Language Arts activities correlate with the unit themes and incorporate reading, handwriting, and English skills. The activities provided during the year continue to utilize phonics and blend these skills with sight word recognition to promote fluency and comprehension in reading and writing. The questions for discussion of literature incorporate new vocabulary words that become part of your child’s usable vocabulary and stimulate higher-level thinking skills. Practice worksheets to reinforce these concepts are included within the lessons.

Reading

• Use word recognition skills and strategies to read and comprehend text.
• Learn new sight words and vocabulary words.
• Read orally with fluency and expression.
• Draw an illustration to reflect a story.
• Identify and use words that rhyme, start, or end with the same sound.
• Develop the ability to recognize and describe the main idea, setting, plot, supporting details, characters, conflict, and theme in a story.
• Analyze a character.
• Create a character analysis collage.
• Demonstrate evidence of literal and inferential comprehension.
• Understand and recognize foreshadowing and symbolism.
• Understand and identify figurative language.
• Use context as a clue to the meaning of a word or phrase.
• Sort and define words by category.
• Understand and recognize a synonym and antonym.
• Understand and recognize a homophone and homonym.
• Understand story sequence.
• Develop the ability to make inferences and draw conclusions.
• Identify cause and effect relationships.
• Expand comprehension by analyzing, interpreting, and synthesizing information in text.
• Read to learn new information, to perform a task, or to enjoy a story.
• Understand literature written in a variety of genres.
• Identify differences between fiction and non-fiction.
• Recognize the three points of view in literature.
• State the difference between fact and opinion.
• Identify true and false statements.
• Read directions, and follow a recipe.
• Define words using a dictionary.
• Use research skills to search for, locate, extract, organize, evaluate, and use or present information that is relevant to a particular topic.
• Analyze a quotation.

Spelling

• Apply spelling and phonics concepts through oral, written, and tactile practice.
• Learn basic spelling rules.
• Recognize silent letters in words.
• Understand and spell abbreviations and contractions.
• Add a suffix to a word.
• Add a prefix to a word.
• Identify a base word.
• Decode and spell words by breaking them into syllables.
• Identify the number of syllables in a word.
• Identify and write compound words.
• Arrange words in alphabetical order.
• Recognize and spell plural words.

Writing and Grammar

• Write in a journal.
• Use free writing to gather ideas about a story.
• Identify common and proper nouns.
• Understand that proper nouns begin with a capital letter.
• Identify and use pronouns correctly: nominative, objective, possessive, relative, interrogative, demonstrative, indefinite.
• Identify an antecedent.
• Recognize an appositive.
• Combine sentences using an appositive.
• Identify a predicate nominative.
• Use conjunctions correctly.
• Categorize words.
• Use commas to separate items in a list.
• Correctly use a semicolon.
• Recognize irregular plural nouns.
• Identify nouns and verbs; use correct subject-verb agreement.
• Differentiate between a concrete and abstract noun.
• Recognize the four principal parts of verbs: present tense, present participle, past tense, and past participle.
• Recall and identify helping verbs.
• Identify a linking verb.
• Learn irregular verb forms: to be, have, do.
• Diagram sentences.
• Identify a prepositional phrase, a preposition, and the object of a preposition.
• Understand that prepositional phrases can be used as adjective phrases.
• Identify an adjective phrase.
• Correctly use prepositions in a sentence.
• Identify a direct and an indirect object.
• Identify collective nouns.
• Identify the simple and complete subject in a sentence.
• Identify the simple and complete predicate in a sentence.
• Identify a reversed subject and predicate.
• Understand how to write and use possessive nouns.
• Identify the adjective that describes the noun.
• Recognize common and proper adjectives.
• Compare nouns using comparative and superlative adjectives.
• Identify limiting adjectives.
• Identify a predicate adjective.
• Identify an adverb.
• Write an outline using correct format.
• Write paragraphs using the points on an outline.
• Understand that a sentence is a group of words that expresses a complete thought.
• Recognize the difference between a fragment and a sentence.
• Understand that a sentence begins with a capital letter and ends with a punctuation mark.
• Identify and write types of sentences: declarative, interrogative, exclamatory, imperative.
• Recognize the difference between phrases and clauses.
• Identify an independent and dependent clause.
• Correct a run-on sentence.
• Correctly use subordinating conjunctions.
• Identify coordinating conjunctions.
• Write compound sentences.
• Write dictated words and sentences.
• Write a paragraph or story about a designated topic.
• Fill in missing words in sentences.
• Use a graphic organizer to organize main ideas and supporting details.
• Organize information into categories.
• Understand and use a writing process.
• Write a title page and a simple bibliography.
• Write in a variety of forms for different audiences and purposes.
• Write clearly and effectively.
• Describe people, places, things, and events with relevant details.
• Recognize alliteration, personification, hyperbole, onomatopoeia, similes, and metaphors.
• Analyze and evaluate the effectiveness of written work.
• Learn about famous authors and their style of writing.
• Identify and avoid double negatives in writing.
• Identify the meter and rhyme scheme of a poem.
• Understand the significance of a poem.
• Write a couplet, a triplet, and a quatrain ending in rhyming words.
• Write a pun, a cinquain, a haiku, a limerick, and an acrostic.
• Write a concrete, catalog, diamond, and an I Am poem.
• Create a comic strip.
• Create a travel brochure.
• Apply the rules for italicizing titles of literary works, movies, music, artwork, ships, planes, and trains.
• Write a tall tale.
• Extend a story written by another author.

Communication

• Use listening and observation skills and strategies to gain understanding.
• Use communication skills and strategies to interact and work effectively with others.
• Write statements or questions for a story, card, or interview.
• Demonstrate the ability to express an opinion, or present ideas in a variety of situations.
• Use transitional words and phrases to connect ideas.
• Demonstrate the ability to give oral descriptions.
• Write and read a persuasive speech or essay.
• Use effective vocabulary and logical organization to relate or summarize ideas.
• Recite and memorize poems and Bible verses.
• Evaluate an oral presentation using a rubric.
• Follow a set of multi-step directions.
• Describe the location of one object relative to another object using prepositional words.
• Understand the meaning of an idiom.
• Develop listening comprehension and the ability to retell a story.
• Pantomime objects or actions.
• Use a mnemonic.
• Develop keyboarding skills.