5th Grade Historical Literacy Curriculum outlines the content of social-studies integrated units taught within the readers' and writers' workshop framework and taught daily for 90 minutes. Each six week unit contains standards, teaching points, vocabulary, and assessments. Readers' and writers' workshop naturally differentiates for all learners. By June of 2020, each unit will have a slide deck associated with it that contains the teaching points, integrated grammar work, vocabulary, and strategies for partner practice. Our district places careful emphasis on vocabulary, as we have a high percentage of English Language Learners.

This sequence of lessons is based on text-dependent questions that are answered through a close reading of the article, "Girl Power" from the Washington Post's Kids' Post.

Making Evidence-Based Claims ELA/Literacy Units empower students with a critical reading and writing skill at the heart of the Common Core: making evidence-based claims about complex texts. These units are part of the Developing Core Proficiencies Program. This unit develops students' €abilities to make evidence-based claims through activities based on a close reading of the Commencement Address Steve Jobs delivered at Stanford University on June, 2005.

Find the rest of the EngageNY ELA resources at https://archive.org/details/engageny-ela-archive .

Embed a layer of questions, quizzes, and rich media annotations into any reading assignment. Track mastery of literacy skills and Common Core standards in real-time.

Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail" demonstrates that even the smallest punctuation mark signals a stylistic decision, distinguishing one writer from another and enabling an author to move an audience. In this minilesson, students first explore Dr. King's use of semicolons and their rhetorical significance. They then apply what they have learned by searching for ways to follow Dr. King's model and use the punctuation mark in their own writing. Note that while this lesson refers to the "Letter from Birmingham Jail," any text which features rhetorically significant use of semicolons can be effective for this minilesson.

Students explore the legal and ethical dimensions of respecting creative work. First, they learn a basic foundation of legal principles and vocabulary related to copyright. They understand how such factors as the rules of copyright law, the values and intent of the original creator, and the audience and purpose should affect their decisions about using the creative work of others. Using the Mad Men Student Handout, students then apply these principles to a simulation activity in which they act as advertising executives who have to choose a photo for an ad campaign.

Students explore the concept of fair use, apply it to case studies, and
create an original work of fair use.
Students learn how to judge whether something is protected by fair use
by using the Four Points of Fair Use Student Handout. They
apply the four points of fair use to two case studies, a remixed video and
a mash-up song, to judge whether or not they fall under fair use.
Students then create an original work of fair use by reworking
copyrighted material to create a collage or a remix video.

These lessons will introduce students to the THIEVES strategy for previewing textbooks and non-fiction articles.  The acronym stands for:
T- Title
H - Headings
I - Introduction
E - Every first sentence in a paragraph
V - Visuals and Vocabulary
E - End of chapter questions
S - Summary
Teacher will model, students will practice with a partner and then use the strategy independently.  These short lessons could be applied to any textbook or article in a middle school classroom.