Strategic Teaching Plan UNE 742 Study Skills and Content LiteracyGrace Hendrie June 20, 2009

Introduction: StudentsMy second grade class consists of 23 vibrant and enthusiastic learners. I have 12 girls and 11 boys. Five of my students have Individualized Educational Plans and all receive some pull-out resource room support. These students also receive differentiated reading and math support within the classroom with the Special Education teacher or an Instructional Tutor, in addition to speech/language, PT, OT, counseling, psychiatric counseling and social groups/Lunch Bunch. Three other children are currently on the Child Study Team. One student is being studied for possible visual perception, fine/gross motor and writing weaknesses. One boy is struggling with possible processing or auditory comprehension challenges. Another student has excellent comprehension, but has much difficulty recognizing even the basic pre-primer sight words. My students range in writing abilities. I have students that are able to write 3-4 pages of fluent narratives with appropriate dialogue to students that are focusing on writing three sentences about one topic. At the beginning of the year my reading levels ranged from Developmental Reading Level 3 to a Developmental reading level of a 34. About two thirds of my students are exceptional artists and visual learners. They respond extremely well to symbols and any kind of visual representations of what they are learning. This is easily transferable to my kinesthetic learners since they are able to see the movement when I am able to integrate movement into my lessons. The majority of my class is able to recite the words to any of the hit songs on the radio. So it is important to try to integrate these type of activities into any lessons that I plan. Visual, movement, and sound will keep the attention of the children in my class.

Introduction: OverviewThe text that is to be read is a Scholastic News Nonfiction Reader about Butterflies. The Shelton Public School District provides this as a resource to supplement the Science and Social Studies curriculum. Since the Connecticut Mastery Test has proven that nonfiction has been a challenge for the students in our district, I chose to focus my Strategic Lesson Plan using a high interest text such as this one. The lessons for this plan include multiple pre-reading, during reading and post reading activities. After completing the pre-reading activities I would choose which during reading activity would fit the needs of your class best to do first. It would be too overwhelming to do both a main idea web and QAR while you are reading the text. It would be best to do a second reading and do the correlating post activities next. Please note that the teacher pages have a background color and the student pages have a white background. In addition, I did not include the citation on the student page since this would be too confusing for the students. I did, however, make note in the bottom notes column.

Introduction: Objectives

Students will activate prior knowledge by looking at the title, headings, pictures, and diagrams to decide what they already know about butterflies. Students will use context clues in a paragraph to determine the meaning of a word to aid in comprehension. Students will interact with the text by identifying the main idea and supporting details using a web to clarify understanding. Students will practice and identify answering different levels of questions in order to develop students thinking processes and use of metacognition.

Pre-reading Activities Whats in a Picture? (Stephens & Brown, 2005, p. 101102). Vocab Alert! (Stephens & Brown, 2005, p. 90). Preview Nonfiction Text Features

Whats In a Picture? Look at the pictures! What do you What do you know?

Vocab Alert! Do you know these words? 1. Take out your science journals. 2. Write the date at the top of the page. 3. Paste the Vocab Alert! slip onto the page. 4. Fold the page in half so that you have two columns. (up and down) 5. Draw a picture or write a sentence of what you think the word means on the left side.

Vocab Alert! Words Title Heading Bold print Diagram Eye spots Flits Camouflages Iridescent Species Exhibit Botanical gardens

Lets PREVIEW nonfiction text features!

Find the title

Find the headings What do they tell us?eye spots flits Find the words in bold. camouflages iridescent Why are they important? species exhibit botanical gardens

Preview the cover, headings, bold print and diagrams

Look carefully at this diagram. What does this diagram show us?

During Reading ActivitiesQAR (Stephens, et. al., 2005, p. 129). At times, students need to be given a purpose for reading other than to learn. I have found that the QAR tool increases the students awareness of their thinking process which is exactly how Stephens and Brown describe the purpose of this strategy. Metacognition not only increases the comprehension of the text read at the present time, but also helps the students increase their level of cognition as the level of texts increase.

Main Idea Web I found that the main idea web is a successful tool for teaching students to write an expository paragraph that summarizes informational text. Perhaps it was too common of a strategy to be found in our textbook, but I have found utilizing the web enables the student to construct a well developed paragraph. (The paragraph will be used as a post reading activity)

During Reading Tool #1 Kinds of Comprehension Questions

Right There! Think and Search!

Two more kinds of questions!

You and the Author! On your Own!

During Reading Tool #2 Main Idea and Details

Buckeye Butterfly

Now YOU help me figure out what this paragraph is telling us!1. What was the main idea of the paragraph? 2. What important details does the author tell us about this butterfly?

Post Reading ActivitiesThe two post reading activities are aligned with the during reading activities. First, since QAR (Stephens, et. al., 2005, p. 129) is a new tool that is being introduced to the students they are going to be shown different kinds of questions that they are going to have to match up with their partners. I will show the four types of questions and the examples of questions on the PowerPoint and then hand out the game to the partners to try to match the pieces. The partners will compare their answers to the computer when they are done. Second, model how you can write a paragraph like the author did using a main idea web. With the students, generate a web of facts that they learned about butterflies. Then have them work in partners to write a main idea paragraph using that web just like the author!

QAR Post Reading MatchingEXAMPLES OF QUESTIONS KINDS OF QUESTIONS

1. 2. 3.

Do butterflies like fruit? What are flits? What fact about butterflies surprised you? Why?

You and the Author! On your Own! Right There! Think and Search!

4.

Have you ever seen a butterfly? Where?

Using the Main Idea Web:This is what we did . NOW it is time to think about what we learned to write your OWN paragraph like the authors of Scholastic News!

Buckeye Butterfly

Revisiting the Vocab Alert!Now let s take a look at our science journals again! Open to the page with our pictures and/or our sentences of the vocabulary words. On the other side of the fold, the right side, use your Scholastic News to draw or write what the vocab words mean!

Optional Tool to be used by Teachers: Homework

After reading the Scholastic News Nonfiction Reader together, can YOU figure out the main idea?

YOU try!

Works CitedScholastic News Edition 2; May/June 2009, Vol. 65 No. 8, p1-4. Stephens, E.C. & Brown, J.E. (2005). A Handbook of Content Literacy Strategies: 125 practical reading and writing ideas, second edition. Norwood, MA: Christopher-Gordon Publishers.