Synthesizing Information and Ancient Greece!

Hello Team Taylor Families!

Here is a quick update of what is happening in ELA and Social Studies.

In ELA, students are learning how to synthesize information from multiple sources when responding to text. Students are learning how reading informational texts enhance their understanding of the world in which they live. They are also looking at how they can defend their ideas in writing. We are learning the ANSWER strategy, which helps them to analyze materials that they read, organize their ideas in a note plan, and select relevant evidence to support their ideas when writing a response. They are looking at various types of articles: argumentative, informational, and narrative. They will learn how to craft an appropriate response to each of these tasks.

We will then move into working with folklore, with a focus on legends and epics. Once we learn about folklore, we will move into our next novel, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, by Mildred D. Taylor. Much of our focus will be how reading stories and poems show common human experiences.

In Social Studies, we are learning all about ancient Greece. Students learned about the geography and how it impacted the communication and settlement of this amazing civilization. We are currently studying about the various forms of government (Monarchy, Oligarchy, Tyranny, and finally, Democracy). Students are analyzing the difference between an Athenian Direct Democracy and a Representative Democracy, which is a legacy left to us from the ancient Greeks. From there, we will move into a close analysis of the life in the two city-states of Athens and Sparta. We will look closely at the government, economy, and education in both of these different regions of ancient Greece.