Literacy Block
Our Literacy Block takes place in the first block of each day. During this time, all students will be involved in reading, writing, oral and media activities that are appropriate for their individual levels. All students will be part of a Guided Reading group each week, with some students participating in Guided Reading every day. Students are expected to read daily at school and have access to an extensive classroom library as well as the school library on a regular basis. We will not be visiting the library for book exchanges as a whole class, but students will each be allowed to visit the library as they need to exchange books.
ReadingAlthough we will be looking at many genres of text, our focus in reading will be on reading non-fiction texts. Our learning goals will focus on making inferences, identifying purpose and audience of text and identifying the various points of view presented in texts. We will also look at non-fiction text features so that we are able to identify the text features and their purpose in a piece of text.
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WritingIn the first term, our focus is on identifying the purpose and audience for the material we are writing. We will work on writing complete paragraphs with topic sentences and supporting details.
Forms of writing focused on in the first term are recounts, reports and persuasive writing. |
Oral languageIn oral language this term we will be working primarily on listening and speaking in unrehearsed situations, such as whole group and small group dialogue. Towards the end of the term, we will focus on organized oral language activities such as debates.
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Media LiteracyOur focus in media literacy will be on recognizing the purpose and audience of various media works, including television commercials and movie trailers. A big idea that students must understand is that media is all around us and has an influence on us. Media in itself is neither positive nor negative, but the messages that are being received must be clearly understood and interpreted by us.
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