Language Arts

Since the start of the new year, the 5/6 students have focused on creating historical interactive journal textbooks. 

The students went back to early European/Asian/African trade routes, all to inform their understanding of U.S. history. They have learned about early explorers and emperors, noting motivating factors for traveling across land and sea.

By creating key vocabulary and people guides, timelines, and being guided through structured graphic organizers, the students have been putting together the elements that led to the cross-cultural exchanges between Euroasia and the Americas.

Through quick informative videos and textbook/article readings, and those graphic organizers, the students have focused on the skill of note-taking. They have used these notes to write cause and effect analysis on various topics.

Using their notes, the students have been writting their own analysis on many topics. A few of those prompts have been-

What led to the rise of Timbuktu?              Why did the Viking settlements fail?Christopher Columbus: friend or foe?        Was the Spanish armor an advantage or disadvantage in their battles against the Aztecs and Incas?

During Valentine’s week, we focused on poetry. In cursive, the students wrote haikus and acrostic poems. They picked their own topics, and also wrote about explorers. It was great for them to express their historical knowledge in a poetry format. They also learned how to create a cinquain poem. This 5-line poem not only reflected their content knowledge on our history topics, but also reviewed various parts of speech such as verbs, adjectives, and synonyms. Many of the students chose to read their poems aloud at our annual Valentine’s Day poetry jam.

On our field trip to Quail Hollow Ranch, the students searched the house on a scavenger hunt and created their own homestead maps. They took these items home on Monday 2/26