Essential Questions
Social Studies
Geography:
- Define and recognize the following landforms: mountains, island, lake, peninsula, valley, plateau, ocean, desert, river, canyon, and plain.
- What is a landform?
- How do you use a map key and compass rose?
- What are absolute and relative locations?
- How do people adapt to their location?
- How do people change or modify their environment?
- What are the three regions of North Carolina, and what makes them so unique?
- What are the borders of North Carolina?
- Why is the scale important to a map?
- What is the difference between a map and globe?
- Students will investigate why European settlers came to the Americas.
- Students will explain how the arrival of the settlers affected the indigenous people who already lived here.
- Why do people move?
- How might places change over time?
- How might technology cause change over time?
- Compare and contrast the life of women, men, and children during colonial times and the present.
Science
Matter:
- How can matter change?
- How can a liquid such as water change to a solid or gas?
- What is evaporation?
- What is rust?
- How does the temperature of water affect the time it takes for a substance to dissolve?
- What changes occur when solids and liquids react chemically?
- What is a mixture and give an example?
- What is a property of liquid? (hint- does it look different in different containers?)
Human Body:
- Coordination is the harmonious action of bones and muscles to produce desired movements (nervous system)
- The adult human body has 206 bones.
- The biggest bone in our body is the femur.
- The skeleton provides three major functions: support, protects, and locomotion (movement).
- The skeleton system give our body shape, this system includes all our bones.
- The muscular system includes three types of muscles. They are smooth, which are found on the walls of internal organs, cardiac, which are found only in the heart, and skeletal muscles, which help strengthen the body and connect to bones.
- Muscles tight up (flex) and contract (relax). Muscles pull but do NOT push. The muscles job is to help bones move.
- Bones are connected by joint.
- Skin keeps the body from drying out and protects the body from harmful substances and germs.
- Why do owls make owl pellet?
- How does the skeletal, nervous, and muscular systems work together?
Curriculum Focus Quarter 1
ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARTS
Reading Fiction:
- Retell stories, fables, folktales, and myth
- Describe characters traits
- Distinguish the narrators point of view
- Ask and answer questions to demonstrate understanding of text
- Decode multi-syllable words
- Reread for understanding
- Know the meaning of common root words & prefixes
- Use context clues to determine word meaning
- Determine the main ideas and supporting details
- Come to discussion prepared with ideas and follow speaking/listening rules
- Write narratives
- Use transition words
- Use dialogue to describe actions
- Provide a closure
- Use writing process
- Choose words for effect
Make simple an d complex sentences
- Identify subject and predicate of sentences.
- Capitalize titles appropriately
- Explain the function of nouns, verbs, and pronouns
- Use commas and quotations marks
- Add and subtract multi digit numbers
- Round to the nearest tens and hundreds
- Identify 2D figures
- Identify shape patterns
- Build multiplication fluency and operational strategie
- Understand the properties of solid, liquid, and gases and the changes they undergo
- Recognize how energy can be transferred from one object to another
- Understand and compare the structure and property of matter before and after they undergo a change
Change
Essential Questions:
- What are the pros and cons of change?
- How can you image the future will change?
Geography, Environmental Literacy, and Culture
Understand and compare the earth’s patterns by using the 5 themes of Geography:
- Regions
- Landforms
- Maps
- Migration of People
- Environmental change and adaptations
MCLASS, Progress Monitoring with Running Records, Case 21 Benchmarks Assessments, Math Expressions, County /Teacher Created Quizzes and Unit Tests, BOG, CoGAT, Read to Achieve
Quality Tools:
Flow chart
Character Education:
Prepared
Resposiblility
Perserverance
Field Trips:
Science is Fun Matter
Curriculum Focus Quarter2
ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARTS
Reading Fiction:
- Character traits
- Compare and contrast theme, setting, and plot
- Determine literal and nonliteral word meaning
- Use text features (key word, side bars, subtitles, illustrations, captions, maps) to locate information
- Use context clues to understand subject vocabulary
- Determine main idea and key details
Opinion
- Provide support
- Linking words
- Concluding statements
- Creating a point of view
- Form and use irregular and plural nouns
- Produce simple, compound, and complex sentences
- Use quotation mark
- Use dictionaries to edit capitalization, spelling, punctuation
- Understand meaning of morphograph (root, prefixes)
- Ask question to check understanding from a speaker
- State main idea
- Report on a topic with a facts and details
- Explain ideas
- Multiplication and division within 100 (application within word problems)
- Fact Families (relationships)
- Patterns
- Graph data (bar, picture, plot line)
- Find area & perimeter
Human Body
- Functions of bones
- Joints jobs
- Skin function
- Coordination workings
How Things Work
Essential Questions:
How does skeletal, muscular, and nervous system work together?
Does my opinion count?
How people and places change over time?
SOCIAL STUDIES
History
- Changes Places and Technology
- Formation of Wake County
- History of European settlers and Native Americans
Case 21, Study Island, Teacher Created Assessments, Read to Achieve, Math Expressions, MCLASS
Quality Tools:
Flow chart, Circle Map, Venn Diagram
Curriculum Focus Quarter 3
ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARTS
- Decode words
- Read with accuracy and fluency (appropriate rate)
- Use context to support comprehension
- Ask and answer questions to understand the text
- Describe relationships (character traits, cause/effect, & sequence)
- Describe connections (cause/effect, compare, sequence)
- Describe characters (traits, motivations, feeling, actions)
- Determine meaning of words
- Distinguish author’s point of view and own point of view
- Explain mood and setting of text and illustrations
- Increase text complexity to be more independent and proficient
- Refer to parts of stories, dramas, and poems (chapter, scene, stanza)
- Explore Biographies & Mysteries
- Write biographies and realistic fiction
- Develop organized writing pieces
- Strengthen writing process (plan, revise, edit)
- Develop topic with facts, definitions, and details
- Publish with Technology (keyboarding skills)
- Provide concluding statements
- Form and use irregular and plural nouns
- Produce simple, compound, and complex sentences
- Ensure subject-verb/pronoun-antecedent agreement
- Use dictionaries to edit capitalization, spelling, punctuation
- Understand meaning of morphograph
- Ask question to check understanding from a speaker
- State main idea
- Speak in complete sentences
- Explain own ideas
- Create engaging audio recordings
- Multiplication and division (application within word problems especially area)
- Fractions on number line
- Equivalence of fractions
- Perimeter of polygons
Objects in the Sky
- Moon Phases
- Patterns in the Sky due to orbit
- Earth’s features
- Sun, Moon and stars positions in the sky
Systems
Essential Questions:
What is the purpose of . . .?
How does it fit together?
How has ____ changed?
SOCIAL STUDIES
Civics and Government
- Citizenship in Communities
- Structure and function of local government
- Voting
Case 21 Benchmark, Study Island, Teacher Created, m-CLASS
Quality Tools:
Flow chart, Circle Map, Venn Diagram
Character Education:
Cooperate
Curriculum Focus Quarter 4
ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARTS
Reading Fiction:
- Retell stories, fables, folktales, and myths
- Ask and answer questions
- Read and comprehend grade level stories, dramas, and poetry
- Use context clues
- Determine the main idea
- Describe sequence and cause/effect between relationships
- Use text features and search tools
- Distinguish own point of view
- Use picture clues like map and photos
- Describe connections of sentences and paragraphs
- Integrate information from two texts (compare and contrast two pieces)
- Read and comprehend nonfiction text
- Ask questions to check for understanding
- Determine the main idea and details
- Report on a topic using facts and descriptive details
- Create an audio recording of a story or poem
- Speak in complete sentences
- Write informative and explanatory text
- Develop topic with facts, definitions, and details
- Use linking words and phrases
- Provide concluding statements
- Conduct research project
- Gather information, take notes, and sort into categories
- Journal and reflect routine
- Write poetry
Produce simple, compound, and complex sentences
- Use conventions correctly
- Choose words and phrases for effect
- Distinguish literal and nonliteral meanings
- Increase your academic vocabulary
- Use dialogue
Draw fraction parts of wholes
- Order fractions on a number line
- Recognize equivalent fractions
- Compare fractions
- Measure time intervals in minutes
- Solve word problems adding and subtracting time intervals in minutes
- Measure and estimate liquid volumes
- Measure and estimate masses
- Measurement word problems (inches, grams, liters)
- Create line plots to display measurement data
- Understand how plants survive in their environments
- Explain basic properties of soil
- Summarize life cycle of plants
- Explain how environmental conditions determine how well plants survive and grow
Changes
Essential Questions:
- What are the pros and cons of change?
- How can you image the future will change?
- Understand economics and financial literacy
- Explain the influences of economic development
- Explain and give examples of entrepreneurship
MClass, Read to Achieve, Math Expressions, Teacher Created Quizzes and Unit Tests, EOG
Quality Tools:
Flow chart, Affinity Diagram, Circle Map, Venn Diagram
Character Education:
Keep a positive attitude
Field Trips:
Planetarium