Units of Study for Writing: Literary Essay - Opening Texts and Seeing More, Grade 5

This unit helps fifth graders meet sky-high expectations for writing literary essays. Members of the class begin by writing an essay about a shared story-a poignant video clip that they watch and discuss together. With that shared experience work as a foundation, fifth graders then learn to design, write, and revise interpretive essays about short stories. Throughout this work, the children-and you, their teachers-are given crystal-clear tips that convey the TCRWP's latest thinking on this important topic. The unit ends by teaching kids to transfer all they have learned to new circumstances, including those posed by high-stakes tests.

Students learn to:

• Write to grow ideas about a text
• Read interpretively
• Reread closely and carefully to identify evidence that best supports a claim
• Support a thesis with a variety of evidence
• Draft and revise thesis statements that capture the themes of a story and that forecast ways their essays will support their theses
• Transfer and apply their essay writing to respond to prompts and real-world situations

This unit is best taught after students have some experience writing opinion texts. Several books in the Units of Study series support this work, including two fourth-grade writing units-Boxes and Bullets: Personal and Persuasive Essays and The Literary Essay: Writing About Fiction-and the fifth-grade reading unit, Interpretation Book Clubs: Analyzing Themes.