What will your children be learning this year in LAL?

1. What will your children be learning this year in LAL? Identity (First M.P.) • Fiction/Nonfiction (R) • Identify and interpret literary elements, author’s purpose, theme, literary devices • Use appropriate reading strategies, draw inferences from text, and use context clues to enhance comprehension • Be able to successfully respond to open-ended responses • Narrative (W) • Develop an introductory paragraph that includes an interesting lead and closing paragraph that reflects on the narrative and elaborating and developing a narrative with literary elements • Explanatory (W) • Develop elements of composition such as introduction, conclusion, thesis, supporting details, etc. Apply literary elements in writing using smiley-face tricks; Incorporate conventions of standard English; Vary sentence beginnings, structure, length, and type (simple, compound, complex, compound-complex) Exploration (Second M.P.) • Informational (R) • Identify and analyze patterns of organization, text connections through comparison, etc. • Continue to use the reading strategies learned in the first marking period more independently • Informative/Explanatory (W) • Develop elements of composition • Literary elements • Continue to build on skills learned the first marking period • Vocabulary [throughout the year] • Vocabulary will be introduced throughout the year based upon the short stories and novels we read • In addition, POWER WORDS will be introduced on a weekly basis through quick writes and a required writing skill such as onomatopoeia to build upon vocabulary knowledge and application

2. What will your children be learning this year in LAL? Expression (Third Quarter) • Nonfiction (R) • Autobiographies, Biographies, and Historical Accounts • Informational (R) • Everyday Texts • Evaluate different mediums to present a topic or idea, analyze multiple points of view, identify and evaluate author’s claims, and paraphrasing and retelling • Argumentative (W) • Format paragraphs correctly, form an opinion on a controversial topic, supply a valid argument to support a claim, evaluate multiple sources from various medium, supply valid arguments to support a claim, etc. Creativity (Fourth Quarter) • Drama (R) • Analyze the usage of dialogue and/or plot incidents and their effectiveness, interpret literary devices, paraphrasing and retelling, vocabulary, charged language, etc. • Narrative/Script Writing (W) • Develop an introductory paragraph that includes an interesting lead, elaborate and develop a narrative with literary elements, utilize literary devices, develop a closing paragraph that reflects on the narrative, etc. • Students will write and perform their own Radio Plays after reading, listening, and viewing actual Radio Plays [Monsters are Due on Maple Street, War of the Worlds, Sorry, Wrong Number, Twilight Zone Episodes]