Ms. Q: Some Planning Questions

Ok. Here is where I am at right now.

I have taken my state standards and culled the ones I won't have time to cover (because the have "already" been covered and we work on them with every story anyway--like reading comprehension).

I took my list of standards and turned them into B R O A D objectives.

I took these broad objectives and found the following list of CONCEPTS I need to cover:
Vocabulary development using roots and affixes as inference clues
Literary elements: hyperbole, metaphor, etc. (the list seems endless!)
Author's purpose (all genres)
Theme-P O V-Setting-Characterization-Plot
Poetry elements
Author's use of evidence
Structure
Persuasion (techniques, use of)
Writing Process
6 Traits of Writing
Types of Writing: Personal Narrative, Non-fiction, work document, persuasive piece
Research

Now I am looking at my history outline and determining what eras I will cover when and determining how much time I have for each era.

Once I have determined this, I will move on to selecting the major work(s) to study for each era and some of the supplemental materials.

Once I have this I can go ahead and determine where the above concepts are best covered.

I have stumbled across a few questions:

How do you teach research? Is it a unit saved for a specific time? Is it a building of skills?
I want to build on research skills all year. When I have taught it as a distinct unit in the past, students did not do well with research. I do think being able to incorporate more primary and secondary source documents will help teach certain research skills small amounts at a time. I plan on having the students complete the research standards through the election project. More on this as the project develops.

How much fiction versus non-fiction do you cover?

Do you discuss or point out purposes for reading (i.e.; reading a textbook, reading for specific information, reading to determine author's purpose, etc.)? How?

Do you teach dialogue writing?

Do you do an author study?