In this lesson, students will learn the steps involved in computational thinking.  Decomposition, pattern matching, abstraction, and algorithms are all steps that make up the computational thinking process. This process is used in many learning subjects and in real-life learning.  Learners discover how understanding each step can help them as a learner and also nurture a growth mindset.

In order to fully comprehend reading materials, students need to understand the cause-and-effect relationships that appear in a variety of fiction and nonfiction texts. In this lesson, students learn cause-and-effect relationships through the sharing of a variety of Laura Joffe Numeroff picture books in a Reader's Workshop format. Using online tools or a printed template, students create an original comic strip via the writing prompt, "If you take a (third) grader to."  Students use various kinds of art to illustrate their strip and publish and present their completed piece to peers in a read-aloud format.

In this lesson, The Jolly Postman is used as an authentic example to discuss letter writing as a genre. Students explore the letters to the storybook characters delivered by The Jolly Postman. They then learn how to categorize their own examples of mail. The Jolly Postman uses well-known storybook characters, from fairy tales and nursery rhymes, as recipients of letters. This children's storybook is therefore ideal for using as a review of these genres of literature and as a means of helping children begin to explore rhyme and a variety of writing styles. Several pieces of literature appropriate for use with this lesson are suggested.

In this module, students will use literacy skills to build expertise—using reading, writing, listening, speaking, and collaborative skills to build and share deep knowledge about a topic. This focus on research intentionally builds on Module 1, in which students explored the superpowers of reading. Specifically, students will seek evidence of culture, which can be thought of as the story of a group of people constructed through the generations; it can be evidenced through ancient and modern-day customs and traditions. The module will begin with a class study of the culture of Japan: Students will read Magic Tree House: Dragon of the Red Dawn, a book set in ancient Japan, paired with Exploring Countries: Japan, an informational text about modern Japan.

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

In this eight-week module, students explore the questions: “Who is the wolf in fiction?” and “Who is the wolf in fact?” They begin by analyzing how the wolf is characterized in traditional stories, folktales, and fables. Then they research real wolves by reading informational text. Finally, for their performance task, students combine their knowledge of narratives with their research on wolves to write a realistic narrative about wolves.

In this lesson, students will reinforce the importance of giving clear instructions to a partner for a desired outcome or result, similar to what is needed in a real world work environment, when instructions or notes need to be communicated in person to or left in written form for a co-worker who may be on a different shift and need to complete a project. In the real world, if instructions are not clear, machines or entire assembly lines may be down for a period of time which causes the company to lose money.
This lesson will be used in conjunction with Code.org's Course D (2019) curriculum (https://studio.code.org/s/coursed-2019) after the initial lesson called Graph Paper Programming - https://curriculum.code.org/csf-19/coursed/1/. In this lesson, students will use what they just learned about programming, sequencing, and algorithms (set of instructions) and take it a step further by communicating instructions for navigating through a series of steps to a partner who either has their eyes closed (or is wearing a blindfold) from a starting to finishing point, while picking up small blocks (or something similar) along the way.

This is a three minute video of Monique LaCour's elementary classroom in Oakland, CA.  The objective of the lesson is to support academic conversations utilizing sentence frames.  It will look at why sentence frames are an effective strategy for English Language Learners.  It illustrates how sentence frames can empower students and make learning come to life.

In this lesson, the teacher explains the difference between thin (factual) and thick (inferential) questions and then models how to compose question webs by thinking aloud while reading. Students observe how to gather information about the topic and add it to question webs in the form of answers or additional questions. Students practice composing thin and thick questions and monitor their comprehension by using question webs in small-group reading. This practice extends knowledge of the topic and engages readers in active comprehension.

This lesson can be added to the study of the life cycle of the monarch butterfly, specifically when it’s time to release your classroom monarchs in the fall. If your class isn’t studying monarchs, but the monarch migration is observed in your area, this is a lesson that could be used to find out more.The pursuits addressed are skills and intellectualism. The skills in this case are reading a map and gathering details from a text. Intellect is the practice of using skills to increase the understanding of the world around you, the practice of reflecting on how one uses a skill. According to Gholdy Muhammad in Cultivating Genius, Intellectualism is knowledge of people, places, things and concepts and the ability to put this knowledge into action. As learning takes place, one asks, “What am I becoming smarter about?” The students are using the pursuit of intellectualism to discover how science research works to discover new things about the world around them. 

Details: This lesson can be added to the study of the life cycle of the monarch butterfly, specifically when the children are learning about monarch migration. It is suggested to use this lesson after Monarch Butterflies Lesson 1. Pursuits: Identity is questioning who you are, how others see you and who you want to become. Students will learn about each other and further define their own identities in relation to their culture, their families and their culture. Skills are writing, collaborating with others, and reading informational texts Criticality: Students are deepening their understanding of the intersections of a group's culture with the economic and land-use expectations of the economic powers of the world. In this case the people in the lesson chose to follow their traditions and culture  over these expectations and found an alternative path to support themselves economically. 

This lesson uses the book Thunder Rose by Jerdine Nolen to reinforce the common elements, or text structure, of tall tales. As the text is read aloud, students examine the elements of the book that are characteristic of tall tales. Then using what they've learned over the course of the unit and lesson, they write tall tales of their own.

After reading Water Hole Waiting by Jane Kurtz and Christopher Kurtz, or another book that has a well-developed setting, students work as a class to chart the use of the three elements of setting in the story, using specific words and examples from the text. Students then discuss the techniques that the book’s author used to develop the setting, making observations and drawing conclusions about how authors make the setting they write about vivid and believable. Next, students work in small groups to analyze the setting in another picture book, using an online graphic organizer. Finally, students apply what they have learned about how authors develop good settings to a piece of their own writing.

Students will learn that they need to be safe online, similar to how they need to keep themselves safe in real life.  The lesson will help them figure out what websites are safe for them to visit and when they need to talk to an adult before accessing a site.  They will also explore what information is safe to publish online and which is not.