Unit 5 — I Can Do It!
Description
This unit emphasizes the importance of trying hard, perseverance, and working together toward goals. Through reading literature and writing narratives, students explore character emotions, problem-solving, and overcoming challenges.
Essential Questions
- What does it mean to try hard?
Learning Objectives
- Students will understand the value of perseverance and effort
- Students will identify character feelings and make inferences
- Students will understand folktales, plays, and narrative structure
- Students will determine multiple meaning words
- Students will decode words with short u and e, v, y, q, and x
Suggested Texts
- Jabari Jumps — fiction
- All By Myself — fiction
- The Little Red Hen (Makes a Pizza) — fiction
- The Little Red Hen On Stage — play
- Let's Make Music! — informational text
- Emmanuel's Dream — biography
- Everyone Can Learn to Ride a Bicycle — fiction
Supplemental Resources
- Index cards for creating vocabulary cards with multiple-meaning words
- Scissors and glue sticks for creating word sort activities
- Printed graphic organizers for story element identification
Language
Speaking and Listening
Writing
Formative Assessments
- Collaborative discussions about character feelings and problem-solving
- Small group reading with guided practice on phonics and fluency
- Graphic organizers for identifying story elements and problems-solutions
- Word relationship activities with multiple-meaning words
Summative Assessment
Module assessment with comprehension and word study components
Benchmark Assessment
A brief teacher-administered task in which students listen to a short narrative, identify a character's feeling using pictures or words, and explain one way the character solved a problem. This assesses comprehension, inference, and understanding of perseverance across Unit 5 content.
Alternative Assessment
Students may demonstrate understanding of character feelings and problem-solving through oral responses, picture sorting with teacher support, or dramatization of key story moments in place of written work. Visual supports such as emotion cards or simple picture sequences may be provided to scaffold comprehension.
IEP (Individualized Education Program)
During read-alouds and collaborative discussions about character feelings and perseverance, provide visual supports such as emotion picture cards and story-structure anchor charts to help students process and express ideas. Allow students to demonstrate comprehension through oral responses, pointing, or dictation rather than written output, especially when completing story element graphic organizers. For phonics work with short u and e and less common letters, offer multisensory practice opportunities and break new sound-spelling patterns into small, sequential steps with frequent check-ins and positive feedback.
Section 504
Provide preferential seating during whole-group read-alouds and phonics instruction to minimize distraction and support focus. Allow extended time during word study and any written response tasks, and ensure directions for graphic organizer activities are given both orally and with visual cues so students can access tasks independently.
ELL / MLL
Build vocabulary around the unit's themes of perseverance, emotions, and problem-solving by pairing key words with pictures, gestures, and simple definitions before reading. Use illustrated anchor charts and bilingual resources where available to support understanding of character feelings and folktale story structure. Simplify discussion prompts and allow students to respond in their home language or through drawings before transitioning to English oral responses.
At Risk (RTI)
Connect the unit's themes of trying hard and overcoming challenges to students' own experiences to build engagement and activate prior knowledge before reading. Offer simplified graphic organizers with picture prompts or sentence starters to make story element identification and problem-solution thinking more accessible. During phonics instruction, provide additional practice with previously introduced short vowels before introducing new patterns, ensuring students have a stable foundation before extending to new letters and sounds.
Gifted & Talented
Encourage students to make deeper inferences about character motivation and emotions across multiple texts, moving beyond identifying feelings to explaining how a character's choices reflect themes of perseverance or collaboration. Invite students to explore how the same theme appears differently across the unit's genres — such as folktales versus plays — and to discuss what makes each structure effective for telling a story. Students can also investigate multiple-meaning words in richer contexts, exploring how the same word shifts in meaning depending on the story or situation.