Words are the wondrous building blocks in language. This unit increases students’ word knowledge by introducing more challenging vocabulary and exploring how words are related. Learners will also discover some of the ways words are constructed using derivational root words, prefixes, suffixes, and compound words. Students will get to explore and create fun literary devices such as similes, idioms and metaphors.

Words are like legos - they can have interchangeable parts. In this unit students will study the construction of words including roots, prefixes and suffixes. Students will also explore how to modify words to make them possessive, a different part of speech and adjust to signify singular and plural. Understanding the basic building blocks of words, will increase students’ vocabulary, improve their spelling and add strategies for decoding unfamiliar words.

Representing data on graphs makes math visual and involves some creativity and design. Plotting data using fractional units takes their learning one step further. Also in this unit, students learn to measure using both traditional units (like inches, feet and yards) and metric units, and how to convert measurements within each system. The concept of measurement gets two dimensional when students explore measuring and working with angles.

As students become more sophisticated writers, they begin to understand that words have different “jobs” in a sentence. These jobs can be thought of as parts of speech. In this word study unit, students will learn about the work that transition words, prepositions, verbs, adverbs and adjectives do. Students will also explore how certain kinds of words work together, like verbs and adverbs.