Learning+from+Authors

**Language Arts Grade 4**  **Unit:** Learning from Authors  **Purposes:** Authors as Mentors, Writing Strategies, Craft (similes, personification, word choice, metaphors)  **Overarching Theme:** Diversity

 **Description:**  The focus during October-January is on lifting the quality of writing by learning from authors. Students will learn about author's craft, strategies for improving writing through lessons using mentor texts. Students will select at least one piece of writing to take through the entire writing process.

Desired Results
 * Established Goals:**

 **Common Core State Standards:** Writing


 * **Understandings** || **Essential Questions** ||


 * **Knowledge:**

//The student will know...// || **Skills:**

//The students will be able to...// ||


 * Content Vocabulary ||

Assessment Evidence
 * **Performance Tasks**

Personal Narrative || **Formative Assessments**

Student Interest Surveys Fall Writing Prompt Blue Ribbon Writing 1 Writing Samples Grade 3 Prompt Writing Conference Notes


 * Summative Assessments**

Writing Prompt

Reflection || Learning Plan The Writing Fix
 * Student Self-Assessments**
 * Resources**

Nothing Ever Happens on 90th Street || All The Places to Love || Dav Pilkey’s story, __Dog Breath__, involves a family's distress over their dog, Hally Tosis, and his horrible breath. After enjoying the story, the writer will plan a detailed and sequenced story about an animal with a silly problem. While planning and revising, students will think about their use of memorable details and their story's pacing. || [|Lesson] Dog Breath || This strategy helps the reader almost feel like they've "slipped into the skin" of the writer or character. It consists of three parts: where the speaker was physically, what they saw, and what they thought. || [| Lesson] || The writer will imagine and compose a descriptive paragraph that focuses on a gigantic object moving through a specific setting and leaving destruction in its wake. The writer will choose an object and a setting in which the catastrophe will take place. Using high-quality details and strong verbs will help the writer create a showing paragraph. || [|Lesson] James and the Giant Peach || This writing activity is inspired by Bruce Coville’s __Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher__, and students will be asked to write about an original magical object that they have discovered in the "Elives’ Magic Supplies," just as Jeremy does in the story. Students will need to imagine themselves in the magic store where the proprietor tells them to look around until they find what they "need." The students will then create an organized scene based upon the magical object and how they will take care of it or use it, depending on their choice of objects. || [|Lesson] Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher ||
 * Lessons ||
 * **Simile City:** Students learn how to identify similes and discuss their purpose through inquiry, a skit, and a hunt for similes. ||  ||
 * **Using 90th Street's Advice:** First, writers will search for all four pieces of advice that young author, Eva, receives from her neighbors and then uses in her story found in the book __Nothing Ever Happens on 90th Street__. Next, writers will apply the four pieces of advice as they brainstorm details about a person, place, and thing they have chosen to write about. Finally, writers will each create a descriptive paragraph that interestingly describes the person, place, and thing they have chosen. || [|Lesson]
 * ** Special Places to Love: ** Students write a paragraph about a special place they remember, then search for prepositional phrases in their rough draft. After a read-aloud of __All the Places to Love__, students talk about Patricia MacLachlan's use of prepositional phrases to give her sentences flow. Students revise their special place paragraphs to use meaningful prepositional phrases that share memorable details. || [|Lesson]
 * **Silly Animal Problems**
 * **Ba Da Bing!**
 * **You're on a Gigantic Roll:**
 * **Adventurous Magic**