The 5-week unit focuses on character development through real and fictional explorations. Students will read exemplar texts like Alice in Wonderland or The Little Prince to examine character experiences and development. They will also read informational texts about exploration to apply lessons from literature. Students will create semantic maps about exploration. The unit culminates in an informative essay responding to how exploring the world helps people learn. Distributed resources include Alice in Wonderland and a text about kids during the age of exploration.

1. Isaac School District No.5
ELAS Thematic Unit Overview Grade 5 – Unit 5
2012-2013
Unit 5: Exploration, Authentic and Imagined
DURATION: Five Weeks
Building on the study of character development from Unit Four, students articulate learning from real and fictional characters’ experience
Students choose an exemplar text with a dreamlike context-such as Alice in Wonderland or The Little Prince- to read with their peers
and to examine what we can learn from the characters’ experiences and development. Additionally, students read informational texts
such as My Librarian is a Camel: How Books Are Brought to Children Around the World or biographies of explorers in order to apply
lessons learned from literature to informational text. Students also create an individual semantic map of the word exploration in order to
help their understanding of the real and fictional characters studied in this unit. Finally, this unit ends with an informative explanatory
essay in response to the essential question.
Essential Questions: Vocabulary:
metaphor
What do people, real or imagined, learn nonsense literature
from exploring their world? paradox
parody
Essential Learning: style
symbol
Exploring the world by traveling through
reading helps us learn more about people.
Distributed Resources Aligned to Unit 5:
Alice in Wonderland (Carroll, adapted by Helfand & Nagulakonda)
Kids During the Age of Exploration (MacGregor)
Underlined vocabulary indicates a Tier II word. 1