Unit 10 — Dare to Dream
Description
Students explore problem-solving, innovation, and inspiring individuals through literature, informational texts, and biographies. They retell stories with key details, describe characters and settings, and identify text organization. Writing focuses on informative/explanatory biographical essays about problem-solvers and innovators. Phonics instruction covers vowel patterns /ô/ with oo and ow, consonant + le patterns, vowel patterns /oo/ with oo and ou, and inflection -ing with spelling changes. Students learn about contractions and explore multiple-meaning words. The unit emphasizes creative thinking and perseverance.
Essential Questions
- How can thinking in new ways help solve problems?
Learning Objectives
- Retell stories including key details and demonstrate understanding of central message.
- Describe characters, setting, and major events in stories using key details.
- Identify words and phrases in stories or poems that suggest feelings or appeal to senses.
- Identify main topics and retell key details of informational texts.
- Know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills.
- Write informative/explanatory texts naming a topic and supplying facts.
- Use common, proper, and possessive nouns.
- Spell untaught words phonetically drawing on phonemic awareness.
- Use frequently occurring affixes and inflections.
- Distinguish shades of meaning among verbs and adjectives.
Suggested Texts
- What Can You Do? — informational text (week 1)
- Kids Are Inventors, Too! — informational text (week 1)
- Young Frank Architect — realistic fiction (week 1)
- Charlotte the Scientist Is Squished — fantasy (week 2)
- Sky Color — realistic fiction (week 2)
- We Are the Future — poetry (week 2)
- I am Amelia Earhart — biography (week 3)
- Joaquín's Zoo — fantasy (week 3)
- Marconi and the Radio — video (week 4)
Supplemental Resources
- Printed word lists for vowel patterns /ô/ (oo, ow) and /oo/ (oo, ou) plus consonant + le
- Graphic organizers for biographical essays with person's name, achievement, and impact
- Index cards for multiple-meaning word activities
- Printed images or photographs of inventors and innovators
- Chart paper for recording problem-solving strategies and inventions
Language
Reading: Informational Text
Reading: Literature
Writing
Formative Assessments
- Setting and character analysis in fantasy and realistic fiction
- Make inferences about problem-solving approaches
- Text organization and topic identification activities
- Response to text: write explanations, opinions, and letters
- Writing conferences during biographical essay drafting
Summative Assessment
End of Unit Assessment; Junior Problem-solving Project (informational and research writing)
Benchmark Assessment
— not configured —
Alternative Assessment
Students may demonstrate understanding through oral retelling of a story with visual supports such as picture cards or story sequence mats. Alternatively, students may draw and label key details about characters and settings instead of writing, with teacher scribing as needed.
IEP (Individualized Education Program)
During retelling and character description tasks, allow students to respond orally or through drawing with dictation rather than requiring written output, since Grade 1 students are still developing writing stamina. For phonics instruction covering new vowel and consonant patterns, provide visual word sorts, picture-sound cards, and repeated practice with multisensory materials to support decoding. When working toward the biographical essay, break the writing process into small, scaffolded steps—such as identifying a topic, stating one fact at a time, and using a simple graphic organizer—so students can demonstrate understanding without being overwhelmed by the full writing demand. Providing highlighted mentor sentences and sentence frames for informative writing will support both grammar focus areas (nouns, contractions) and expository structure.
Section 504
Ensure students have access to a low-distraction environment and preferential seating during phonics instruction and independent reading tasks in this unit, as new vowel patterns and multistep writing require sustained focus. Extended time should be provided for any written response tasks, including biographical essay drafting, to allow students to fully process and produce their thinking without time pressure.
ELL / MLL
Build vocabulary for the unit's content domain—problem-solving, innovation, and biography-related terms—using picture cards, illustrated word walls, and visual glossaries before reading or writing tasks begin. Simplified, step-by-step directions with visual supports will help students navigate informational text structures and retelling tasks; pairing text with images or short video clips about innovators can make abstract concepts more concrete. When introducing phonics patterns and multiple-meaning words, using realia, gestures, or drawings to connect words to meaning bridges the language gap and supports comprehension alongside decoding.
At Risk (RTI)
Connect the themes of perseverance and problem-solving in the unit's texts to students' own experiences and challenges, giving them a meaningful entry point for retelling and character description before moving to more complex analytical tasks. For phonics patterns, provide additional practice with familiar, high-frequency examples before introducing less common words, and use word-building activities that allow hands-on manipulation of sounds and letters. During biographical essay writing, a simple two- or three-part graphic organizer (who, what they did, why it matters) can reduce complexity while still building the informative writing skill that is the unit's core writing goal.
Gifted & Talented
Invite students to move beyond basic retelling by analyzing how an innovator's character traits directly caused or shaped the problem-solving events in a text, requiring them to support inferences with specific details from multiple sources. In biographical essay writing, students can be challenged to structure their writing with an introduction, organized facts, and a concluding thought about why the person's work matters today, moving toward a more sophisticated expository form. Exploring multiple-meaning words and shades of meaning through the lens of precise author's craft—why an author chose one word over another to convey a character's determination or creativity—provides an enriching language extension that goes deeper into vocabulary study without simply assigning more of the same work.