Learning Through Literacy
Learning Through Literacy > Grade 5

Grade 5 – Learning through Literacy

Looking for new ways to support writing across Grade 5? Check out these Releasing Writers-inspired units. Created by Ontario teachers, for Ontario teachers, these resources connect writing with learning in subjects like Health, Science, and Social Studies. With explicit vocabulary and syntax built in, they’re classroom-ready, curriculum-connected, and designed for Ontario classrooms.

General Resources

These one-page TIDE-L organizers can be used during the organizing step of the Releasing Writers POWeR Cycle. Educators may choose an organizer based on their class’s needs and provide additional scaffolding as required. If there are alternative TIDE-L organizers you would like to use, you are encouraged to do so. The format of the organizer itself is less important than maintaining a consistent TIDE-L structure – choose one that works for your students and use it consistently.

This is what is included:

  1. Important Evidence/Detailed Examination terminology with icons.
  2. Important Evidence/Detailed Examination terminology, no icons.
  3. Ideas/Details with icons.
  4. Ideas/Details, no icons.
  5. Ideas/Details, with icons, and printing lines to support legibility.

The syntax templates can be used during the Syntax Focus of each unit. They include sentence expansion and combining templates, as well as templates for more complex expansion activities involving independent and adverbial clauses.

The templates are editable and designed to be used in future lessons with new content. Adapt them as needed to suit your learners.

Structured writing in Grade 5 emphasizes writing as a process for organizing ideas, refining understanding, and communicating content knowledge with clarity. Through a guided writing cycle, students study mentor texts to explore how authors develop and connect ideas, use different text structures to support explanations, and select language that conveys information precisely.

Students apply these features in their own writing through supported planning, drafting, and revising, with the use of exemplars, explicit vocabulary instruction, and guided practice. Writing is used to consolidate learning from reading and content areas, supporting deeper comprehension and the development of transferable skills across the Ontario curriculum.

Grade 5 Units