Home > Consumer Reviews > Complete Year in Reading and Writing: Grade 5: Daily Lessons - Monthly Units - Yearlong Calendar

I'm a fifth grade teacher in Westchester County, NY and my colleagues and I have just begun using The Complete Year/5 as the basis for our ELA curriculum. The first unit alone is worth the price of the book! That unit focuses on how readers and writers have changed the world - perfect for this age group. We are now studying sentence structure and the students are surprisingly interested in punctuation and how it is used. The resource sheets in the back of the book are particularly helpful. I highly recommend this book for upper elementary school teachers.

Scaffolding learning as students go from one grade level to another, is an educational goal.
Laurie Pastore and Pam Allyn have achieved this by writing a fourth and then a fifth grade book about the teaching of reading and writing.
When your wife talks - you so often listen (or should!) My wife has been working with these two grade level books for the past year. She uses them in her work with classroom teachers and administrators in her capacity as a literacy consultant.
The fact that teachers in the same building can converse using the same framework and language is remarkable yet so necessary. This resource enables teachers to do that. The "user friendly format" as well as the wealth of information teachers find at their fingertips is terrific. It can be used as such or as a program for teachers who are so inclined.
According to my wife, Janice, this book is a must!

I was lucky enough to get a copy of The Complete Year, Grade 5, in September. I read it and then began using it the next week in my 5th grade classroom. Laurie did a great job writing thoughtful lessons that directly relate to my curriculum. The students have enjoyed learning through immersion instead of constant direct instruction. I would recommend this book to any new or seasoned teacher. You'll be amazed at how much more a student achieve using these lessons.

This is a great teaching resource full of lots of practical lessons and a wide variety of different texts to use to teach reading and writing. You can use it in so many ways. Adopt the whole thing, teach units that you like or use it to create similar units that will fit in with your school calendar. Teachers have especially enjoyed teaching the beginning unit looking at inspiring words and found it incredibly relevant to this momentous year. The spotlight units are worded perfectly for the beginning teacher or even those more experienced teachers trying to teach in the framework of the workshop model for the first time. I would definitely recommend this to teachers I work with without any hesitation.

It's a great book for teachers, but to parents, I don't think it's helpful - ordinary parents don't have the time to read the day-by-day teaching plans. Take a look before you buy it.