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.

Sentences are the building blocks of paragraphs. A sentence is a complete thought that can stand alone and in this unit students will learn what comprises a complete sentence and how to identify a fragment, or incomplete sentence. They will explore different kinds of sentences and how to punctuate them. And, to sharpen their craft, students will learn how to spice up their own writing by adding sentence pattern variety.

Understanding how our ten number system works enables students to see interesting and useful patterns and relationships in these math activities. These patterns allow students to develop more efficient mental math strategies when multiplying by multiples of 10 or 100. Students will also review rounding and apply this skill to larger numbers - up to 100,000’s place.

1, 2, 3, go! Help your child beat their words per minute game after game with these typing numbers games. Using the numbers at the top of the keyboard, your students will get lots of practice integrating numbers into their sentences and paragraphs. Try practicing these games with the numerical keyboard for a fun challenge!

Did you know Melitta Benz invented the coffee filter? Who is the father of text messaging? Kids learn about 3 cool inventors in this quick typing game. They will practice typing symbols, numbers, and capital letters as Floyd surfs a big wave! Have them play over and over again to beat their previous words per minute!

Letter writing is a very engaging and authentic way to learn formatting, punctuation and grammar. The activities in this unit should be learned in tandem with actual letter writing to aunts, uncles or other special far-away people. That way, students can learn and practice the letter writing skills and then apply them in their own letters. It would be especially rich to include their thoughts about books they are reading.