2026 - 2027 School Year

Hello! It was a wonderful first two days getting to know my students. As we continue to build our classroom community, we will also begin our ELA curriculum. For the first half of the quarter, we will be focusing on informational standards, in addition to reading our first novel, Counting By 7s. We will focus on figurative language and vocabulary, main ideas and details, summarizing, and identifying the relationships between two or more people or events in the text.

**Please see the "Week at a Glance" section for detailed plans for each day of the week.**

Important Dates

Monday, September 7th - holiday - No School

Friday, September 11th - Informational text summative assessment 

Friday, October 9th - holiday - No School

Monday, October 12th - Holiday - No School

Friday, October 23rd - End of Quarter 1

Remind Updates

Our Encore classes for the year are as follows:

Quarter 1 - STEM with Ms. Jozaitis 

Quarter 2 - Music with Ms. Hughes

Quarter 3 - Art with Mrs. Maney

Quarter 4 - Spanish with Mrs. Smerz 

We have PE every day - please remember to have appropriate gym shoes with you each day.

My ELA classes will visit the library on Mondays.

 

Quarter 1 Overview

Essential Question: What does it mean to adapt?

Novel: Counting By 7s by Holly Goldberg Sloan; Gordon Korman book clubs

Word Study: During word study, we will be utilizing Structured Word Inquiry (SWI) to increase our vocabulary and spelling skills. We will be learning about Greek and Latin roots along with prefixes and suffixes.

 

Sentence Study: We will be using mentor sentences from our text sets and novels to identify parts of speech, types of sentences, and figurative language. We will also be making connections to SWI.

 

 

Writing:

• Narrative writing - Students will compose original texts, write story continuations, and rewrite portions of stories from different perspectives.

• L 5.2 – I can demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing.

 

Reading Literature Standards:

• RL 5.1 I can quote accurately from a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text.
• RL 5.2 - I can determine the theme of a text, including how characters respond to a challenge; I can summarize a text.

• RL 5.4 - I can use context clues to determine the meaning of unknown words and phrases.
• RL 5.6 - I can describe how a narrator's or speaker's point of view affects the way the story is told.

 

 

Reading Information Standards:

• RI 5.1 I can quote accurately from a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text.
• RI 5.2 - I can determine two or more main ideas of a text and explain how they are supported by key details; I can summarize a text.
• RI 5.3 - I can explain the relationships or interactions between two or more people and/ or ideas in a text.
• RI 5.4 - I can determine the meaning of general academic or domain-specific words and phrases.

 

Scholastic Book Club Orders

Our class code is QCDZK. I place orders from Scholastic at the end of each month. These book orders give our class a chance to build our classroom library as well as earn free books for our classroom. If you need any help with your order, please let me know! Thank you for supporting our classroom. Order Scholastic Books

E-Learning Plan

In the event of the need to call an e-learning day, we will be utilizing the schedule attached below. E-learning days will only be called if we have fair warning of severe inclement weather and have time to send students home with all their materials and devices.