Units of Study for Teaching Reading

LUCY CALKINS with Colleagues from the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project

A Workshop Curriculum, Grades K–5

Unit Summaries • STATE-OF-THE-ART TOOLS AND METHODS

• RESPONSIVE, DATA-BASED INSTRUCTION

• EMBEDDED PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT K-5 UNIT Summaries

KINDERGARTEN UNIT 1: WE ARE READERS Your biggest message in this, your children’s first-ever of books. As a result, shared reading, read-aloud, and and sounds), and the knowledge necessary to use unit is that yes, indeed, they can read! You’ll know word study will be especially important to this unit. story language to support their approximations of that this unit has succeeded if, by the end of it, your Your kids will be able to sustain one kind of reading reading. Children will meanwhile pore over texts with kindergarten students declare, “We are readers!” for five or ten minutes, another kind of reading for flaps and mirrors and creatures with weird noses While you will be teaching reading strategies and another ten minutes, so that is how reading workshop and trucks with big cranes. They’ll also read “Old habits, the most important teaching will be about will proceed. The predictability of the different kinds Favorite” storybooks, returning to books that you’ll desire and identity. of reading will help your youngsters know that yes, read over and over to them. The constant refrain of indeed, they can do this thing called school. The kindergarten— “Do it again!” — means that kids are The first bend of the unit invites kids to read routine matters, the predictability matters, and the primed to learn from rereading, and in this unit you information texts and the second adds storybooks to crystal clear structure and transitions between parts lean heavily on that. Your children take comfort in the mix, so that by the second half of the unit, reading of the workshop all matter. and also love familiar texts. One aim will be to draw time for your kindergarteners will include time to them toward conventional reading. By the end of this reread and storytell familiar storybooks as well as Of course, most of your kids will be doing emergent unit, many of your students will reach a point where time to study the pictures and figure out words rather than conventional reading, which doesn’t mean they want to read a text conventionally but can’t, (as best they can) in concept books and other that their skills won’t develop in leaps and bounds— when they are craving the skills and powers to read nonfiction books. they will. Children will develop concepts of print conventionally. The next unit, Super Powers, will move (that is, an understanding that books are read from them another big step closer to the reading that they At the start of kindergarten, you won’t be able to cover to cover, left to right, top to bottom), phonemic desperately want to do. teach a minilesson, say “Off you go,” and expect your awareness (learning to rhyme, to hear component kindergarteners to sustain involvement with a stack sounds in a word), phonics (learning letter names

2 K-5 UNIT Summaries

KINDERGARTEN UNIT 2: SUPER POWERS: READING WITH PRINT STRATEGIES AND SIGHT WORD POWER At this point in kindergarten, most of your children This is also the age where your children are begging reading just the first few pages of the book. are 4 and 5 years old, still so young! But they’re also anyone and everyone to “Read it again!” They can brimming with energy and desire to read. And they read the same text a hundred times over, and that In the first bend, you’ll announce that children have are familiar enough with the daily rhythms of reading eagerness to reread beloved texts characterizes “super powers” for reading, and you’ll spotlight workshop that things work with a hum rather than in the kinds of work you’ll do and the kinds of material “pointer power,” helping children point as they read, spurts and starts. This means that you are poised to you’ll use. You can make dramatic strides with tapping each word just once, checking that their do some important teaching. To do this, it is important kids by channeling them to practice their reading reading makes sense, and anchoring their pointing by to remember that young children learn through play, superpowers with books you’ve read over and over to noting the words they know “in a snap.” through drama, through exploring. them, songs you’ve sung repeatedly, and charts The second bend rallies kids to move from familiar to you’ve made together. Your kindergartners’ unfamiliar ones and adds to students’ repertoires of This unit glories in children’s love of play. You’ll introduction to paying attention to print will be with super powers (reading strategies), teaching them to dramatize the idea that to read, people call on super familiar and beloved texts, and this will allow them to search for meaning, use picture clues, and to use the powers, just like superheroes do, thus imbuing this bring their energy and enthusiasm to the work of sound of the first letter of a word to help them read. unit with a spirit of fun and accessibility. Instead of one-to-one matching. conveying, “Let me instruct you in how to read,” you’ll In the final bend, you’ll invite students to draw on say, “Oh my gosh, we have to use our super-strength, At this stage in the year, children at benchmark will all of their super powers as they work to make their extra special powers to read this book!” Equally read emergent storybooks, shared reading texts, and voices smoother (fluency), and to communicate their important will be the message that “Superheroes unfamiliar level A and B books. “Unfamiliar” books understanding of the text (meaning). Partners will don’t give up in a jam!” are ones you’ve read only once or twice during shared share favorite parts of books during book talks. reading or books you’ve introduced to kids, perhaps

3 K-5 UNIT Summaries

KINDERGARTEN UNIT 3: BIGGER BOOKS, STRONGER READERS At this time of the school year, your kindergarten Since your children will need to carry forward the In the second bend of the unit, you’ll rally students readers are at an important juncture. They are moving reading behaviors that they worked on in the previous around the work of using their knowledge of letters from rereading mostly familiar texts to attempting unit, it makes sense to uphold the metaphor of super and sounds—their sound power—to read tricky words. more difficult books with greater independence. heroes using their reading super powers. You will You’ll teach children first to attend to the initial letter, Whereas in the Super Powers unit, texts such as “The help students to grow their banks of super power then to look to beginning consonant clusters (blends Itsy Bitsy Spider” feature heavily in children’s book reading strategies to help them face the challenges of and digraphs), and finally to move their eyes to attend baggies after repeated reading and singing of the their new books. As the unit progresses, you’ll teach to the end of unknown words. By the end of this bend, song, in this unit they’ll be shopping for unfamiliar readers that as their books get even bigger, their your students will be using more visual information, books, and doing so on their own. Many will have regular super powers need to get bigger, too. You’ll in addition to meaning and structure, to solve made the leap from reading levels A/B books to ask readers to turn their powers up to tricky words. reading books at levels C/D, and some will be beyond. “Extra Strength!” This is a significant time in reading development. The third and final bend of the unit supports students At level C, readers must use the initial consonant In the first bend of the unit, you’ll invite readers to in orchestrating all the strategies they’ve developed or consonant cluster (blend or digraph), along with study the ways books are becoming harder, so they’ll to read more complex books with accuracy, fluency, meaning and syntax to read the correct word. Many be prepared for the new work they need to do as and comprehension. This bend places a particular of your readers will be approaching level D, and these readers. You’ll teach them that they can use their emphasis on reading high-frequency words with books are written so that readers must use meaning knowledge of how patterns go—their pattern power—to automaticity. You will also emphasize the importance and syntax, and check the beginnings and endings of read texts with longer, more complex patterns. You’ll of thinking and talking more deeply about books. words in order to understand what is happening. With equip them with strategies for tackling breaks in all of this learning to do, it’s not only the children who patterns, and you’ll teach them to use their pattern have their work cut out for them! power to think more deeply about what a book is really saying.

4 K-5 UNIT Summaries

KINDERGARTEN UNIT 4: BECOMING AVID READERS Kindergarten children at this time of year are and many will come to this unit already able to attend The next bend parallels the work of Bend I, but now blooming, right along with the crocuses and the to the various patterns and pattern shifts that exist in you’ll support children in becoming avid readers of daffodils. Springtime of kindergarten is a time of the books they are reading. They know that not only nonfiction texts. They will become experts on a chosen unparalleled growth, both physically and intellectually. is there often a twist at the end, but that the pattern topic as they read alongside others in reading clubs. Your children are taller, leaner, and better able to might also change in the middle or from one page to You’ll show your students how to read like professors, control both gross-motor and small-motor skills and the next. They have learned to pay attention to what how to teach each other what they are learning, and they are ready to put their growing literacy powers to is happening in each book and to use multiple sources how to incorporate keywords that go with their topics great use. In this unit, you’ll help them to get an image of information—phonics (visual information) as well as into their talks. of what it means to be a truly avid reader—talking the whole picture (meaning)—to help them problem deeply about books, envisioning the drama of a story, solve their way through these tricky pattern changes The final bend of the unit has a celebratory feel as sharing responses with friends, and pursuing ideas. with increased accuracy and comprehension. students explore poetry, play with rhyme and rhythm, and innovate upon existing poems and songs. All This unit bookends the first unit, We Are Readers, as This first bend begins by exploring the question “What the while, they’ll be developing their fluency as they once again you help your youngsters role play their is an avid reader?” You tell kids that avid readers are continue to read alongside others in their clubs. way into being the readers you want them to become. not to be confused with aphids—avid readers are not The grand finale brings together the best aspects of Back then the rallying cry was “You are readers!” bugs you capture in a jar. Instead, avid readers are poetry— illustrating, performing, singing, and creating Now it’s “You are avid readers!” and helps them people who love reading so much they can hardly copycat poems—as you and your students celebrate believe that there are few pleasures in life that are BEAR to stop reading. They read not just during the language of poetry and books. more special. Your children will continue to engage in reading workshop, but at home, too, and all day long— playful interactions, with reading now a part of this even during line-up for gym time! You’ll move your Your children will end kindergarten not only enacting play. As they engage in “reading playdates,” children students further toward independence by helping the role of an avid reader, but believing they are avid will try out and even invent fun literacy things to do them create their own super powers charts based readers as they play their way into a powerful reading with their friends. on self-selected goals as they read fictional stories, identity that will help them transition to first grade. paying close attention to characters, setting, and plot. Your children have also grown as conventional readers

5 K-5 UNIT Summaries

GRADE 1 UNIT 1: BUILDING GOOD READING HABITS The start of the school year is a time for you to fall that first graders have lots of things they do by habit also need to begin to be more flexible with letters and in love a new class of children, noticing each child’s as readers as well. The emphasis on habits is, in a way, sounds, particularly vowels, trying both the long and quirky little self. You’ll notice Theo always carries an emphasis on working with more independence short sounds for vowels within words. a tiny toy skateboard in his pocket and you’ll note and automaticity. Pokemon cards spilling out of Max’s desk. You are If it were possible, children would love to have going to want to help your children find the same The theme “readers have good habits” unites all the a teacher sit beside them each and every time passion for reading that they have for collecting disparate reminders you will be giving kids so these they read, coaching them through tricky words or seashells and action figures. reminders are more easily remembered. In Bend confusing parts of their books. In this unit, you’ll I, you remind readers about the good habits they establish ability-based partnerships that outsource The start of the year is also a time for dusting off already use at the beginnings, the middles, and the that support to students. In turn, you tap into the the skills and habits that children learned during ends of books. For example, because it is easy for social power of peers working together to help kindergarten. It’s tricky to recap what kids learned early readers to turn all their attention to breaking children become more strategic as readers. last year in a way which doesn’t lead you to inundate the code, you’ll remind students to preview books so your youngsters with a laundry list of forgettable their work with words happens within the frame of an Jerry Harste, a prominent literacy researcher, once reminders. The solution we came to in this unit is to awareness of the entire story. said, “Our job is to create in the classroom the kind suggest you begin by saying, “You’ve grown up so of richly literate world that we believe in and then much that I bet there are things you do all the time, First graders work to become more efficient and to invite children to role play their way into being without anyone having to remind you. Thumbs up if flexible word-solvers. In Bend II, your rallying cry the readers and writers we want them to be.” Keep you always remember to turn the lights off at night, about good habits will encompass word solving as you this concept front and center in your thinking as you even without reminders. Thumbs up if you remember suggest that first graders have good habits for getting launch this year. to brush your teeth every morning. Holy Moly—this themselves unstuck as they read. First graders not class has so many good habits.” Of course, the point is only need to attend to all the parts of each word, they

6 K-5 UNIT Summaries

GRADE 1 UNIT 2: LEARNING ABOUT THE WORLD: READING NONFICTION If there is one defining characteristic of the young those standards or not, their guidance on this front is The second bend of the unit spotlights word child, it is curiosity. Think of a youngster on the solid. Think of how much of your reading is nonfiction: solving and vocabulary. First graders need to make morning after a rain storm, out on your driveway, train schedules, restaurant reviews, websites, extraordinary progress over the course of this year. crouching alongside one of the worms that has newspapers, blogs, professional books. Think of how Many will move from a level D all the way to J. To washed up in the rain. The child will ask, “Why did he much children need to learn about the world! Even move between those levels, students must integrate come out?” “Where is his mouth?” The questions will to understand any one thing—say, how clouds form— sources of information and develop flexibility at word be incessant, and they will last all day. they need to learn about weather, rain, the water solving on the run. You’ll teach readers to fix up their cycle, evaporation, gravity, forms of water, rain, air, reading at, or close to, the point of error and to use At the start of this unit, you’ll build on that natural forecasting. All that, just to mull over the grey clouds all three sources of information to do so. Many of curiosity by telling your children, “We’re going to rolling in overhead. your students will be working on using parts of words learn about the world. We’re going to swim with to word solve, breaking longer words into parts, and sharks. We’re going to travel back in time. We’ll hold It’s early in first grade and your children have a using inflectional endings such as ‘ing’. It’s important baby monkeys and crystals in our hands!” When the lot of growing to do as readers of any text, not to support their enthusiasm for this work, because as kids wonder how that can be true, you’ll unveil a new just nonfiction texts, so this unit balances support their books become more complex, words will become section of your classroom library, filled with books for nonfiction with support for reading processes. longer and they will need stamina for working through that teach about these topics and more. Children think of the first bend of the unit as being all the hard parts. Some of those hard parts will involve about how nonfiction readers become super smart unfamiliar, domain-specific vocabulary words. It will This unit on nonfiction reading comes early in the about topics, but you’ll know that as you rally children be important for your children to incorporate these year because it is important for children to know, to learn all that they can from their books, you are words they encounter into their talk. right from the start, that books can teach them also teaching comprehension strategies such as about submarines and thunder, dinosaurs and ipads. previewing the text, predicting, noticing text structure In the final bend you’ll shift your emphasis to building The Common Core and other world class standards and synthesizing information from multiple sources fluency and studying craft, teaching students to suggest that there should be a 50/50 division (the picture, the print, the text boxes). reread, to sound like an expert, and to notice between fiction and nonfiction across the whole day, craft moves. across all grades. Whether your district adheres to 7 K-5 UNIT Summaries

GRADE 1 UNIT 3: READERS HAVE BIG JOBS TO DO: FLUENCY, PHONICS, AND COMPREHENSION This unit, all about the reading process, comes at take a deep breath, have a little courage and say, “I parts of text, as well as strategies for understanding a time in the year where your readers will need to can solve this myself!” To this end, you’ll help your new vocabulary. In the final bend, you’ll help readers develop the independence necessary to make it to readers to develop a repertoire of strategies they can pull together everything they’ve learned to problem the finish line. That finish line encompasses so much have at their fingertips when the going gets rough. solve on the run and read with fluency. more than a reading level—it’s also about the level The good news is that first graders are collectors. And of processing kids are doing in their reading and the so in this unit, you will invite them to spread out not In this unit, as in many, partner work plays an mindset they have about what can sometimes feel their baseball cards, but their reading strategies. important role. It will be important that your readers like hard work. This unit sets children up to be able feel what it’s like when they understand the story, to read increasingly complex texts with accuracy, In the first bend, you’ll help your readers develop the and are able to solve words —in other words, it’s comprehension, and fluency, all of which require the mindset to take charge of their own reading. Children important that they feel what’s it’s like when their development of great problem-solving skills. Think of will learn to stop as soon as they encounter difficulty, reading is going well. A partner can help them to do this as the unit that helps you dismantle the training draw from the strategies they’ve been accumulating this, getting a sense of what it will be like to eventually wheels. “Watch out for the bumps,” you’ll say, “But I all year, and then check to see that what they’ve done do this independently. There is a something incredibly know you can do this!” makes sense. In the second bend, you’ll focus on powerful about sharing learning as a classroom strengthening and expanding students’ word-solving community. Learning together builds a sense of Your main goal then, is to help your students move strategies, reminding them to draw from multiple identity as a community. Now your readers belong to a past the initial impulse to say, “Help me!” when faced sources of information. The third bend shifts the community that sees themselves as the kind of people with a tricky word or when meaning breaks down. attention toward monitoring for meaning. Children will that watch out for problems and try to solve them. You’ll teach them that when this happens, they can learn strategies for maintaining meaning across large

8 K-5 UNIT Summaries

GRADE 1 UNIT 4: MEETING CHARACTERS AND LEARNING LESSONS: A STUDY OF STORY ELEMENTS As you are getting ready to send your first-graders things—and you’ll get to go, too.” As students travel characters and to read in a way that brings them off into the rest of their lives, the very best gift you with beloved characters to museums, zoos, imaginary to life. can give them is the knowledge that books can truly islands, or the Jurassic Age, you’ll help them to each function like the rabbit hole in Alice and Wonderland; bring along a suitcase of strategies for making sense You’ll also pave the way for interpretation work by or like the tornado in The Wizard of Oz, lifting of these longer, more complex books. showing students how to consider the messages in readers off their feet and setting them down in new stories. In the third bend, you’ll teach children that places, new times. This unit helps you do just that. The first bend invites readers to track the events of stories contain life lessons, using the metaphor that After a sequence of units focused tightly on reading the story—using pictures and words to keep track of cracking open a book is like cracking open a fortune process, this one spotlights the nuts and bolts of story the plot and journey along with the character. Along cookie and finding a message hidden within. As first elements and the skills that are foundational to literal the way, they’ll make predictions by anticipating what graders try on this deeper thinking, you won’t expect and inferential comprehension. It teaches empathy, might come next. You’ll also teach readers strategies them to master this analytical work. Instead, celebrate imagination, envisioning, prediction—all of those key for holding onto longer and more complex stories and their approximations and trust that by opening the comprehension skills that add up to engagement. determining importance to retell key details door to thinking about the bigger message a story in sequence. hopes to teach, you’ll help them to begin to think You’ll start by leaning toward your kids, looking beyond what’s on the page—work that will continue them in the eyes, and telling them, “Today, we are The second bend shifts to a closer study of characters, well beyond first grade. The unit comes to close with starting a brand new unit that will take you on lots helping readers learn all they can about main and readers recommending favorite stories to others, of adventures. Every time you open a storybook, secondary characters. You’ll teach children to draw passing along those life lessons. you’ll meet a character who is going places and doing from the details in the text to grow ideas about these

9 K-5 UNIT Summaries

GRADE 2 UNIT 1: SECOND GRADE READING GROWTH SPURT Second grade is a year in which children grow by the importance of goals and the magical combination that every time they react in their books—every time leaps and bounds, not just on the playground, but also of fluency and comprehension. In Bend II, you’ll let they giggle or gasp or sigh—it’s because the author in the classroom, as readers. To cement children’s your children know that grown up readers don’t wait did something special in the writing to evoke that expectations for a year in which they’ll grow and around for others to help them with the hard parts. reaction. Each time they have a reaction, they can ask grow and grow as readers, you’ll remind them of the You’ll say, “When second-grade readers come to a themselves, “How did the author do that?” The three beloved tale, “Jack and the Beanstalk,” explaining that tricky word, they don’t just say, ‘Help me, help me!’ bends, then, focus on fluency and comprehension, researchers who study young kids as readers say that Instead, second-graders roll up their sleeves and get word solving, reading like a writer, and making during second grade, readers grow just like to work! They draw on everything they already know reading-writing connections. that beanstalk. to figure out that hard word.” It will be critical to make reading as social as possible You’ll suggest to your students that whereas first As your students progress towards reading more this year. Second-graders are, in a way, like a young graders spend more of their mental energy on reading complex texts, they’ll be working with texts that version of adolescents. Just as this is the age when the words, second graders can often read more words, contain longer parts (chapters, sections, paragraphs) they need to push away adults, saying, “I can do it on more easily. And, this growing ease with word reading and this will require more retention across the entire my own!” This is also the age when they want to be leaves more energy for thinking more deeply about book. And it is not just that the books and the sections with their peers. Throughout this unit and this year, books. The move from a “little-kid” focus on print to of the books that are longer, the sentences will also you’ll use partners, and eventually clubs, to invite a “big-kid” focus on meaning is a challenging one, be longer and will contain more complex language readers to share their opinions, to debate with each and yet it is necessary if your children are to develop structures. Meanwhile the number of poly-syllabic other, to figure out things together, to prove their into avid readers. This unit is written to create the words increases dramatically, requiring readers to points—that is, to collaborate. mindset needed to rally them around the hard work of read across the word, breaking the word into syllables, outgrowing themselves as readers. in order to use parts of words they know to figure out the difficult words. This requires students to reach for In the first bend of the unit, you point out that in new strategies. order to grow, readers need to take charge of their growth. Readers choose not only what to read, but In the third and final bend, readers learn to read like also how to read. This portion of the unit highlights writers. You’ll start by letting your children know

10 K-5 UNIT Summaries

GRADE 2 UNIT 2: BECOMING EXPERTS: READING NONFICTION By the time you start this second unit of second grade, your students, books about other nations or what they used to read, and they’ll definitely encounter your reading workshop will be off and running. Your happens underground or Congress or volcanoes will unfamiliar vocabulary words that will pose challenges kids will be matched to books, and hopefully reading all open whole new horizons. By teaching kids to read for them. They need to be ready to use context to up a storm. For those who are flourishing as readers, nonfiction, you teach them to explore and to construct help them figure out what a word is apt to mean. this unit will offer them an important new challenge, for themselves a knowledge of the world. It’s a big To engage in that sort of figuring-out work, readers and for those who may not yet have self-identified as world out there, waiting for your students to read it! need to monitor for sense and to stop at the point of readers, this unit offers a new way to connect with error, rather than just skipping past or mumbling over reading. They may find that reading suits them better In the first bend of this unit, you send your readers the tricky words. As readers do this work, one of the when they’re studying text boxes, cross-sectional off to read lots of different books on different topics. challenges will be for them to zoom in and pause to views and charts, and learning about dinosaurs, the You’ll challenge them to live wide-awake lives, setting solve a challenging word, while not dropping their grip Milky Way, and race cars. themselves up to learn more about topics that are in on the larger content that is being taught in the book. their schema, as well as to allow books to take them to So as this unit begins, you will tell your students whole new topics. Once you move into the third bend, students will that for a time, they’ll shift from reading fiction to begin to read from text sets, choosing a topic to read reading nonfiction. For now, they’ll say goodbye to Ivy Meanwhile you’ll teach your children that nonfiction about and connecting, comparing, and contrasting and Bean, and to Captain Underpants—and hello to readers put pages of text together. They study, they information inside and across texts. It is a big deal nonfiction. And that’s a big deal. Research suggests notice details, they question the text. You’ll help to teach readers that they can read to take in new that first-graders read nonfiction for only 3.6 minutes children approach nonfiction texts with questions and knowledge. They need to know that part of what they a day. Chances are good that most second-graders ideas in mind, and to navigate and read nonfiction in will do in their minds as they read is to compare new don’t get much more access to nonfiction than that. voices that match the content. knowledge to known knowledge, and to compare So this unit will put you on the cutting edge of primary and contrast information they learn from one text, As you move into the second bend, students continue language arts instruction. another, and another. The important thing is that to read nonfiction books of their own choosing and to you’ll help your children read nonfiction to learn. You do all the intellectual work you’ve taught them to do, This unit is an opportunity not only to teach your are teaching your kids that they can actually learn only now you also highlight resourceful word solving students skills, but also to support them in developing about a topic in the world without needing a teacher. and vocabulary development. The books your children broader and richer understanding of reading. Think Books can be their teachers. of the topics they have yet to explore. For most of are reading will be far more challenging than those

11 K-5 UNIT Summaries

GRADE 2 UNIT 3: BIGGER BOOKS MEAN AMPING UP READING POWER At the start of this unit, you’ll say, “Readers, you know leads to overall improvements in reading. In this When most of your children’s books were episodic, how there are scientists who study bees, and there are unit, you’ll teach phrased reading and rereading, as comprised of a sequence of mini-chapters such as scientists who study hurricanes? Well, there are also well as fluent expressive reading. Children who read one sees in Frog and Toad, they didn’t need to keep scientists who study reading. There are professors of slowly—fewer than 70 words per minute—may have a as many characters, events, and places in mind reading; to study reading, they go into classrooms just hard time accumulating text. They may be able to tell as they need to do now. In Bend III, you will teach like ours, with their clipboards and their pens behind you what’s happening on the page but they may be comprehension strategies that help them capture their ears, and they watch and listen to kids reading.” less able to talk about how that page fits with earlier what has happened in one part of a text and carry You go on to say that these research scientists have pages in the book. You’ll teach students to work at a that forward as they read on. Finally, in the fourth and found that second grade is a time for readers to just-right reading rate, doing so in ways that improve final bend, children will choose goals for themselves experience an enormous growth spurt. comprehension. from all that you have taught and work with a club in pursuit of that goal. This is an important message to communicate In the second bend, you’ll help children explore because too often, second-graders get into a holding figurative language. As students move into more Your second graders are ready to be challenged in pattern. As expectations on third-graders sky rocket, sophisticated texts, the language becomes more new ways, tackling longer and harder books. This unit it has become especially important that second- complex. They’ll be reading passages such as this one: focuses on three aspects of reading: fluency, literary graders maintain the growth curve that characterizes “I love my hair because it is thick as a forest, soft as language, and tracking longer texts. We encourage first grade. cotton candy, and curly as a vine winding upward…” or you to bring your own new energy and resolve to this this: “Her baby wings were as limp and useless as wet unit on building foundational skills, so that the work Each of the first three bends focuses on an important paper.” You’ll teach students to read closely and to feels interesting, fresh, and challenging—yet within foundational reading skill. In the first, the focus is on monitor for sense so that when they reach passages your readers’ grasp. fluency—what researcher Timothy Rasinski refers to like these, they stop to ponder over what the author as the bridge between phonics and comprehension. may have wanted them to think and feel by choosing A solid body of evidence suggests that kids can be those images. taught to get better at fluency, and this improvement

12 K-5 UNIT Summaries

GRADE 2 UNIT 4: SERIES BOOK CLUBS Your second graders have now blossomed into almost- you’ll form clubs by joining sets of two partnerships to use word choice, figurative language, punctuation, and third-graders, and will now be tackling chapter books continue to study the series together. Your students even patterns to construct their series. Students will in this last unit. Many young readers will be more will likely relish the chance to talk to clubmates about uncover the craft that the author uses to hook readers able now to orchestrate all the sources of information the beloved cast of characters in their shared series, into the series and link the books together. Then and to get through tough words with increasing ease. and in so doing, they will develop bigger ideas than they will come together in their book clubs to read However, this confidence can also cause children to they would have developed on their own. parts aloud, and to talk across the series, comparing fall into the habit of whizzing through their reading, similarities and differences from book to book. not monitoring for sense. You may find that some As students move forward into slightly more readers need encouragement to slow down so challenging books, the recurring characters in a In the final bend, you’ll teach students to invent ways as to read more closely. This unit provides many familiar series and the predictability of these books to share their books with others. They will think about opportunities to engage children in looking at the text will provide support for their comprehension. ways to share their opinions about the series books carefully, thinking about what the text is saying and Your students will become far more adept at the that they most love with others. They will swap books about how the writer is saying it. foundational skills upon which all fiction readers rely: within and across a series, and this will give them lots previewing, envisionment, prediction, monitoring for of opportunities to talk together about why they fell In the first bend of this unit, students will begin sense, inferring, and understanding characters and in love with a particular book. At the end of this bend, reading a series with their partners, collecting other story elements. they will also begin to learn how to hold debates inside information about the main characters of their books. their clubs as another way to share and grow bigger As this part of the unit progresses, you’ll encourage In the next bend, students will start rereading a book ideas about books. them to think and talk together about the similarities in their series and engaging in inquiry, thinking about and differences that they find across the series. Then, the craft the writer uses. They will study ways authors

13 K-5 UNIT Summaries

GRADE 3 UNIT 1: BUILDING A READING LIFE This unit launches not just this year, but also your Over the rest of the unit, you’ll continue to fan reading become longer and contain more subordinate kids’ lives as upper elementary school readers. The children’s love of reading as you read aloud Stone Fox clauses and parenthetical phrases, they again need unit helps your students see themselves as people (or another book of your choice) and your children some support with fluency. who care about reading. Your students will collaborate read within-reach fiction books they’ve chosen. You’ll with each other and with you to turn the classroom equip your kids with ways to check on their literal The unit also supports envisionment and prediction— into a good place for reading, devising systems for comprehension and to use fix-up strategies when two foundational skills that are almost extensions book recommendations and plans for organizing the they’ve lost the thread of the story. You’ll also stress of each other and that when taken together, allow classroom library. key foundational skills such as synthesis. As books get readers to walk in the shoes of a character. When longer, it is important for readers to grasp how a new readers do this, it is almost impossible for them not Right from the start of third grade, your emphasis will part of a story fits with earlier parts. to predict—they read, anticipating, worrying, co- not only be on getting students to love reading, but constructing the story line. For readers to predict what also on helping them work with resolve to ramp up Without foundational skills in word solving and will happen next in a story, they must draw on their their reading skills. This will begin with them reflecting vocabulary, third graders will not be able to do the theories about characters’ traits, about the theme of a on performance assessments and using new learning work expected of them in literal comprehension, story, about the unfolding story structure. Prediction progressions to ratchet up the level of their work on interpretation, or analytic reading. You’ll support and envisionment, then, require that readers move those assessments. You’ll show your students that kids who need to strategies for tackling multi-syllable beyond reading with blinders on, and instead keep in with deliberate effort, they can accelerate their skills words and figurative language. Fluency is also a very mind both the page at hand and the entire book—that in ways that are visible to them, to each other, and to big deal for third-graders. The unit will not only help which is behind them and that which lies ahead. The you. This first bend in the unit gets readers started children who read robotically, in two- or three-word commitment to support prediction and envisionment, keeping track of their reading and studying their data phrases, but it will also help proficient third-grade then, is a commitment to helping youngsters engage to set goals and make plans. readers who are finding that as the sentences they’re in minds-on-fire reading.

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GRADE 3 UNIT 2: READING TO LEARN: GRASPING MAIN IDEAS AND TEXT STRUCTURES This unit is one of many in this series that supports anticipating that it will follow the template that they’ll about their reading, and you’ll help them know they students in developing a rich life of nonfiction reading. soon refer to as “boxes and bullets.” If your third- can have conversations in their own minds as a way to In fact, this unit could be titled, “Foundational Skills of graders expect an infrastructure of big ideas followed grow ideas. Nonfiction Reading,” because it addresses skills that by supportive information, and if they learn to use are essential to reading nonfiction. text features, white space, and transitional phrases to Finally in Bend III, you will help children navigate help discern that infrastructure, they will be able to narrative nonfiction texts, using their knowledge of You will teach youngsters that readers of nonfiction glean what matters from texts. story structure to help them determine importance. read a long stretch of a nonfiction text, then pause You’ll be amazed at how your children’s grasp of after reading that long chunk of text to grasp what the The main work in Bend I involves teaching children biographies improves when they stop recording minor author highlighted as especially important. The little to read expository nonfiction with eagerness, facts—the name of the subject’s elementary school— facts that matter are those that support, illustrate, interest, and fluency, ascertaining the main ideas and look instead for traits, motivations, challenges, and embody the big ideas, and readers aim to and recognizing the infrastructure of a text. Bend and ways of overcoming challenges. Students will construct a mental summary, complete with big ideas II helps readers go beyond that work to compare also be taught how to shift between reading with a and supporting details. You’ll help your third graders texts, think critically, and apply the information they lens of story and reading them with a lens of gleaning know that it is important for them to be able to read learned. You’ll encourage readers to ponder over what information. an informational text in such a way that they can turn they have read—agreeing with it, disagreeing, and around and teach the main idea and the supporting comparing it to other texts and to prior knowledge. This unit not only spotlights nonfiction, it also points to someone else. That will be easiest for You remind them that they read differently when they provides students with skills that are foundational to them to do if they approach a new expository text know they are going to participate in conversations reading nonfiction in our 21st century world.

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GRADE 3 UNIT 3: CHARACTER STUDIES Talk to any avid reader about the book he or she This work brings with it new challenges. In second students’ abilities to be resourceful word solvers, is reading, and that reader will tell you about the grade, your students may have found it relatively drawing both on context clues and on their knowledge characters. It is characters who lure us into books, easy to point to the problem and the solution in of prefixes, suffixes, and some common root words to and characters who keep us reading. How much we a story, or to a character’s traits, or to the way a figure out new words. You’ll notice whether your kids’ love a character affects how much we love the book. character changed. All of that becomes vastly more abilities to envision and predict are strong. Pause at a A deeply unsatisfying character often leaves us with a difficult as children begin to read longer and more spot in a read-aloud when most readers would predict, sense of something lacking, whereas a character who nuanced books. It can sometimes take a fair amount and then say to your students, “Jot what you think will grows and changes leaves us oddly proud, as if we had of thinking for a third-grade reader to figure out happen next!” Ask students to assess their predictions something to do with it! ways in which the character changes across a book. against the learning progression that they came to Has the character come to a new realization? Did the know well earlier this year. By doing this, you will not This unit begins with a close study of characters. character’s behavior change? And what key moments only check in on your students’ abilities to predict, In the first bend, you invite children to get to know contributed to the change? you’ll also remind students that all of your teaching is characters by studying them deeply, first observing, meant to make a lasting difference. then coming up with ideas, then investigating patterns Of course, to truly grasp the essence of stories, that reveal deeper traits and motivations to articulate students need to deepen their interpretation skills Finally, the third bend of this unit directly supports evidence-based theories. Readers will use those and consider what big lessons a character might be students in doing the important compare and contrast theories to make predictions as they follow their learning through the problems that he or she faces, work that is expected of them. They will compare and character on his or her journey across the story—a and this relates to the larger messages or ideas a contrast not only characters, but also the problems journey that follows the shape of a predictable story story aims to convey. The big new work for third grade characters encounter and how they react, the settings, mountain, as they will learn in the next part of the is that children will learn to express a lesson at some and the lessons characters learn (the themes unit. This focus on story arc and on the interaction length and support their thinking with details from authors convey). between character and other story elements, is part the story. of the work of seeing the character as part of the larger story. Students will learn that what characters This unit will continue to support students in the do in stories influences both other characters and the foundational skills that were front and center during events that unfold. the first fiction unit of the year. You’ll assess your

16 K-5 UNIT Summaries

GRADE 3 UNIT 4: RESEARCH CLUBS: ELEPHANTS, PENGUINS, AND FROGS, OH MY! This unit is one of our favorites. Teachers who piloted engage in reading for the main idea and not because they will learn about dolphins or turtles, it were flat-out astonished at the level of energy cross-text synthesis. but because they will learn to learn—perhaps the from their kids, and at the growth the children made. single most important academic skill we can offer our One of the minilessons preaches the importance of In Bend II, clubs transfer what they learned into the students as we set them out into the world. approaching a topic with zeal, and that rallying cry study of a second animal. Eventually you’ll teach became a mantra for many of the classes that piloted children to compare and contrast across animals—you This unit is a precursor to a similar unit that is taught the unit. and the children will be surprised to learn that yes, in fourth grade, when children study different forms spiders and tigers actually are the same in some of extreme weather in groups. This unit also sets the To begin Bend I, your kids form clubs, and each ways! The unit will end with children applying their stage also for independent research projects that club studies an animal. You’ll teach your children to knowledge of animals to solve real-world problems, students tackle in fifth grade. Expect, then, that the preview the collection of texts on their animal and such as creating a better habitat for animals in zoos work your kids undertake will be challenging, and they then to each take a subtopic at a time and read across or investigating why certain animals are no longer won’t entirely master it. The only way in which our books on that subtopic, starting with an easier book thriving in their environments. children will possibly be ready for the challenges of so as to develop the background knowledge needed the 21st century is if we invite them into heady to handle more detailed and challenging texts. As This unit, then, is more than a unit on information intellectual work. one club member researches the animal’s habitat and reading. It is a unit on research. Information is another, the animal’s life cycle, you’ll teach them all exploding at a breathtaking pace and the young to synthesize and organize what they are learning. people in your care need to turn to texts as their Your budding researchers will also use the learning teachers, learning from them as they learn from you. progression to ratchet up their skill levels as they This unit has the power to change your students’ lives,

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GRADE 4 UNIT ONE: INTERPRETING CHARACTERS: THE HEART OF THE STORY In fourth grade, you’ll help your students read deeper, attention to what characters say and do, recognizing grasp concrete, accessible ways to lift the level of seeing more in texts. A character study is a perfect how this gives them windows into character traits, their work. They’ll learn that with deliberate goal- venue for getting your students to read with this they’ll now give special attention to the complexity driven effort, they can form interpretations that are sort of deep engagement. You will rally students’ of their characters, realizing they are people with supported across a whole text and find meaning in enthusiasm for building substantial ideas about complications and flaws. By helping children see the recurring images, objects, and details. characters—ideas that are grounded in evidence, not bigger issues with which characters are grappling, you lightweight ideas. lead them to build on their work with characters in Although you’ll be reading aloud realistic fiction, your order to think also about themes. Fourth-graders are students will devour fiction books of every genre. Your Many students will enter fourth grade reading to grasp expected to read, developing and testing ideas on the instruction will help them to draw on their knowledge the sweep of a story, so it will be important that as run, in addition to being able to look back and trace a of different fictional genres to position themselves to they move into more complex texts, you teach them to theme through different parts of the story. read actively and intensely from the start. If the story read more closely and to see significance in the small is a mystery, they’ll be trying to collect enough clues details. You’ll read aloud a text that invites this work; As your students develop skills that are essential for so they solve it before the crime solver does. If the the unit is built around DiCamillo’s The Tiger Rising, interpretive and analytic reading of fiction—skills such story is fantasy, they’ll expect to learn about a quest. but you could substitute another text if as inference, interpretation, and thinking about craft Whatever the genre, your students to be more alert to you prefer. and structure in texts—they’ll rely on the performance the structure of a story than ever before, because at assessments and learning progressions to help them this level, stories are not always told sequentially. Whereas in third grade, students learned to pay

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GRADE 4 UNIT 2: READING THE WEATHER, READING THE WORLD: PURPOSEFUL READING OF NONFICTION This unit continues the effort across the series to effects. Those finding cue words such as “Similarly, . natural disasters. One group will take on hurricanes. equip students to engage in the nonfiction reading . .” and “However, these differ because. . .” can set up Another will study tsunamis, earthquakes, drought, work that is highlighted in every iteration of 21st mental or physical note taking systems which prepare floods, and tornadoes. You’ll help each team and each century standards. In third grade, your students them to list ways things are similar and ways they reader to research one subtopic and then another, learned the importance of previewing nonfiction texts, are different. reading across their source material to learn about asking, “How does this text seem to be structured?” the causes or effects of the event, or the ways of and then using that sense of text structure to orient The reader who can distill the main ideas and measuring, forecasting, and preparing for it. Your their reading. They learned that if the text is a important points of a nonfiction text is able to teaching will support cross-text synthesis, channeling traditional expository text, it pays off to look for the summarize. Learning to summarize requires not only kids to think about how new information can add to or main idea and supporting points. If the nonfiction text that students can informally outline a text, but that challenge information they have already learned, and is a narrative nonfiction text (as most biographies they can be selective, as summaries should be brief. the learning progressions will function as co-teachers, are, for example), it pays off to use a story frame to This work is highlighted in the Common Core and helping to show students concrete ways that with determine importance, looking for the main subject’s other global standards. It is important intellectual elbow grease, they can improve their work. You’ll also traits, motivations, problems, responses to problems, work because readers need to get their mental arms teach readers to adjust their reading strategies when and eventual resolution. Although students were around a text in order to think about and off-from that reading dense scientific portions of their texts, such taught that basic work in third grade, it is work that text, critiquing and applying the contents of it. as scientific explanations and the graphs. requires a lot of continued instruction. During Bend I, students read far and wide, picking up Bend III will have students taking on a different, yet Bend I of this unit continues the work of helping any nonfiction text that interests them. They start related topic of extreme weather or natural disaster. students read texts with an awareness of the text reading easy texts and doing important work with Students will practice close reading and comparing structure—work that becomes more challenging as them. Then they choose more challenging texts, and contrasting content between texts, as well as the texts become longer and more complex. The unit and with your help, do similar work with those texts. aspects of authorial intent, such the tone and craft. goes further, suggesting that when expository texts Within this context of high-interest engagement, you Readers also practice evaluating sources to determine are organized into specific text structures such as bring kids backstage to show them that reading as their credibility. This unit ends with several options for problem-solution and compare and contrast, readers a researcher is well within their grasp. Research is celebration, one which calls students to live their lives who discern this can use their knowledge of text poking and prying with a purpose in mind, not unlike differently in the light of what they have learned: to be structures to figure out what is and isn’t important what they did when they were little and found an activists for awareness around extreme weather and in the text. For example, students reading an article earthworm lying sprawled across the sidewalk. natural disaster events. about California’s drought can think, “This looks like a In Bend II, children will form research teams to poke cause and effect text” and then be alert for a list of and pry into topics related to extreme weather and

19 K-5 UNIT Summaries

GRADE 4 UNIT 3: READING HISTORY: THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION This unit is about the American Revolution and know, paying special attention—as historians do—to the In Bend III, students work in partnerships to begin the beginnings of this country. It’s about the Sons people, geography, and chronology. You’ll also teach a new research project on the time period after the of Liberty, the Minutemen, and Constitutional students strategies for tackling more difficult Second Continental Congress. After students orient Convention. But actually, if you are teaching this unit primary sources. themselves to their new topics by reading accessible in Singapore or Finland, or if you are teaching from texts, you will teach them strategies for tackling a state that teaches the American Revolution in fifth Bend II moves the chronology to the eve of the increasingly complex texts. You will teach them to grade (not in fourth), the unit would still stand as a American Revolution. Students continue their preview and paraphrase, and to study all parts of a unit on researching history. research, preparing to debate the question of text to extract the main ideas. Vocabulary will have a independence from Great Britain. You will teach special emphasis, as you teach strategies for learning This unit builds on the work of the first fourth-grade them that historians study multiple points of view the definitions of new domain-specific words and nonfiction unit,Reading the Weather, Reading the to gain a complete picture of past events. Students using those words at a deeper level. Approaching World, and guides students on a journey of learning to will prepare to take sides on this great question, with the end of the bend, you will teach students how to read like historians. In the first bend, students embark some researching the Patriots’ viewpoint, and others draw on their growing body of knowledge to consider on a research project about the events leading up researching the Loyalists’ perspective. As they gather new questions and answers about their topic. Your to the American Revolution. You’ll teach them how evidence and angle it to support their side, they will students will begin to see how the past and the to begin building knowledge by reading accessible hone their skills of supporting a position with reasons present are connected, and how the past continues to texts, showing them how researchers lean on text and solid evidence. The bend culminates with a affect us today. structures to organize their notes and their thinking. reenactment of the Second Continental Congress, with As students focus on a subtopic, you’ll teach them your students debating the question of independence how to synthesize new information with they already for America.

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GRADE 4 UNIT 4: HISTORICAL FICTION CLUBS In this final unit of study in fourth grade, readers children consider how work that was introduced in assess their own interpretations of theme by holding dive into historical fiction book clubs. These clubs Number the Stars plays out in other historical fiction. in their mind an internalized sense of the qualities invite students to begin reading analytically right Children will also read several novels, as well as a of a strong interpretation, and comparing their work from the start, to synthesize complicated narratives, picture book, so that the unit is truly a study of this with this list. Indeed, working to raise the level of their to compare and contrast themes, and to incorporate literary genre, not one book. thinking work is the main work students will do in this nonfiction research into their reading. It’s a beautiful bend, and you’ll see that the focus of your teaching intellectual journey, and the stories themselves At the start of the unit, in Bend I, you’ll help readers to will be on moving children to do more intellectual sweep the children along with their exciting dramas. read analytically, inviting them to analyze complicated work with more independence. No matter your readers’ levels, this unit of study will settings and multiple plotlines. The emphasis here is deepen their comprehension, their text analysis, and on monitoring for comprehension in harder books, In Bend III, you’ll invite readers to think between their knowledge. and on synthesizing more complex story elements. relevant nonfiction texts and their novels. They will Readers learn to consider how one part of a text is think about how the information from nonfiction texts The unit is structured so that children are divided related to the rest of the text, which means thinking enlarges their understanding of the characters, their into small clubs. Each club will read several novels and talking deeply about craft and structure. This struggles, their perspectives, their insights, and their set within a historical time period, and research work is crucial as your readers move up levels of knowledge of history. Students will call on strategies nonfiction, including primary sources such as text complexity, and your conferring and small-group for reading nonfiction to glean knowledge and to historical images. Anchoring the work will be an all- work will also focus on helping children make their apply it to other texts. This bend has a strong cross- class immersion in Number the Stars, Lois Lowry’s reading practices more complex as they read more text emphasis, with children learning to think across award winning book about a young girl in Denmark complicated novels. fiction and nonfiction, across story and history, and coming of age during WWII. It’s a story of courage and across the books they have read now, in the past, and awakening. The minilessons in the unit of study use Bend II shines a light on interpretation, helping their own life. this text as a demonstration text. Children, meanwhile, students to engage in ambitious intellectual work and will practice and extend the work in their club novels. building on the work in Unit 1, Interpreting Characters: You’ll see an emphasis on transfer across the unit, as The Heart of the Story. Your readers will learn to

21 K-5 UNIT Summaries

GRADE 5 UNIT 1: INTERPRETATION BOOK CLUBS: ANALYZING THEMES Right from the start, this unit goes for the gold, we’ve built the unit around Home of the Brave but you from the text best support each of those themes and teaching students the best of what it means to read could substitute another text if you prefer. which theme is most important in this story. Sorting, literature. Teachers who piloted this book said they’d categorizing, and ranking details needs to become a never seen such extraordinary work from their Then in Bend II, you organize the class into clubs, natural part of the interpretive process. children. The quality of work probably comes, in large each of which convenes around multiple copies of part, from expectations. The fact that students work a shared novel. You’ll channel those clubs to study By Bend III, you’ll lift the level of students’ thinking in clubs within a week or two of the start of fifth grade novels with nuanced characters and multiple subplots, about texts by helping them notice the ways different is emblematic of the way this unit conveys that fifth and then you’ll help students read asking, “What authors develop the same theme, and you’ll help grade will be a time for an intellectual independence might this book be REALLY about?” Fifth-graders them compare and contrast several texts that develop and heady expectations. are at an age when almost everything stands for a similar theme. How do these two texts—both of something else. Sneakers can be a symbol of fitting in which deal with the issue of loss—develop their theme In Bend I, you’ll set students up to participate in an or of individuality, an overheard comment can mean differently? As students approach middle school, intellectual growth spurt by rallying them to take (at least for the moment) the ending of a friendship. expectations for analytic reading increase. Think of seriously the challenge to write well about their Asking your students to take seriously the challenge analytic reading as the sort of intellectual work that a reading. For now, your children will read fiction books of reading interpretively in the company of friends is a scholar does, pulling back from a text and surveying of their own choice. Meanwhile the strategies you perfect way to start fifth grade! it with dispassionate objectivity, hoping to understand teach to lift the level of their writing about reading how the pieces fit together. This is work that the will remind them to draw on a repertoire of ways After your students name the most important thing Common Core and other global standards highlight, for reading closely and thoughtfully, alert to the a text teaches, you’ll teach them to think, “Okay, and and it is work that students who write and who read interaction of story elements and aware of details that what else might this teach?” The expectation that a like writers have long done. When students step back seem to represent big ideas. You’ll help them look at novel supports more than one theme will nudge them from a text and think, “How does this part contribute the text through the lens of their first tentative ideas to take up aspects of the text that aren’t accounted to the whole text?” or “What is the work this portion and questions, so that as they read on in a text, they for by the theme that springs first to mind. As this of the story does for the whole story?” or “Why might develop evidenced-based accountable theories. You’ll bend unfolds, you will help students know that the author have done this?” the payoff is immense, demonstrate this work using a rich read aloud text— their job is not just to think about more than one both in reading and students’ own writing. overarching idea, but also to weigh which details

22 K-5 UNIT Summaries

GRADE 5 UNIT 2: TACKLING COMPLEXITY: MOVING UP LEVELS OF NONFICTION The nonfiction texts your fifth-graders are reading are supports students as they summarize complex texts. Reading analytically is a very big deal for fifth graders. complex; they raise significant challenges. Gone are You’ll support students in analyzing differences in the supportive headings and subheadings, as well as If your fifth-graders expect to encounter complexities perspective across texts, particularly differences that the pop-out sentences that highlighted main ideas in in their texts, and if they learn that instead of tie into craft or structure decisions an author makes. the passages your students used to read. What’s more, becoming discouraged they should to turn to You’ll also support skills such as cross-text synthesis. engaging visuals and catchy fonts can make these strategies for support, then they will be able to As students read across texts on their inquiry topics, texts appear deceptively simple, leaving readers to independently tackle challenges in texts. The far- they need to not only form categories that capture gloss over complexities and lose track of meaning. reaching impact of what you teach in this bend will their learning as they read deeply within a subtopic, show itself in the ways your students deal with the but they also need to notice contradictions within This unit teaches students to embrace complexities difficulties they encounter in texts long after they texts and think deeply about what might be causing in their high-interest nonfiction texts. Across Bend I, have left you. those contradictions. Then, too, growing ideas you’ll rally students to join you in a giant investigation matters. You’ll encourage your fifth-graders to move Across Bend II, your fifth-graders will pursue into the ways nonfiction texts are becoming complex, beyond reading a text and taking its ideas at face independent inquiry projects on the topic they are and you’ll equip students with skills and strategies value, to instead thinking deeply about a text, to make most interested in, be it infectious diseases, outer that help them tackle these new challenges. You’ll their own connections and spark their own ideas, so space, or their favorite pop star. You’ll rally students teach students that readers of nonfiction come to they are ready to contribute their own thinking to the to first learn through primary research, conducting texts expecting to encounter multiple main ideas, grand conversations on their topics. some implicit. Then, rather than listing all the details surveys, interviews, and observations, and to use that that support each main idea, you’ll teach readers to research to identify main ideas, so they return to texts Your students do not need to wait until they are think, “What are the strongest supportive details?” on their topics with expert eyes. The first unit for fifth adults to see the power of embarking on a learning and to sort and rank those details. grade, Interpretation Book Clubs: Analyzing Themes, journey, one that feeds a passion or question of placed a special emphasis on writing about reading their own. John Dewey wrote, “Education is not a Reading complex nonfiction requires strong from fiction texts, and your teaching now will help preparation for life; education is life itself.” Across this foundational reading skills, so this bend emphasizes students write about their nonfiction reading in ways unit, you will communicate to students that following fluency, orienting to texts, and word solving. A that are similarly engaging and productive. Across interests of their own matters and is valued in your particular spotlight is placed on increasing vocabulary this work, you will support students in transferring classroom. Being a strong reader of nonfiction and an demands, and you’ll teach students to look around everything they’ve learned about making meaning independent researcher leads you to live more deeply. words and look inside words to determine the from complex texts to texts on their inquiry topic. meaning of new words. Taken together, this work

23 K-5 UNIT Summaries

GRADE 5 UNIT 3: ARGUMENT AND ADVOCACY: RESEARCHING DEBATABLE ISSUES This unit continues to take students along the path of on each issue. Students will read a variety of of the author as they read across texts on a topic. By the ambitious reading work in which it is necessary informational and argumentive texts, and then debate the end of the bend, the debates you hear should be for them to engage in order to meet the expectations the issue, work which will push their cross-texts deeply informed and nuanced, showing students’ firm of global standards, as well as to live as active, critical synthesis skills to new heights, as well as support grasp of the complexity of the issues they have citizens. The standards call for students to read their abilities to make their own arguments. Across been studying. across multiple points of view on topics or issues, the bend, they will continue to engage in debates, comparing ideas, information, and perspectives. This while you ramp up the level of their research, teaching In Bend III, you’ll rally students to study a new issue, is also work that is at the heart of being an informed them that research is a cycle of reading and thinking reminding them to use all they have learned about citizen—understanding different positions on issues in response to that thinking and showing them how to research, reading informational and argumentive and the reasons behind these positions, analyzing the summarize arguments. texts, and using conversations as tools for strengths and merits of each of these positions and understanding. You’ll push them into higher-level ultimately, forming one’s own thoughtful viewpoint on This start of the unit, then, rallies students into work critical literacies work by asking them to consider an issue. that the researcher Gerald Graff (2003) calls “central why texts were made and who benefits from them. to being educated”—the work of listening closely to Students will continue to apply critical and analytical In Bend I of this reading unit, you’ll rally students others, summarizing them in a recognizable way, and lenses to the texts they read as they work to into work that is foundational to the unit—the work making your own relevant arguments” (p. 2). understand their new issue, debate these issues and of analyzing arguments—with a one-day argument formulate thoughtful, ethical, evidence-based, logical intensive in which students read and analyze a variety In Bend II, you will continue to push students to positions. By the end of the unit, you’ll show them the of arguments. With this experience in mind, students dig deeper into research. They’ll develop deeper relationship between argument and advocacy and will then work in research clubs, each club studying a questions and new ideas on their issue, and they will students will apply their argument writing practices debatable, current issue. (Should we ban or support engage in more complicated conversations. You will to raise the awareness of others on the issue. This zoos? Are extreme sports worth the risks?) To study teach them to read and reread more difficult texts unit is intended to accompany The Research-Based the issue, students will read text sets included in the with a critical eye, showing students that they can Argument Essay Unit (Heinemann, 2013), though both unit which are designed to offer different perspectives consider and compare perspective, craft, and strength units can be taught as stand alone units. of argument, in addition to the information and ideas

24 K-5 UNIT Summaries

GRADE 5 UNIT 4: FANTASY BOOK CLUBS: THE MAGIC OF THEMES AND SYMBOLS In this fourth and final unit of fifth grade, you’ll find There is a tremendous emphasis on transfer in this and themes within and across their novels. You’ll an emphasis on developing students’ knowledge of unit. The teacher introduces new work through a also lead students to engage ever more deeply by literary traditions, encouraging students to read with read aloud of a riveting fantasy novel for children (we considering the implications of the conflicts, themes, more maturity and independence. The unit reflects suggest The Thief of Always), as well as a few short and lessons in the stories they read for the lives an acute awareness that students will be going on texts. Meanwhile, students will practice this work students lead and want to lead. in middle school and the rest of their lives as truly across the several fantasy novels, each time exploring independent readers. We need to ensure they are how the work differs slightly in different texts. As you move into Bend III, you’ll focus students on ready to make their own way through longer and more dealing with the challenges that harder novels pose. complicated books, to form their own study groups At the start of the unit, students will find that they Part of this work will involve really working on kids’ around reading, and to work through hard parts with a need to read analytically right away, as they consider habits as readers—getting them, for instance, to go toolkit of strategies and a sense of resiliency. the work authors do at the very beginning of a novel outside the book to build knowledge, or to not ignore to develop the setting as a physical place and a hard words but to study how authors introduce them, The unit is structured so children work in small book psychological one. Comprehension work really matters and to use a variety of strategies to actively learn new clubs, reading fantasy series. They’ll read several in more complex narratives. You’ll alert students to vocabulary as they read. novels so they become deeply immersed in this ways that novels become more challenging and lead literary genre, and also so they can develop the your readers through more tricky narratives, teaching Finally, in Bend IV, readers learn to capitalize on kind of higher level thinking skills needed to study them, for instance, to learn alongside the main their expertise by investigating fantasy as a literary how authors develop characters and themes over character, and to suspend judgment as they carefully tradition—and studying how the thinking work time. Indeed, whether students are reading Dragon analyze scenes that introduce new and complicated developed through reading fantasy novels will pay off Slayers’ Academy or The Harry Potter Series, they’ll characters and places. in other genres. Expect students to read hundreds of synthesize details and make connections across pages, to think and talk like young literary theorists, hundreds of pages in this unit of study. In Bend II, you’ll lead students to think metaphorically and to fall ever more in love with reading. and analytically, teaching them to explore the quests

25 NEW from Lucy Calkins UNITS OF STUDY for Teaching Reading A WORKSHOP CURRICULUM ◆ Grade-by-Grade, K–5

Lucy Calkins and Colleagues from the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project

“ This series builds on decades of teaching and research--in literally tens of thousands of schools. In states across the country, this curriculum has already given young people extraordinary power, not only as readers, but also as thinkers. When young people are explicitly taught the skills and strategies of proficient reading and are invited to live as richly literate people do, carrying books everywhere, bringing reading into every nook and corner of their lives, the results are dramatic.” —Lucy Calkins

Following on the success of the Units of Study in Opinion, Information, and Narrative Writing, the new grade-by-grade Units of Study for Teaching Reading, K–5, will:

◗ provide state-of-the-art tools and methods to help students move up the ladder of text complexity

◗ build foundational reading skills and strategies

◗ support the teaching of interpretation, critical reading, synthesis, and main idea

◗ offer classroom structures to support inquiry and collaboration

◗ help teachers use learning progressions to assess students’ reading work, develop their use of self-monitoring strategies, and set students on trajectories of growth

◗ give teachers opportunities to teach and to learn teaching while receiving strong scaffolding and on-the-job guidance.

Learn more at @HeinemannPub unitsofstudy.com/teachingreading Heinemann.com | P 800.225.5800 | F 877.231.6980