About the Unit

This unit helps fifth graders meet sky-high expectations for writing literary essays. Members of the class begin by writing an essay about a shared story—a poignant video clip that they watch and discuss together. With that shared experience work as a foundation, fifth graders then learn to design, write, and revise interpretive essays about short stories. Throughout this work, the children—and you, their teachers—are given crystal-clear tips that convey the TCRWP’s latest thinking on this important topic. The unit ends by teaching kids to transfer all they have learned to new circumstances, including those posed by high-stakes tests.

Students learn to:

• Write to grow ideas about a text
• Read interpretively
• Reread closely and carefully to identify evidence that best supports a claim
• Support a thesis with a variety of evidence
• Draft and revise thesis statements that capture the themes of a story and that forecast ways their essays will support their theses
• Transfer and apply their essay writing to respond to prompts and real-world situations

This unit is best taught after students have some experience writing opinion texts. Several books in the Units of Study series support this work, including two fourth-grade writing units—Boxes and Bullets: Personal and Persuasive Essays and The Literary Essay: Writing About Fiction—and the fifth-grade reading unit, Interpretation Book Clubs: Analyzing Themes.

About the Four Additional Units

The Teachers College Reading and Writing Project and Heinemann are proud to announce the release of four additional book-length units of study, each addressing an especially key topic from the Units of Study If...,Then… books.

These new book-length units have been written to fit tongue and groove into the original Units of Study, yet each can also work as a self-contained stand-alone unit, offering you a chance to try on the experience of teaching with the Units before moving to the complete series.

Note: All Additional Units include Anchor Chart Sticky Note Packs. Word Detectives also includes Read-Aloud Prompts Sticky Notes. Trade Packs for each of the new units are recommended and available separately. The How-To Guide for Nonfiction Writing requires no separate Trade Pack.

Product Name:

Invoice Title: UOS WRTG:LIT ESSAY OPNG TEXTS W/TRD PK

ISBN-10: 0325088985

ISBN-13: 9780325088983

The Literary Essay, Grade 5 Trade Book Pack includes books that are used in the unit to model effective writing techniques, encourage students to read as writers, and provide background knowledge.

• Every Living Thing by Cynthia Rylant
• Marshfield Dreams by Ralph Fletcher
• Eleven and Papa by Sandra Cisneros

Because some teachers may want to purchase class sets and others may already own these popular books, these are available as an optional, but recommended, purchase.

“Any effective writing curriculum acknowledges that it is important for writers to be immersed in powerful writing—literature and other kinds of texts. Children especially need opportunities to read as writers. By studying the work of other authors, students not only develop a felt sense of what it is they are trying to make but also learn the traditions of that particular kind of text.”Lucy Calkins

Product Name:

Invoice Title: UOS WRITING:LITERARY ESSAY TRD PK ONLY

ISBN-10: 0325088888

ISBN-13: 9780325088884

The new Graphic Novels units asks you to reinterpret your definition of writing—you will teach true writing skills, but they will be disguised in a fun new medium that will help your students grow much smarter at reading and writing stories in multiple media. Even though students may not create pages and pages of paragraphs, they are writing:

- Structuring a well-paced story is writing.

- Zooming in on a moment to highlight importance is writing.

- Showing not telling is writing.

Your writers will do all of this and more in this unit by visually storytelling.

Unit Overview

Like other writing Units of Study, this unit focuses heavily on process rather than product, and the flow of lessons reflects this. Instead of handing students a printed grid of panels to fill out, you’ll teach them to build a panel layout to highlight what they deem important on that page. Instead of having them cartoon out a preexisting story, you’ll preserve the true writing process by teaching them to doodle the very start to a story idea. This makes for a messier process, but it also makes the process intellectually demanding. In preserving the independent decision making that is the hallmark of the authentic writing process, you are actually teaching true writing skills disguised in a fun new format.

This unit comprises two bends. Each bend takes students through a complete writing cycle, which means children will have written two graphic novels by the end of the unit.

Bend I: Writing a First Graphic Novel

- Students doodle a character into being and set this character up with a challenge or problem, then immediately think up a believable resolution to this problem

- Kids learn that stories are seldom thought up in the order that they are told, and that plotting a story requires having an end in mind.

- Students plot a story arc for their character, building tension until a turning point appears.

Bend II: Powering Up Your Visual Craft

- Students think about inserting suspense through cliffhangers at the end of every double page.

- They decide how to adjust the timeline of their story to maximize impact on the reader.

- Across this bend writers learn to use important narrative craft moves through a rich and engaging new format.

The Graphic Novels bundle includes:

- Graphic Novels: Writing in Pictures and Words

- 2 trade books to serve as demonstration texts:

     Stinky, written by Eleanor Davis (TOON Books & Graphics)

     Comics: Easy as ABC!, written by Ivan Brunetti (TOON Books & Graphics)

Product Name:

Invoice Title: U of S Graphic Novels, Grades 4-6, with Trade Pack

ISBN-10: 0325160589

ISBN-13: 9780325160580