Explorer's Curriculum
Humanities
Social Studies:
Throughout your child's academic career in Niskayuna, five social standards form the basis for students to learn about the political, economic, geographic, and social characteristics of different world communities. These four areas are referred to as "PEGS"
Some of the concepts and themes developed are: culture, civilization, community (social aspects), economic and political systems, landforms/water bodies, and location of world communities. We focus on learning about other cultures and areas of our world as well as comparing and contrasting these global communities.
FIFTH GRADE SOCIAL STUDIES TOPICS;
I. European Exploration
Essential Question: What Was The Cost of European Exploration?
II. Slavery: John Brown
Essential Question: Can Someone Do a Harmful Act in the Name
Goodness and Justice?
LANGUAGE ARTS:
New York State has four Language Arts Standards that guide our curriculum programs are: Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing.
The English Language Arts Standards are:
Standard I: Language for Information and Understanding
Standard II: Language for Literary Response and Expression
Standard III: Language for Critical Analysis and Evaluation
Standard IV: Language for Social Interaction
Listening and Speaking Concepts:
* listening and understanding multistep directions
* listening respectfully and responsively to others' ideas
* making oral presentations in logical order
*participate in class and group discussions
*use complete sentences, age-and content-appropriate vocabulary
*initiate conversations with peers and familiar adults
*establish eye contact to engage the audience
*use appropriate voice expression and volume
Reading and Literature Concepts:
*According to NYS standards, all students must read a minimum of 25 books per year
* Students will:
learn to apply specific strategies before, during and after reading to attain the main goal of reading, which is comprehension. Some of the strategies covered this year are:
-create mental pictures -find important details
-choose appropriate books
-choose a variety of genres -use correct pace
-make connections -form judgments
-make predictions -make inferences
-sustain silent reading -generate/answer questions
-self monitor -fix errors
-summarize -activate prior knowledge
*identifying story parts (setting, characters, conflict, resolution, plot..)
*active and purposeful reading
*read with increasing fluency and confidence
*use decoding strategies
*develop a strong vocabulary
* distinguish between fiction and nonfiction
* build vocabulary through literature
* develop study skills and reference skills
* appreciate a variety of literary forms
*identify and interpret significant facts from visuals
*maintain a personal reading list to reflect accomplishments
Written Expression
The same four standards above apply to writing. That is writing for information & understanding, literary response & expression, critical analysis & evaluation, and social interaction. Thus, students will be expected to:
* practice a variety of pieces, including response journal, research, and poetry
* use an organizational format that reflects a beginning, middle and end
* develop an idea within a brief text
* write sentences in logical order to develop ideas
* use varied sentence structures
* organize sentences into paragraphs
* use the writing process (planning, first draft, revising, editing, final draft)
* begin to develop voice
* determine audience and purpose
* apply grammatical and mechanical skills; such as, punctuation, capitalization, parts of speech, and verb tense
* use observation, imagination, and logical development while writing
* use word processing
The main focus in my program is writing a clear and concise piece. That includes: a strong topic sentence, supporting details and an ending sentence that parallels the topic sentence.
Along with this, students are expected to follow the writing process which is: planning, writing a first draft, revising/editing and sometimes a final copy.
Following the process can be as important as the final product. There are a very few children who have difficulty beginning a piece using a plan. Those students will be identified and then required to create a plan at the end of their writing.
DOES SPELLING COUNT?????????
YES, YES, AND YES.... spelling does count. Simply passing a spelling test does not make one a "good" speller. Spelling is a tool for writing and requires many skills. As with reading and writing, students have varying skill levels.
The purpose of learning to spell is so that writing can become easier, more fluent, more expressive and more easily understood by others. Thus, a most appropriate place for spelling instruction is within the writing program. Active daily writing along with revising and editing is necessary for spelling development. However, for some students, direct instruction in spelling patterns is also needed.
Spelling mastery is based on the ability to spell within the context of writing. Students in my class are held accountable for spelling in ALL of their writing. This requires the skill of proofreading, revising and editing
The acquisition of spelling and proofreading skills go hand in hand. If a student spells well on tests but cannot proofread known words in daily writing, then the student is not considered to be a good speller. So knowing how to proofread is an important part of spelling.
Acquiring skill in proofreading requires two phases:
*learning HOW to proofread
*APPLYING that skill in writing
Learning how to proofread is dependent upon the development of visual skills. That is, learning how to look at each letter, group of letters or whole word in a sentence in sequence. It does little good to expect student to proofread effectively if they have not been taught how to do so, nor had sufficient practice at developing these skills.
At this level, students are just learning how to proofread. People often do not see their misspellings in the pieces they've written. Even when they say they have proofread (and indeed they have), they often read what they think they wrote, rather than what is really written. Often when proofreading, the meaning, not the mechanics takes precedence in our brains. This can become a rather tricky process as we are trying to teach students not to look at the words when reading, but rather to focus on the meaning....yet in writing, we are saying focus on the words as well as the meaning.
In my program, numerous opportunities to write will be provided. Students will be expected to proofread everything they turn in, from personal notes to formal tests. Direct instruction will be given on how to proofread. The main method is to check words backwards. Start at the last word and continue to check backwards from there. In that way students focus on the word, not the meaning.
Throughout the year you will see more and more proofreading/revising/editing going on. This can be an overwhelming process for your child and needs to happen slowly. So if you see a paper that appears to have many errors, please do not feel compelled to correct it all with your child or think that I am allowing these errors to go by unnoticed. If too much attention is paid to mechanics and not meaning, your child might get "stuck" on the mechanics, inhibiting meaning.
That's not to say that we ignore mechanics....it's a fine line we walk here!
