• Covers areas of reading, writing, spelling, and vocabulary. Novels are incorporated to teach and reinforce comprehension, articulation of ideas and literary devices such as personification, inference, and character and plot development.
• The Institute for Excellence in Writing is a proven writing tool that creates a strong foundation of writing mechanics and the path towards becoming an excellent writer. In short, students begin with one paragraph assignments and end the year with 3 paragraph stories using an outline format for their stories. Writing fairy tales is a special unit. Grammar is implemented in the writing process.
• Vocabu-Lit (Perfection Learning, 2016) is the basis for learning vocabulary and reinforcing spelling skills through the use of children’s literature.

Math U See (Demme Learning) – The focus will be on learning addition and subtraction facts, moving on to multiplication facts, applying skills using word problems, understanding place value when adding and subtracting and multiplying, solving for the unknown, measurement in inches, feet, centimeters and meters, adding and subtracting time in hours and minutes, representing, recording and interpreting data, solving measurement problems, understanding basic fractions.

Earth Science and Astronomy (Elemental Science) – This is a study of the planet Earth, rocks, fossils, our solar system and stars using visually appealing encyclopedias. It includes weekly scientific demonstrations, reading assignments, notebooking assignments, lab reports and additional activities.

Topics that are covered include explores, Native Americans, colonial times, local government, and community helpers. This will be taught through the use of different types of children’s literature involving independent as well as collaborative learning.

This area covers reading, writing, spelling and vocabulary. Novels are incorporated to teach and reinforce comprehension, articulation of ideas, critical thinking skills and literary devices such as plot and character development. The novels that will be read are:

• Sign of the Beaver – Elizabeth George Speare
• My Brother Sam is Dead – James Lincoln Collier
• Many Thousand Gone: African Americans from Slavery to Freedom – Virginia Hamilton
• The Watsons Go to Birmingham – Christopher Paul Curtis

Vocabulary from Classical Roots (Educators Publishing Service) is the curriculum that is the basis for learning spelling and vocabulary. It implements the use of Latin root words.

Ridgewood Grammar, The Language Connection (Nancy Bison and Terri Wiss) covers parts of speech, sentence types, possessives, homophones, contractions, and objects. It incorporates sentence diagramming and writing.

There will be a periodic review of place value, regrouping with addition and subtraction, multiplication with whole numbers, division (with and without remainders) and expanded notation. The students will also focus on adding and subtracting fractions and mixed numbers, understanding equivalent fractions, improper fractions and how to reduce fractions and convert fractions to decimals and percentages. Adding and subtracting decimals and converting decimals to fractions and percentages will also be included. The students will work on rounding and estimating, factoring and prime and composite numbers. The students will also study U.S. and metric measurement, time and temperature. There will also be a variety of lessons involving geometry – shapes, area and perimeter, angles. Other concepts that will be covered are the different properties of math, graphing, probability, statistics and basic algebraic concepts.

A variety interesting and exciting science encyclopedias and texts are used to introduce different areas of  science which include biomes, earth science, basic chemistry, the solar system and the animal kingdom.

US History is taught through the use of interactive notebooks. The topics that are covered are Explorers and the Age of Exploration, Colonial America, US Geography, American Revolution, Civics and the US Government, Civil War, and Westward Expansion. The books that are read in Language Arts correlate with the Colonial Period, the American Revolution, and the Civil War/ Civil Rights movement. There will be writing exercises as well as group projects and a research paper.