In this lesson, students will compare John Smith's account of the Powhatan Indians with other primary source material about the Powhatans. They will then compare ideas and facts from each source to determine similarities and differerences.

In this lesson, students play with words as they explore how prepositions work in Ruth Heller’s picture book, Behind the Mask. They first explore the use of language in the text and identify how prepositions are used. They then read and identify prepositions used in a poem. Finally, students compose their own original prepositional poems, which they publish in a multimodal format modeled on Heller’s text.

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. 

Students will play the role of newspaper reporters in order to research, write, and publish an article about the history of the Star-Spangled Banner. This is connected with the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, DC.

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.

In this lesson, students write theme poems using their content knowledge and sensory awareness of a familiar object. Students first learn about the characteristics and format of a theme poem. They then engage in an online interactive activity in which they select a graphic of a familiar object (e.g., the sun, a heart, a balloon), build a word bank of content area and sensory words related to the object, and write poems within the shape of the object. Finished poems are printed and displayed in class.

In this unit, students learn how standard of living increases as a result of international trade and how international trade creates independence.

In this lesson, the whole class analyzes a photograph and brainstorms words to describe the characters' senses and feelings. A "hot-seating" drama session follows where classmates interview each other, acting as characters in the photograph, and further exploring the characters' feelings. Students are introduced to the idea of using similes and then work in pairs to describe a character's experience. They then create a simply structured poem using their ideas and similes.

Using this student reproducible, from a ReadWriteThink lesson, students explain what friendship means to them by finishing a series of statements.

In this lesson, literature and shared writing are used to teach letter-writing format and promote authentic letter writing. Students listen to and talk about stories dealing with correspondence before participating in a collaborative, whole-group letter-writing activity. They go on to write their own letters to deliver or mail to adult school helpers, family, or friends. Students often go on to write letters on their own time, which may generate ongoing correspondence.

In this lesson, students will use thematically related texts, organized from least to most complex, to gather a word bank of supporting details and content vocabulary about a concept. Then they use these words as a basis for writing acrostic poems, which support organization of information around a central idea, as the lines of an acrostic poem are held together by the topic or main idea spelled vertically.