Part II Teaching Nonfiction and Citing Text Evidence
Alright guys, I promised you that I'd deliver a Part II of my previous post. This time I'm going to share a lesson with you that I learned in a workshop. This lesson uses nonfiction text to teach students how to cite text evidence and utilize cooperative learning. This lesson should be taught after teaching the first three mini lessons in Part I (summarizing, drawing conclusions, and generating questions). First, I will show you the steps for the students during this lesson. Then, I will go through the entire lesson.
Steps:
1) Students choose an article
2) Students predict what the article will be about, scan the article, and talk to their face partner or shoulder partner about their predictions.
3) Independently read the article.
4) Students re-read the article taking notes with sticky notes--summarizing each paragraph
5) Students write down a summery on a large index card. At the bottom of the card, the student should write their conclusion (i.e. What did he/she learn? What is the main idea?)
6) On the back of the index card, the student should write a question to ask a classmate.
7) Students will participate in Stand-Up, Hand-Up, Pair-Up Kagan Structure. (See Kagan.com). The students will take turns asking each other their questions, reading their summaries, and giving their conclusions. The partner must answer their question after hearing the summary.
Monkey Business Lesson
First, the teacher should show this video titled Monkey Business Illusion from YouTube to hook the students. Ask the students to watch the white team pass the ball and count how many times they pass the ball.
After the video, ask the students if they saw the gorilla or the curtains change colors. Explain that the brain has a limited capacity to focus when given a task.
After the video read the article "We are Blind to Our Blindness" from delanceyplace.com.
Model to students how to summarize each paragraph using sticky notes. (See Part I for instructions).
After summarizing, model with the students how to take those sticky nots and write a summary on an index card and a conclusion. Finally, model how to generate a question (See Part I for instructions).
Last, students will complete the process independently using the steps above.
This lesson hits on a lot of Common Core tasks: students get a choice in the article they want to read, students create high order questions to ask each other, students are cooperatively working together, and students are summarizing.
RI.5.2, RI.5.7, SL.5.1, SL.5.2
* This lesson came from a workshop titled Where's the Evidence by Suzanne Flores and Julie Scruggs.
I hope this lesson helps some of you!
