Mrs. Moorman's Class - Language Arts

Language Arts Files We Use in Class

Useful Language Arts Links

Language Arts State Standards
CST Language Arts Released Questions
Open Court Reading

Welcome to the Language Arts Section of our website. In this section, you will find links to many of the things we use and are learning during Language Arts Instruction. You will also find pictures of the students' work, as well as explanations of the current standards.

California Treasures Reading

Our Language Arts Basal Series is called California Treasures, published by Macmillan/MacGraw-Hill. This program will have us studying 5 interesting, yet distinct themes:

   * Taking A Stand
   * The American West
   * Using Your Wits
   * Team Up To Survive
   * Investigations

* Changes

Through these themes the students will be learning the 5th grade social studies and Science standards, as well as learning about our past, present and future. These themes will be represented in all that the students do in class this year.

California Treasures is divided into three main sections -- Grammar Skills, Reading, and Writing. Each day the students will be instructed in these three core language arts strands, hitting the CA 5th Grade standards each step of the way.

Below are some pictures of things we are doing, and have done, in class related to the themes above. Please take a minute to browse through the snapshots, and get a glimpse of what is going on in class.

Morning Message

Each morning, your child enters the class to find a "Morning Message" pre-written and waiting to be picked up. This friendly letter is written to both preview the day, as well as help all of the students practice the important standards they must know as 5th graders.

As I am writing the message, I am embedding the key skills that the students must practice. Figurative language, parts of speech, sentence combining, and basic grammatical skills can all be found in the messages. When the students are reading them, they are to be identifying the different grade level skills, fixing any mistakes they come upon, and combining any sentences that need to be combined. All of this is done within the first five minutes of entering the room.

Once they have completely "revised" the letter, the students are then to write back to me on the lined side of the paper. Here they are not only practicing their writing skills, but also are using the skills that they learned in the message itself. If, for example, the message of the day focused on conjunctions, the students will be instructed to include a few conjunctions in their own writing. It is a good, in context way to learn the language arts standards.

I review these messages weekly and send them home with the students. Be on the look out for these messages, so you can see what skills you can be working on with your child at home.

Morning Message Sample.doc

Our Organized Library

Library

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Main view of the library.

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You can see in this up close picture that each of the books are labeled with the bin color and title. This allows for easy filing of the books when they are being put back into the bins.

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These are the Non-Fiction books in our library. Above them sits the Book Recommendation area, as well as the student selected "Favorite Books".