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.

Learning how to read fluently includes more than just piecing letters together to form words. Kids also have to read from left to right and notice spacing between words. Help your child become a fluent reader by tackling these skills.

Understanding how to pronounce the short I sound, such as in pill and film, is important for first graders encountering words they don't know. This guided lesson teaches kids all about the Short I sound, and provides lots of examples of short I words. Targeted practice like this helps to reinforce kids' understanding of short vowel sounds and boosts phonemic awareness, upon which lifelong reading skills are based.

Teaching kids to blend, or combine, sounds in order to pronounce new words is an important element to first grade reading. Segmenting the sounds that make up a word, and then blending those sounds to pronounce them correctly, can be a tricky skill to master. This lesson helps take first graders through this process, with guided practice and helpful examples.

Teaching kids to blend, or combine, sounds in order to pronounce new words is an important element to first grade reading. Segmenting the sounds that make up a word, and then blending those sounds to pronounce them correctly, can be a tricky skill to master. This lesson helps take first graders through this process, with guided practice and helpful examples.

Teaching kids to blend, or combine, sounds in order to pronounce new words is an important element to first grade reading. Segmenting the sounds that make up a word, and then blending those sounds to pronounce them correctly, can be a tricky skill to master. This lesson helps take first graders through this process, with guided practice and helpful examples.

Teaching kids to blend, or combine, sounds in order to pronounce new words is an important element to first grade reading. Segmenting the sounds that make up a word, and then blending those sounds to pronounce them correctly, can be a tricky skill to master. This lesson helps take first graders through this process, with guided practice and helpful examples.

Teaching kids to blend, or combine, sounds in order to pronounce new words is an important element to first grade reading. Segmenting the sounds that make up a word, and then blending those sounds to pronounce them correctly, can be a tricky skill to master. This lesson helps take first graders through this process, with guided practice and helpful examples.

Teaching kids to blend, or combine, sounds in order to pronounce new words is an important element to first grade reading. Segmenting the sounds that make up a word, and then blending those sounds to pronounce them correctly, can be a tricky skill to master. This lesson helps take first graders through this process, with guided practice and helpful examples.

Learning parts of speech will help third graders to develop a deeper understanding of written language. This guided lesson teaches about adjectives, prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections, which is the glue holding most sentences together. Designed by our team of teachers and curriculum experts, the content in this lesson provides instruction and examples that will support kids as they learn these important words.

Verbs do a lot of the heavy lifting in good writing. Understanding the different kinds of verbs and how they are used enables students to write more compellingly. Students will explore how tenses work and how they must agree with and sometimes work together with other words in the sentence. Students will also learn about adverbs, the "sister" part of speech that enhance, or modify, verbs.

The mysterious comma is arguably the trickiest form of punctuation, which is why assigned it it’s own unit in 5th grade. As students become more sophisticated writers they craft more complex sentences. They incorporate independent phrases and clauses, generate compound sentences, and utilize transition words to combine ideas - and the exercises in this unit will teach them how to use commas correctly in each scenario.

As students begin to read more sophisticated texts, understanding how authors use figurative language becomes critical. In this unit, students will revisit some of the figurative language they learned in fourth grade and also study some new ones too, including onomatopoeia, hyperbole, puns and oxymorons. Analyzing how figurative language is used in texts will help readers apply what they have learned.