This curriculum is designed to provide the following eight benefits. Following the list, each of these benefits is explained in further detail.

1. Versatility of the Graphic Organizers: Empowering and Confidence-building
2. Improves both Critical Thinking Skills (which improves Reading Comprehension) and Writing Skills
3. The Benefit of Explicit Teaching with Repetition
4. Highly Visual (makes the brain happy!)
5. The Benefits of Using Simple Texts
6. Free Video Lessons available on the website for Lūminé Press:
7. Perks that improve student independence
8. Many Uses

Benefit 1: Versatility of the Graphic Organizers: Empowering and Confidence-building

Many curriculums provide a unique or customized graphic organizer for each writing task. However, this can create a dependency on the teacher or curriculum to provide the graphic organizer, and that might make it difficult for the student to take on independent or more advanced writing tasks in the future. Why? Step 1 to any writing task is to plan out the writing. This is what the graphic organizer is for. However, if the student has not learned how to take a simple graphic organizer and adapt it to a variety of purposes, then when it comes time for the student to take on an independent writing task, he or she might not know how to start. The student may start mentally sifting through all the many different graphic organizers they have been exposed to and feel overwhelmed at the thought of needing to choose the “best” one. This might create a feeling of being “stuck” before even getting started!

When I first started working on this curriculum in 2002, I originally had 5 different graphic organizers for 5 different purposes in writing. You will see some of those in the student exemplars that are provided in this curriculum. However, after that first year, as I reflected on the pluses and minuses of the year, I realized that it would be more empowering for the students if they could learn the skill of adapting one or two graphic organizers to a variety of purposes. I chose the Story Map and the 4-Square. I believe that is one of the strengths of this curriculum.

The Story Map: I have adapted the Story Map so that it can work for a wide variety of purposes, and this makes it easier for the student to apply the process to both story analysis and story creation.

The 4-Square: I have also adapted the 4-Square so that it can be used for a wide variety of five-paragraph essays. It can also be used for note-taking. Additionally, in one of the appendices, I share how it can be used as a tool to assist with problem-solving in math, and with designing a science experiment using the Scientific Method.

Key Point: When the same graphic organizer is used for a variety of purposes, it not only reinforces the formula or recipe for the writing process, but it also empowers the student with the skill of taking a known resource and adapting it for a different purpose. This is a great skill to have. It is empowering and confidence-building. It decreases a sense of dependency on a teacher or curriculum.

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Benefit 2: Improves both Critical Thinking Skills (which improves Reading Comprehension) and Writing Skills

The Story Map is used in two different ways that allow the student to improve in both their critical thinking skills (seen in reading comprehension), and in their writing skills.

Critical thinking skills

Something that sets this curriculum apart from other curriculums is that with this curriculum, the students are learning what questions to be asking themselves when they are reading and after they finish reading. Asking and answering these questions, in one’s own mind, can be applied to any book or text they read, and to any piece of writing that they are planning. Thus, the thinking skills learned in this curriculum allow the student to enjoy increased reading comprehension and writing skills without always being dependent on a curriculum or teacher to guide them.

Students like to answer questions, but they need to know what the questions are! If the questions are always given by the curriculum or by the teacher, then the student becomes dependent on being given the question. This does not necessarily translate to an application outside of school when reading literature or text on one’s own. If reading independently, the student may not know what questions to ask him/herself about what they are reading.

The key, and what this curriculum is based on, is that when a student knows what the question is, they can answer it. Therefore, this curriculum teaches students, when preparing to write a literary analysis, what questions they should be asking themselves. Their answers get written down on the Story Map and demonstrate both the student’s comprehension of the story and their ability to discern important events from unimportant events. If a student is unable to determine what information is relevant and what is not, they may err on the side of writing down everything (including every unimportant, irrelevant, unhelpful detail). It is a similar quandary with notetaking. If a student is unsure how to identify and summarize key details, they may err on the side of copying the textbook word-for-word. The skill of determining what needs to be mentioned and what does not, and how to state it concisely, takes higher-order thinking skills. This curriculum is designed to help the student develop those higher-order thinking skills.

Often, the stumbling block to being able to discern the important from the unimportant is simply not knowing the specific questions one should be asking of him or herself and answering. This curriculum teaches the student exactly what questions to ask themselves while they are reading, and it is what allows the student to become a more independent thinker. That is empowering as they are no longer dependent on the teacher or curriculum to ask them what questions they are expected to answer.

Key point: When you know what questions to ask yourself while you are reading, you gain a much deeper understanding of the story.

Thus, the process of filling out the Story Map helps the reader to improve his/her “critical thinking skills” and overall reading comprehension.

Throughout this year, the student will learn what questions to ask themself for every step in the process. One of the ways the student will learn this is by watching the accompanying videos in which the teacher is modeling the metacognitive strategy of stating her mental thoughts out loud. As the student hears the questions that the teacher is asking herself, and as the teacher guides the student toward asking him/herself the same questions, the student is able to learn first from observing, then by imitating, and finally through repetition.

Writing skills.

Second, once the Story Map is filled out, it can be used as the pre-writing plan for the student’s analytical writing about the story. The content and ideas for the writing have been written down, and the graphic organizer allows the writer to visually see the organization of what to write down first, next, after that, etc. In this way, the same graphic organizer is used for both reading comprehension and for writing regarding the same story.

Once the one-paragraph form of analytical writing is mastered, the student becomes ready to tackle the five-paragraph format. For the latter, the 4-Square becomes quite useful. The 4-Square can be used for just about any type of 5-paragraph essay: persuasive writing, compare/contrast, character analysis, analysis of theme, etc.

Just as with the Story Map, the completion of the 4-Square is when the writer does all of their thinking. The writer gets their ideas written down in an organized way. Then, all that is left to do for writing the essay is turning one’s phrases into sentences, and checking for good sentence structure, transitions, and a smooth flow.

While this curriculum focuses on the writing of paragraphs, essays, and stories, there is one preliminary chapter provided on how to write a good sentence. The purpose of Chapter 2 is to improve a skill called “sentence fluency.” It will include the purpose of a sentence, academic vocabulary used when talking about the grammar and punctuation of a sentence, and the “signal words” and “transition words” that can be used to help with defining the purpose of the sentence as well as improving the flow from one sentence to the next. Thus, Chapter 2 is being provided as a resource, but not for lessons and practice.

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Benefit 3: The Benefit of Explicit Teaching with Repetition

Explicit teaching (observe à imitate à repeat) is in line with the Optimal Learning Model (OLM), The Gradual Release of Responsibility (GRR) seen in The Science of Reading, and classical education.

This type of learning design allows the student to learn via a carefully sequenced repetition of the same process. Initially, the teacher is modeling the work, and the student is observing. A key feature is that the teacher is not only modeling the written work (external), but more importantly is modeling the “thinking” involved in the task (internal) by stating out loud the thoughts going on in the brain. This is the part where the student learns, first by observation, then by imitating, and finally by repetition, how to develop critical thinking skills.

As the process repeats, the teacher gradually hands off more and more responsibility to the student until by the end, the student has mastered both the thinking process and the writing process and is able to demonstrate those skills by performing the process independently. It is the assessment of the independent work, culminating the unit, that shows the student’s level of mastery of skills developed in that unit.

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Benefit 4: Highly Visual (makes the brain happy!)

A highlight of this curriculum, and what allows even reluctant writers to gain confidence, is that it is very visual. The graphic organizers provide a visual map for the writer before they even begin writing. To augment the visual, this curriculum uses a lot of color-coding. That is an aspect of brain-based learning. When the student sees sentences written in a specific color, they will know what the purpose of those sentences are in the writing. Because the color-coding is such an integral part of this curriculum, the student will need to have access to writing tools (pens, colored pencils) in those colors.

There are two ways in which color-coding is used in this curriculum. One way is for defining the different units that focus on different purposes for writing.

Color-Coding according to Unit:

(There is an asterisk next to the units that include the reading of literature or non-fiction text.)

Quarter 1 (Q1):

*Unit 1: Writing a one-paragraph summary of a story (with a focus on the problem and solution)

*Unit 2: Writing a one-paragraph analysis of cause-and-effect in a story

Quarter 2 (Q2):

*Unit 3: Writing about a main idea with supporting details (one-paragraph and five-paragraph)

Unit 4: Writing a persuasive essay (one-paragraph and five-paragraph)

*Unit 5: Writing to take notes (not writing sentences)

Quarter 3 (Q3):

*Unit 6: Writing a one-paragraph analysis of character traits (character analysis)

*Unit 7: Writing about compare-and-contrast (one-paragraph and five-paragraph)

Quarter 4 (Q4):

Unit 8: Writing a story (fiction) and personal narrative (non-fiction)

*Unit 9: Writing an analysis of theme (five-paragraph)

Unit 10: Writing a friendly letter (five-paragraph)

Color-coding according to the job in the paragraph or essay:

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Benefit 5: The Benefits of Using Simple Texts

 

 

	Simple Texts Reason #1: Time Management Time management is a practicality. If the student has one hour to spend on homework, a shorter book may require 15 minutes of reading (application of phonics and decoding skills), and thus allow 45 minutes to be spent on thinking deeply about what was read, writing one’s thoughts down in an organized way (on the graphic organizer), and completing a well-crafted written paragraph (application of thinking skills, reading comprehension, writing skills). But if it takes 45 minutes to read the book, then the student only has 15 minutes to spend on the thinking skills and writing skills. Thus, there is a practical reason for keeping the texts short and simple.
	Simple Texts Reason #2: An opportunity to develop the critical thinking skills necessary for being a better reader and a better writer In Unit 1, the Aunt Eater stories could be read by a first or second grader. However, when filling out a Story Map, the reader cannot simply copy down every word from the story. The reader has to decide which events are important to include, and which ones are not. The reader needs to decide how to combine events in a way that is more concise. Lastly, the reader needs to formulate his/her thoughts into a variety of sentence types including both compound and complex sentences. While the Aunt Eater stories are simple to read, they are not simple when it comes to these tasks. They provide an excellent place to start, as the student gains practice with the application of the necessary thinking skills.
	Simple Texts Reason #3: Creates a strong foundation: starting simple makes it possible to advance! Whenever learning anything, such as a method for developing critical thinking skills, or a method for becoming a skilled and confident writer, it is important to start with tasks that may feel too easy, but that allow the writer to gain an understanding of the process, and that allow the writer to gain confidence. Once the writer has mastered the method, they can apply them to increasingly challenging texts throughout their schooling, and in fact throughout their life. Thus, parts of this curriculum could be used by a high second grader because the reading level of many the texts (especially the Aunt Eater stories) will be accessible, but it could also be used by a sixth grader who does not like writing, or who does not feel confident as a writer. In general, this curriculum is created for students in grades 3-5. At the end of most units are examples of optional tasks that could be a challenge for the older student, or perhaps for a gifted student.
	Simple Texts Reason #4: Readers become more independent Even though the texts are short and simple, the curriculum does teach the reader to become more independent, and more able to think critically about what he/she is reading, by teaching specific questions that the reader asks of him/herself while reading. These thinking skills can then be applied to more challenging texts that the student reads independently. More challenging texts tend to have a more complicated plot, and they likely even have several subplots. Before tackling those texts, it is helpful to have a strong foundation with very simple plots. However, in order to find a book with a very simple plot, one might find that it is written for a young reader. This could be an “easy reader,” or it could be a children’s picture book. We will be primarily looking at a range of folktales, fairy tales, and simple mysteries. Interestingly, many of the children’s picture books are written to be read aloud, and thus the independent reading level might be more accessible to a fifth or even a sixth-grader! In that event, parents are welcome to read aloud books that are too challenging for the student to read fluently and independently. If the student is a strong reader who likes a challenge and wants to apply the process of Story Map Writing to a more challenging chapter book, the student might choose to select one of the subplots in the book to focus on rather than the overarching plot. In Quarter 4, we will tackle a chapter book titled Magic Tree House: Merlin Missions: A Christmas in Camelot. We will not only analyze characters, cause/effect, and compare/contrast, but we will also analyze theme! It will be an opportunity for the student to take many of the thinking and writing skills that have been developed throughout the year and apply them to one longer book.

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Benefit 6: Free Video Lessons available on the website for Lūminé Press:

The first one or two lessons of each unit are available on video for no charge (accessible with a password provided with the purchase of this curriculum). These video lessons provide the student with an opportunity to hear and see the teacher model every step of the thinking and writing process. It is very helpful for the student to hear what questions they need to be asking themselves throughout each step.

 

 

 

 

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Benefit 7: Perks that improve student independence

• For most units, optional “extra stories” are provided if the student wants more practice or a greater challenge.

 

• Editing checklists are provided to help the student check over their work.

 

• Rubrics are provided that allow the student to assess their own work.

 

• Once the paragraph is completed, the students score their own work by using a rubric tailored to that type of paragraph. The rubric, which is based on the 6+1 Traits of Writing (minus the trait of “Voice”) provides scores for the following aspects of one’s writing:

 

• Each score is either 4, 3, 2, or 1:
  • 4: A “Wow” paper. Practically Perfect.
  • 3: Meeting the standard we are aiming for.
  • 2: Almost there. Needs some work.
  • 1: Information is inaccurate or missing.

 

• The rubric serves multiple purposes:
  • It can be used as a guide for how to write the paragraph.
  • It can be useful during the revision process.
  • It empowers the student to have control over his/her own score.

 

• More information about rubrics is included in the Appendices of the Q1 Teacher’s Guide.

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Benefit 8: Many uses

• Homeschoolers: grades 3-5.
  • Note: Examples of student work and other models are provided for both the beginning writer and the more advanced writer throughout most of the units (Unit 1 treats everyone as a beginner writer, but more advanced writers can work on improving sentence structure and fluency by including complex sentences).

• Schools (for an entire class or grade-level):
  • Note for schools: All of this curriculum, except for Unit 9, was piloted in a public school, including a holiday essay which all of the students opted to do on Christmas. However, the same essay could be done on any other holiday which is special to the student. In other words, this curriculum does not focus on Christianity. There is a reference to the bible as a literary work to exemplify two literary devices, a reference to our minds being a God-given gift, and an essay on mythology vs. religion. The Christmas essay examples do not focus on the Christian meaning of Christmas, but on the time spent with family and one’s family traditions. Any family-centered, tradition-filled holiday would work.

• Students who are not homeschooling but who would like to gain confidence as a writer.
  • Note: The curriculum does not necessarily need to be completed in one year. However, it is recommended to follow the units and lessons in their sequential order. Each unit, for example, assumes that the student is familiar with the language and skills taught and used in the prior units.

• Students with special needs who would benefit from the simple step-by-step directions (one step at a time), the repetition throughout each unit with a gradual hand-off of responsibility to the student, and the highly visual color-coding