City. As students read, they take notes on how the Great Oz is described to Dorothy and her friends.

In this lesson, students evaluate the changes Disney made to the myth of "Hercules." By creating a plot diagram of the “real” myth, students hone in on critical differences. They then document these changes in a Venn diagram and discuss the role of audience and purpose in Disney’s decisions through the Think-Pair-Share strategy. Finally, students evaluate the changes for themselves in a summary and critique writing activity.

During this PBL, students will read a text and make it come alive by creating a 3D story map that shows the major events of the plot and the obstacles that the main character faced throughout the story. Students will then code an Ozobot to maneuver through the story and the obstacles while explaining them to an audience or their peers.

In this lesson, students begin by working in small groups to analyze differences and similarities among a selection of comics from a variety of subgenres. Based on their discussion, they determine what subgenres are represented and divide the comics accordingly. Students then analyze the professional comics' uses of conventions such as layout and page design. Finally, they create their own comics using an online tool.

A strong plot is a basic requirement of any narrative. Students are sometimes confused, however, by the difference between a series of events that happen in a story and the plot elements, or the events that are significant to the story. In this lesson, students select a topic for a personal narrative and then do the prewriting in comic-strip format to reinforce the plot structure. Finally, they write their own original narratives based on the comic strip prewriting activity, keeping the elements of narrative writing in mind. This lesson uses a version of "The Three Little Pigs" fairy tale to demonstrate the literary element; however, any picture book with a strong plot would work for this lesson.

Students are given a brief description of a rhyme scheme before being asked to determine the rhyme scheme on their own in this worksheet

In this activity, students read a fable by Aesop who was a storyteller who lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 560 BCE.

This is an online exploration poetry lesson. Students will navigate through aninteractive PowerPoint presentation and complete different tasks while acquiring knowledge on the various aspects of poetry.

In this lesson,students work to transform narrative-style letters into poetic format and they are forced to think carefully about where to end each line. Students begin by discussing letters they have written and working with an online tool as an introduction to letter poems. As a group, students look at a letter form of “This is Just to Say” by William Carlos Williams and add line breaks to turn it into a poem. They then compare the poem they created with the original, discussing why the poet made the line break choices he did. Next, students
work in small groups to rewrite another letter as a poem and then compare the various groups’ results with the original poem. Students then use a Venn diagram to compare letters and poems. Finally, they compose their own letter poems.

This teacher's guide for Lion Island: Cuba's Warrior of Words by Margarita Engle contains information about the book, discussion questions and prompts, activity suggestions including a readers theater, and ways to connect the themes in the book to other subjects.

The lesson plan will guide students while reading the novel "Love that Dog" by Sharon Creech. The discussion questions are perfect for literature circles. Provided is a summary of the book and more about the author. This resource is provided by Scholastic.

Lucinda H. Kennaley has written for Highlights. In this short story, a boy goes on his first dive for pearls in the Arabian Gulf. As students read, they take notes on how Omer feels about his first dive.

This resource helps students practice part of the RL5.5 standard using Maya Angelou's "Still I Rise" poem.

This resource helps students learn the elements of poetry through shared practice of multiple poems by Shel Silverstein. It includes an assessment using Maya Angelou's "Still I Rise" poem.

Lyman Frank Baum (1856-1919), also known as L. Frank Baum, was an American author, best known for his children’s books. Baum is the author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and its sequels. He wrote 14 novels in the Oz series. In this excerpt from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Dorothy, Toto, and the Scarecrow meet the Tin Woodman. As students read, they take notes on how Dorothy reacts to meeting the Tin Woodman and why she reacts this way.

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

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

This resource accompanies our Rethink 5th Grade ELA course. It includes ideas for use, ways to support exceptional children, ways to extend learning, digital resources and tools, tips for supporting English Language Learners and students with visual and hearing impairments. There are also ideas for offline learning.