Mood and Tone
A Free Unit For Grades 5-6

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Mood and tone can be really tough concepts to teach. As adults, we might understand the concept of the mood of a story vs the author's tone, but for kids, it's a big concept to master. In this unit, your students will walk step-by-step through descriptions, exercises, and activities to help them discover what these two big concepts mean, and how they're different.

First, you'll use the posters/slides to teach your learners what mood and tone are. You'll discuss words that can be used to describe them, how authors use them, and how to describe the difference between them. The slides can basically be used as a teaching script and include discussion prompts to help you along.

After reading about what mood and tone are, you'll either choose an excerpt for students to use in class, or let your students choose one themselves. I have included 5 really fantastic excerpts from great books that will give quite a lot to work with. Some are shorter and some are longer, but all show the mood and tone of those books quite well.

Students will use these excerpts to write a paragraph about the mood and tone given in that excerpt using a guided writing exercise.

These tough concepts are broken down step-by-step here for your kids to write a full paragraph about the mood and tone of their chosen excerpt. If you're reading a novel in class, you may wish to discuss that novel first and the mood and tone they see there.

Students will choose an adjective to describe the mood and tone of the excerpt (examples are given to inspire them - I highly recommend letting them use a thesaurus too!). They'll then need to find 3 examples from the excerpt that prove this adjective describes the mood or tone of the text.

Finally, they'll put everything together into a final paragraph. This is a great way to prepare for writing a literary essay, and the posters and worksheets can be used throughout the year to practice the concept.

Download the Free Unit Below 

You can download this free unit by clicking on the link below. **You may use and distribute this product for FREE in your homeschool, classroom, or school, but you MUST leave my website name as it is on each page (MessyBeautifulFun.com). If you'd like to share the digital file directly, please direct people to this blog page and not the Google Drive link. You may NOT sell this unit or redistribute it for a profit. Thanks!**

Download Free Mood & Tone Unit Here

Summary and Theme A Free Unit for Grades 5-6

Summary and Theme A Free Unit for Grades 5-6

 Want more free ELA resources for this grade? Check out my ELA page here!

Writing about a book's theme can seem like a daunting task for most kids in this age group. Breaking down how an author is writing to their audience and what theme or lesson they want to get across is a big concept. The key to teaching it to fifth and sixth graders? Breaking it down step-by-step.

In this free printable unit, your learners will write a short summary and summarize the theme of a story using text evidence and their own thoughts.

The unit follows the story 'After the Fall' by Dan Santat, a story about Humpty Dumpty and how he braves climbing the wall once again after his fall. You can use the book itself, or listen to the story read aloud on Youtube. Either way it's a great book to start with that could give your students  few different themes to work with. 

They will start by writing a quick summary using SWBST method (Somebody Wanted But So Then). They'll then flesh out their summaries a bit into a small paragraph. 

Next, students will learn what the theme of a story IS. They'll listen to some common story themes, think up some themes from books or movies, and finally work as a group to come up with quick story ideas for different themes.

You'll then have them write a short paragraph using sentence stems provided on posters to write about the theme of the mentor text, After the Fall.

Finally, they will put it all together into a short essay that includes a quick summary of the story and a paragraph about the theme. I've included excerpts from the story that can be used as text evidence, as well as checklists students can use to be sure they've included everything in their papers.

The 5 lesson plans in the unit guide you through teaching all of this, and make planning a breeze too!

Download The Free Unit Below

You can download this unit by clicking on the link below. 

**You may use and distribute this product for FREE in your homeschool, classroom, or school, but you MUST leave my website name as it is on each page (MessyBeautifulFun.com). If you'd like to share the digital file directly, please direct people to this blog page and not the Google Drive link. You may NOT sell this unit or redistribute it for a profit. Thanks!**

Download Summary & Theme Here

 Free Phonics Program Unit 2 
CVC AN Words and Sight Words

Want more free phonics resources? Check out my phonics page here!

Unit 2 is here!

I hope my Let's Get Reading! Phonics Unit 1 has been helpful for you and your readers! Reading is such an important skill that everyone should have the ability to learn. I'm looking forward to releasing more units in the coming weeks too!

In this unit, the focus will be on CVC (-an) words, like man, can, and van. Your readers will also learn some new sight or heart words to help them read sentences quicker (if you're following a SOR-style or heart words approach to sight words, kids will learn the phonics rules for these later on)

These units follow the same pattern with each new one so that your learners will not have to deal with learning new activities each week. Posters can be displayed or projected for practice every morning, while cards can be used as practice at home or with partners.

Of course, we want our kids to actually use the reading skills we teach them, so they'll get plenty of reading practice in these units too! There are shorter and longer options for readers at different levels, and I've included both with and without illustrations.

The sentence strips have great cues for readers on them too! These use words from previous weeks as well so that students are always practicing learned skills.

Centers are included for practice and fun too! There is a flip and cover center in which students choose a word card and find that picture on the page. There is also a sight word BINGO game and a build-a-word center for extra practice.

I have also included worksheets for extra practice in reading and spelling too! There are missing letter worksheets, sight word writing, drawing a sentence, writing and drawing a sentence, and a dictation page that you can use if you'd like to dictate words or a sentence.

Download the free Phonics Unit below!

You can download this free phonics unit by clicking on the link below - it will take you directly to a Google Drive file. From there, you can download or print the file. 

**You may use and distribute this product for FREE in your homeschool, classroom, or school, but you MUST leave my website name as it is on each page (MessyBeautifulFun.com). If you'd like to share the digital file directly, please direct people to this blog page and not the Google Drive link. Thanks!**

Download Let's Get Reading Unit 2 Here

Free Repeated Addition to Multiplication Lesson and Worksheets

Free Repeated Addition to Multiplication 

Lesson and Worksheets

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Kids following most math curriculums will typically spend the first 3 years learning about addition and subtraction. So it shouldn't come as a surprise that when we throw in a completely new symbol, many kids get stuck. Teaching multiplication doesn't have to be scary though, or even take up a lot of time. As soon as kids realize exactly what multiplication is, it becomes a whole lot easier for them to get to know their facts and tables.

In this open-and-go lesson, you'll take your learners step-by-step from addition to repeated addition, to multiplication! The lesson slides or pages keep it super simple with easy explanations and real-life situations. It will go over what multiplication is, what the symbol for multiplication is, the commutative property of multiplication, and how to use skip counting and/or strategies to multiply.

Your learners will get plenty of practice too! Not only is practice built into the lesson, but I have included an easy-to-use center and worksheets for you as well. These can be used with markers or manipulatives when placed inside a plastic page protector or laminated. We also love to use them with dice or a spinner. Just have kids spin for the numbers and fill them in.

Download for free below!

You can download this lesson and practice unit by clicking on the link below. All I ask is that when sharing this resource with others, please share the link to this blog post, not the Google Drive! You may distribute paper copies of this resource for FREE or store it for use in your school's resources so long as my website name remains on each page. You may NOT distribute this resource for any profit in any way. Thank you!

Download Repeated Addition to Multiplication Lesson Here!