Writing September: Writerly Life Students will be learning good writing habits, basic conventions, and the writing process through the publication of a work of choice. Students will learn to use a writer's notebook appropriately and come up with expectations for notebook maintenance. October: Response to Literature Students will be learning the components of a good response to literature.  Through this genre, we will also focus on basic writing skills and paragraphing. November/December: Narrative and Memoir Students are focusing on memories and family stories during this unit. For our writing skills, we are focusing on sentence structure, and basic beginning/middle/ending organization. We also also helping students incorporate creative language in their writing. By the end of the unit, students will have created at least one major narrative publication. Advanced students will be focusing on reflection as an ending in order to create a memoir. January: Commas... Conventional and Creative Use We will teach students the basic rules for the use of commas. After students master these skills, we will help students learn how authors use commas to convey or change meaning. Students will complete this unit with a publication that focuses on the conventional and creative use of commas. February/March: Reports and Paragraphing Research and report writing are key elements in a student's writing education. During this portion of our year, we will teach effective research skills and organization of a report. Once the research and organization are completed, we will shift focus to paragraph writing. Students will be able to create paragraphs with a topic sentence, supporting details, and a concluding sentence. Finally, students will put this work all together in a report publication. February: Paragraphing and Organization This unit of study will help students respond to essay questions in a logical manner. The short unit will teach students the basic organizational skills in responding to a prompt. February/March: Colon, Ellipse, and Dash... Using Less Frequent Conventions Similar to the comma unit, students will learn the basic rules for the use of the colon, ellipse and dash. After mastering the basic use, students will look through mentor author text to investigate creative use of these conventions. Students will complete a publication that uses several of these conventions in both accurate and creative ways. March/April/May: Poetry Poetry is a more abstract form of writing and during this unit of study, students will focus on thinking more broadly about writing. This unit incorporates the use of music, science, art, and math to show students creative ways to write poetry. Students will create at least two poems using the skills taught during class. May/June: Open Cycle and Review By this time in the year, organization, conventions, and literary forms have been introduced and practiced. After this massive amount of learning, students need a chance to just write using their new skills. This unit will allow kids this opportunity and provide a time for teachers to review with students as well.