By the end of the school year, all students should be able to:
■ Recognize how authors use literary devices such as alliteration (repeating the same consonant sounds at the start of words, as in “pretty in pink”) or foreshadowing (weaving in clues about what will happen later in the story).
■ Understand that their personal points of view will affect the opinions they form about texts and issues.
■ Use different methods to plan and organize their writing. For example, they could keep a writer’s notebook or use a graphic organizer, such as a timeline.
■ Listen to class lectures, small-group discussions, and classroom discussions to understand and interpret literature and informational text (reports, articles, etc.).
■ Present original literary texts such as their own poems, plays, or stories. Use inventive language and text structures. For example, they could use an introduction that catches the listener’s interest.
■ Read and understand at least 25 books, including at least four books about one subject or by the same author or in one genre of literature.
■ Recognize that the way words are spoken can affect their meaning. For example, speech can convey sarcasm, irony, or enthusiasm.
■ Use different comprehension strategies, such as predicting, questioning, summarizing, visualizing, and making connections, to understand and respond to reading.
■ Use knowledge of word roots (such as those of Greek, Latin, or Anglo-Saxon origin) and word parts (such as prefixes and suffixes) to determine the meanings of new words.
■ Read silently and aloud from a variety of genres.
Learning at Home
The following strategies can be done in the families’ native languages as well as in English.
Encourage your child to keep a journal, blog, or other written record of an ongoing personal experience or theme. For example, they could write about possible careers, making and keeping resolutions, undertaking a continuing volunteer project, or starting a new school year.
Record a discussion between your child and yourself. Analyze each other’s tone of voice, volume, pace, and choice of language. What nonverbal messages does each voice communicate?
Encourage your child to check out online research resources on topics of interest available through the New York Public Library’s Web site, kids.nypl.org.