Reading to Learn
Rational - As students progress into
the upper grades, they are required to read and comprehend
more expository texts. This poses a problem, commonly known as
the "Fourth Grade Crisis."
Students have been inundated with strategies that help them with reading
and comprehending
narrative texts, but are completely unaware as to how to sift through
the information included in an
expository text. The students get bogged down by all of the trivial
information. This lesson focuses
on helping students to learn to differentiate between the trivial information
and the important
information and to question as they read. Students will be guided
through the reading of "At Home
in the Old Oak Tree." This lesson is meant to be carried out
in small reading groups. At the end of
this lesson it is my hope that students will be able to: 1comprehend
an expository text, 2create
effective questions, and 3summarize an expository text.
Materials - "At Home in the Old Oak
Tree" Branching Out - Images magazine, Heath Literacy,
Vol. 3 Number 2; Individual Dry Erase Boards; Dry Erase Markers for
each student; Encyclopedia
(Volume O); Post It Notes; Butcher Block paper; Notebook paper; and
pen or pencils for each
student.
Procedures -
1.Begin by assigning reading groups. It is often
effective to do this according to reading ability.
2.After reading groups have been assigned, create activities
for the other groups to be working
on while you are busy with the guided reading.
Since this story is about oak trees, it might
help to build prior knowledge by having the
students do an activity about oak trees. This
would also be a good time for students to
go to their assigned centers (spelling, math, social
studies, etc.).
3.Sit with your reading group at a table. (There
should be between 4 and 6 students in each reading group.)
Give each student his or her own magazine
to read.
4.Have students turn to the Table of Contents. Why
do you think we are turning to the Table
of Contents? What is the Table of
Contents used for? After the students have had a chance
to respond, continue: We are going to read
"At Home in the Old Oak Tree." Does anyone
know where we can find this article?
As the children respond, have them put their finger on
the title of the article in the Table of Contents;
this way you can be certain that all of the
students know how to use the Table of Contents.
5.Before you turn to the page of the article. Ask
the children what do they think the article is
going to be about? After they
respond "oak tree," ask them if they know anything about oak
trees. Tell that when you want to
know something about a topic it is sometimes good to look
it up in the Encyclopedia. Look
up oak tree in the Volume O encyclopedia. It would help if
you read this before the lesson and knew what
parts were interesting and appropriate for this
lesson. Read the portions you selected to
the children.
6.Now what do we know about Oak Trees? Discuss
what was learned about oak trees from
reading the encyclopedia. Let's turn
to page 2 and read this article.
7.Before beginning to read the article, call the children's
attention to the pictures and the
captions. Let's look at the pictures;
they help us to know what the article is going to be
about. Does anyone know what the
words beside a picture are called? Wait for the correct
response. That's right they are called
captions. Now assign a different picture and its caption
to each member of the group. I want
you each to read your caption silently and look at the
picture. Do you have any questions
about your picture and caption? If you do, write it on
your dry erase board.
8.After each child has had the opportunity to practice
reading their caption and thinking about a
question, have them read their caption aloud
to the group. It might be a good idea if you
took the first caption to model reading and
questioning. If you have 5 or fewer students in
your group, you can model the first caption.
Read the porcupine caption aloud. I have only
seen a porcupine in a zoo. I wonder
if they feel as prickly as they look. What do you think?
Discuss porcupines and continue with the other
captions and questions, student by student.
9.Now look at the title. After reading the captions
and looking at the pictures, does anyone
know why the title is "At Home in the Old
Oak Tree"? Discuss.
10.Tell the students that we are going to break the article
up into different sections. We will stop
and discuss each section as we read.
You will each be required to think of two things as you
read - a question and a summary of the
part read. Does anyone know what a summary is?
Wait for the response. That's right
a summary is when you take a large chunk of information,
weed out the unimportant information, and
create a sentence that tells the main idea of the
passage. Let's practice.
11.As I read this paragraph, write on your dry-erase boards
all of the things that you think are
important. Read the passage that
you chose from the encyclopedia. Go around the table and
discuss what the students thought was important.
After a consensus has been made about the
important points, continue with the summarizing.
Now we need to take the important
information and turn it into one sentence
that sums it all up. Do this as a group.
12.Now let's read the article. Take a post it and put
it at the bottom of the first paragraph. This
is where we are going to stop reading.
Make certain that the students have done this
correctly. Now draw a line down the
middle of your dry-erase board. The top is for
questions, and the bottom is for important
points. Give the students a minute to do this.
13.Read the first paragraph silently. As you read model
on your own dry erase board the
questioning and summarizing. Do this
activity with them.
14.When they have finished, ask them if they had any questions.
If no one answers, it might help
to have one of your own. Ex. I wonder
how many animals live in an oak tree, or how can an
animal call an oak tree a home when it
doesn't have walls or a roof?
15.Now go through and ask for the students' important points.
Come to a consensus about
what is important and create a sentence to
summarize the paragraph. Write this sentence on
a piece of butcher block paper.
16.Now we are going to read the next paragraph. Move
your post it notes to the bottom of this
paragraph. Remember as you read to
look for important points and write down any
questions you might have. Read
silently and write your own questions and points as they
read and write.
17.Discuss the questions the students had and then create your
summary sentence. Write your
summary sentence on the butcher block paper.
18.Continue in this way for the rest of the article. Take
it paragraph by paragraph.
19.After you have finished reading the article, look at the
piece of butcher block paper and all of
the summary sentences. You should have
5 sentences. Read over these sentences as a
group.
20.Assessment - Have students take the summary
sentences from the article and create a
summary sentence that summarizes the five
sentences. Tell the students to do this on a piece of notebook paper.
This will be for a grade.
21.After you have taken their summaries up, discuss what they
wrote on their papers. Now we
have taken this whole article and broken
it down to one sentence. Good job!
22.Enrichment - Have students research the animal
that was featured in their captions. Instruct
them to write a page about this animal. Discussing
habitat, food, life span, and so on.
Reference -
Pressley, Michael, et al. "Strategies That Improve Children's
Memory and Comprehension of Text." The Elementary School Journal.
Volume 90,
Number 1. 1989. 2-32.