In Unit 1, students launch their learning about the sun, moon, and stars by focusing on literary texts about these celestial objects. In the first part of the unit, students explore the unit guiding question--"Why do authors write about the sun, moon, and stars?"--by participating in a cycle of inquiry through observations and literature. The unit begins with a lesson focused on noticing and wondering about the sun and moon with close viewing of both photographs and time-lapse videos. Students then generate questions about these celestial objects and begin reading literature that centers on these objects.
During the second part of the unit, students complete a series of focused read-alouds, in which they explore a number of literary texts. Each text is read over the course of two lessons: students answer text-dependent questions, complete a Story Elements board to track the elements of the text, participate in role-playing to better make sense of what they are reading, and write in response to text. Students also gather language from these stories and begin to build a Word Wall with words used to describe the appearance and movement of the sun and moon. This will later support the students in their performance task. For the Unit 1 Assessment, students listen to Kitten's First Full Moon by Kevin Henkes read aloud, and then write in response to the text about its characters, setting, and major events using key details from both the text and illustrations. (RL.1.2, RL.1.3, RL.1.7, W.1.8, SL.1.2, L.1.6)