In this unit students explore the concepts of honesty, forgiveness, and friendship by reading Freckle Juice and Keena Ford and the Second-Grade Mix-Up.
Students read, discuss, and write about spider — or Anansi — folktales from West Africa, which have been used for generations to teach lessons about human nature and the consequences of good and bad behavior.
In this unit students learn that families come in all different shapes and sizes, and that no matter what a family looks like, all families love and care for one another, by reading fiction books on various types of families.
In this unit, students compare and contrast events and characters in multiple versions of The Three Little Pigs and Little Red Riding Hood.
Students learn about the concepts of fairness and justice and people who worked to overcome injustice, while developing informational reading strategies for reading narrative nonfiction texts.
Students become engaged in reading through a variety of familiar stories with predictable patterns and illustrations that allow them to anticipate words, phrases, and events on their own.
Students study the institutional processes and popular beliefs surrounding mental health in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, as they discuss and debate the themes of power, order, and authority.
Students explore the power of oral storytelling in African-American and Hispanic cultures through folktales that have been passed down within families and communities for generations.
In this unit, students improve reading and writing standards and skills as they explore biographies of famous leaders and change agents.
Students explore the structure of the American government, the three branches of government, the history of women's suffrage, and read biographies about famous Americans who fought for change.
Students will explore the complexity of power and its relationship to otherness and the American Dream through their reading of Steinbeck’s novella Of Mice and Men, excerpts of Sarah Burns' The Central Park Five and Ava Duvernay’s When They See Us.
Students explore how energy is transferred and how it can be converted into different forms, and learn about renewable and nonrenewable energy while looking towards the world’s energy future.
Students explore the meaning of true friendship by reading E.B. White's classic novel Charlotte's Web, examining its themes, setting, character and language, and learning to develop empathy for others.
Students learn about the joy books and reading bring to people's lives, the different ways people access books, and some of the barriers people have faced when trying to learn how to read.
Students learn the science behind natural disasters, such as volcanoes, earthquakes, hurricanes, and wildfires, with an emphasis on how natural disasters happen.
Students explore how plastic pollution is choking the world’s oceans, and explore a variety of solutions for reducing plastic waste and reducing the amount of plastic that ends up in the ocean.
Students explore the American experience through the story of an African-American family struggling to achieve their dreams.
Students learn about the Pilgrims and the first Massachusetts colonies, including why the Pilgrims came to the New World, their relationship with the Native peoples, and the truth behind the first Thanksgiving.
Students learn about how to save the earth by reducing, reusing, and recycling. Students learn why waste is a problem, about the options for limiting waste, and read stories about different people from around the world who have found ways to reduce, reuse, and recycle waste.
Students read the renowned novel The Scarlet Letter, exploring and analyzing the themes of sin, compassion, and hypocrisy as they played out in seventeenth-century Puritan New England.