Page 13 - EL Grade 5 Teacher Guide

Introduction
EL Education’s 3–5 Language Arts Curriculum
Welcome to EL Education’s second edition Grades 3–5 Language Arts Curriculum. This intro- duction is designed to give you key information about how the curriculum is designed and built, and the principles that underlie it. It will give you a good understanding of what makes this curriculum unique and valuable.
Meet the udents
It is 10:15 a.m. on Wednesday, and fourth-graders Nathan, Sergei, and Alma are hard at work. Over many weeks, their teacher Ms. Henderson has immersed her students in a study of animal defenses and what it takes for animals to survive and thrive. She has helped her students suc- cessfully read complex texts about the topic. During her second hour of content-based literacy instruction, the Additional Language and Literacy Block, she also has ensured that students read a lot on their own about animal defenses, and she has made sure her students received much-needed explicit skills instruction and practice.
Ms. Henderson has facilitated intense conversations among her fourth-graders about what might happen to speci c animals without their defenses. Dividing the students into small, het- erogeneous groups, Ms. Henderson facilitated as her fourth-graders researched three speci c animals. She then gave them speci c instruction on narrative writing. Now Nathan, Sergei, and Alma are about to craft choose-your-own-adventure stories about how armadillos use natural defenses to survive and thrive. And during science time, they are using the companion Life Science Module to dig in and explore the internal and external structures of plants and animals, and how they function.
Nathan, Sergei, Alma, and all their elementary classmates have been bene ciaries of EL Educa- tion’s 3–5 Language Arts Curriculum. Their engagement, perseverance, and mastery are a snap- shot of the realized goals for all children that underlie this comprehensive literacy curriculum.
How is the curriculum ructured?
The Grades 3–5 Language Arts Curriculum o ers two hours of content-based literacy instruc- tion per day (module lessons and the Additional Language and Literacy [ALL] Block), with an additional optional companion Life Science Module, which accompanies Module 2 for a third hour of instruction lasting eight to nine weeks. With or without the Life Science Module, the two hours of content-based literacy are considered comprehensive.
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