Re: Changing grades - Read aloud ideas for 5th grade

Francie

Posted on 8/08/10

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I love teaching fifth grade. The students grow up a lot
during the school year. One thing you might be surprised to
learn is that the fifth grade students still loved to be read
to. I usually focus on the read alouds that I can finish in
one sitting: Eve Bunting's How Many Days to America is
excellent to give meaning to Thanksgiving.

She also has Cheyenne Again - about the white people trying to
Americanize a Native American. Another great Eve Bunting book
is called "Train to Somewhere" about the orphan trains during
the Depression.

For our unit on slavery, I read "Nettie's Trip South" - by Ann
Turner Summary: A ten-year-old northern girl encounters the
ugly realities of slavery when she visits Richmond, Virginia,
and sees a slave auction. She writes a letter to her Northern
friend. I have the students write a letter back to Nettie,
explaining how awful they feel after reading Nettie’s letter.

Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt is also good.

For the Westward Movement, I read There is a powerful read
aloud about a Chinese immigrant: Coolies by Yin. It shows how
abused the Chinese immigrants were as they helped build the
Transcontinental Railroad.

A longer book that is great is: “Go Free or Die” by Jeri
Ferris. This is a gripping biography of Harriet Tubman. I
have a Discovery.com slave unit that I do. The culminating
project is the students become a character in a Slave Auction
and have to defend what they do. Here is the website where I
created a ton of word files from:
http://school.discovery.com/schooladventures/slavery/witness1.
html

One last read aloud idea by Gary Soto: Too Many Tamales. I
use this to teach narrative writing.

Francie

On 8/03/10, sydney wrote:
> I am changing grades/ Not at my request. What am I up
> against and what do I need for fifth grade? Please help.

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