ALEX Classroom Resources

   View Standards     Standard(s): [SC2015] (5) 16 :

16 ) Collect and organize scientific ideas that individuals and communities can use to protect Earth's natural resources and its environment (e.g., terracing land to prevent soil erosion, utilizing no-till farming to improve soil fertility, regulating emissions from factories and automobiles to reduce air pollution, recycling to reduce overuse of landfill areas).

[ELA2021] (5) 5 :

5. Demonstrate fluency when independently reading, writing, and speaking in response to grade-level literary and informational text, including stories, dramas, poetry, and cross-curricular texts.

[ELA2021] (5) 22 :

22. Determine the implied and/or explicit main idea in literary and informational texts.

The teacher will present an informational text from the website, ReadWorks. Students will interact with this non-fiction text by annotating the text digitally. The students will answer the questions associated with the article as an assessment. This learning activity can introduce students to the concepts of recycling and conservation, serve as reinforcement after students have already learned this concept, or be used as an assessment at the conclusion of a lesson. 

   View Standards     Standard(s): [SC2015] (5) 17 :

17 ) Design solutions, test, and revise a process for cleaning a polluted environment (e.g., simulating an oil spill in the ocean or a flood in a city and creating a solution for containment and/or cleanup).*

[ELA2021] (5) 5 :

5. Demonstrate fluency when independently reading, writing, and speaking in response to grade-level literary and informational text, including stories, dramas, poetry, and cross-curricular texts.

[ELA2021] (5) 16 :

16. Demonstrate comprehension of varied literary and informational texts by utilizing its content when discussing or writing in response to the text.

The teacher will present an informational text from the website, ReadWorks. Students will interact with this non-fiction text by annotating the text digitally. The students will answer the questions associated with the article as an assessment. This learning activity can provide the background information needed for students to design a solution for cleaning a polluted environment, serve as reinforcement after students have already learned this concept, or be used as an assessment at the conclusion of a lesson. 

   View Standards     Standard(s): [SC2015] (5) 15 :

15 ) Identify the distribution of freshwater and salt water on Earth (e.g., oceans, lakes, rivers, glaciers, ground water, polar ice caps) and construct a graphical representation depicting the amounts and percentages found in different reservoirs.

[ELA2021] (5) 5 :

5. Demonstrate fluency when independently reading, writing, and speaking in response to grade-level literary and informational text, including stories, dramas, poetry, and cross-curricular texts.

[ELA2021] (5) 22 :

22. Determine the implied and/or explicit main idea in literary and informational texts.

The teacher will present an informational text from the website, ReadWorks. Students will interact with this non-fiction text by annotating the text digitally. The students will answer the questions associated with the article as an assessment. This learning activity will describe the freshwater distribution on the Earth's surface and provide a graphical representation of freshwater reservoirs. This activity can serve as reinforcement after students have already learned this concept or be used as an assessment at the conclusion of a lesson. 

   View Standards     Standard(s): [ELA2021] (3) 11 :

11. Read and reread grade-appropriate poetry, practicing phrasing, rhythm, rhyme, and meaningful expression.

[ELA2021] (3) 18 :

18. Demonstrate content knowledge built during independent reading of informational and literary texts by participating in content-specific discussions with peers and/or through writing.

[ELA2021] (3) 42 :

42. Write poetry or prose in response to visual images to interpret their meanings.

[ELA2021] (4) 25 :

25. Explain how the form of a poem contributes to its meaning.

[ELA2021] (4) 32 :

32. Respond in writing to literature and informational text, including stories, dramas, poetry, and cross-curricular texts, both independently and with support, demonstrating grade-level proficiency.

[ELA2021] (5) 5 :

5. Demonstrate fluency when independently reading, writing, and speaking in response to grade-level literary and informational text, including stories, dramas, poetry, and cross-curricular texts.

[ELA2021] (5) 32 :

32. Respond in writing to literature and informational text, including stories, dramas, poetry, and cross-curricular texts, independently and with grade-level proficiency.

Students begin by brainstorming types of poetry, then examining themed poetry collections to find examples. They create a working definition of poetry that they will revisit throughout the unit. Next students reexamine the collections, identifying what the poems have in common and generating a list of characteristics of thematic poetry collections. Students then begin work on their own poetry collection. In each session, they read, analyze, and write a different form of poetry, including diamante, cinquain, 5W, Bio, I Am, Name, Acrostic, Limerick, and Two-Voice poems. In some forms, they write about themselves, and for others, they interview and write about a classmate, but all the poems follow the theme of "getting to know each other". Throughout the process, students complete a checklist to organize and track what they learn about poetry forms and elements of poetry. Graphic organizers are included for each poetic form.

   View Standards     Standard(s): [ELA2021] (4) 5 :

5. Demonstrate fluency when reading grade-level text and when responding through writing or speaking.

[ELA2021] (4) 14 :

14. Demonstrate comprehension of literary and informational text by utilizing its content when discussing or writing in response to the text.

[ELA2021] (4) 32 :

32. Respond in writing to literature and informational text, including stories, dramas, poetry, and cross-curricular texts, both independently and with support, demonstrating grade-level proficiency.

[ELA2021] (5) 5 :

5. Demonstrate fluency when independently reading, writing, and speaking in response to grade-level literary and informational text, including stories, dramas, poetry, and cross-curricular texts.

[ELA2021] (5) 16 :

16. Demonstrate comprehension of varied literary and informational texts by utilizing its content when discussing or writing in response to the text.

[ELA2021] (5) 32 :

32. Respond in writing to literature and informational text, including stories, dramas, poetry, and cross-curricular texts, independently and with grade-level proficiency.

While students in grades 4–6 often have the necessary skills to decode words, they sometimes struggle with comprehending the words they have read. In this lesson, students use the INSERT (Interactive Notation to Effective Reading and Thinking) technique to help them monitor their own thinking and make connections between texts and their own experiences. Students begin with an introduction to the strategy and a teacher-directed demonstration of the strategy using a text about mummies. Students are then given an opportunity to practice the strategy in small groups and reflect on the benefits of the INSERT technique. In subsequent sessions, students are divided into three instructional-level groups to practice using the strategy and participate in various writing and reading activities.

   View Standards     Standard(s): [ELA2021] (3) -3 :

R3. Expand background knowledge and build vocabulary through discussion, reading, and writing.

[ELA2021] (3) 11 :

11. Read and reread grade-appropriate poetry, practicing phrasing, rhythm, rhyme, and meaningful expression.

[ELA2021] (4) 5 :

5. Demonstrate fluency when reading grade-level text and when responding through writing or speaking.

[ELA2021] (4) 25 :

25. Explain how the form of a poem contributes to its meaning.

[ELA2021] (4) 26 :

26. Analyze how rhythm and rhyme in poetry contribute to meaning.

[ELA2021] (5) 5 :

5. Demonstrate fluency when independently reading, writing, and speaking in response to grade-level literary and informational text, including stories, dramas, poetry, and cross-curricular texts.

[ELA2021] (5) 6 :

6. Read grade-level text orally with accuracy, automaticity, appropriate prosody or expression, purpose, and understanding, self-correcting and rereading as necessary.

This lesson is a great way to teach both scientific and English content to a class, although the teacher can easily choose another book and subject area. In this lesson, students listen to poems in the book Science Verse by Jon Scieszka. Students then create diamante, acrostic, or theme poems with illustrations. To help increase fluency, students read their poems to the class. Finally, students create original poems using facts they have learned in the current science curriculum.