Why Do I Need To Know
Why?
Caroline
Yow
Reading to Learn
Rationale- In
order for students to be able to comprehend text, they need to be able
to
gather important and meaningful information from the text. Having
students
recognize and answer "why" questions helps them to understand and
organize
the ever changing facts about a book. Predicting what might happen in
the story
from previously read text, helps the children put all the known clues
and
answers together to produce a creative hypothesis. Predicting is useful
for
organizing the facts in order to predict a reaction.This lesson
explains and
models how to ask "why" when you read in order to understand what you
are reading, and also how to predict what might happen next. This
lesson also features
a reading worksheet activity in which the students can put their
reading
comprehension and prediction skills to the test.
Materials:
Board to write questions on
Marker or chalk to write questions with
Pencils for each student
Books: Robert the Rose Horse by Joan Heilbroner (1962).
Beginner Books
Worksheet for each student:
Questions
to answer from Robert the Rose Horse.
Why did Robert's
friends gather?
Read until page 9. From what you have read, what
do you think will happen next?
Why is everyone up in the air?
Why is Robert leaving the farm?
Why is the milkman mad?
Why is Robert out of a job?
Why did Robert intentionally sniff the rose?
Read
until page 62. From what you have read,
what do you think will happen next?
Why were all of Robert's farm friends in town?
Why
did Robert not sneeze when the policemen gave him roses?
Procedures:
When
we read we are always thinking about what is going to happen next. Don't you just love to predict things? When
we read, we also are remembering important facts about the book. How
many of
you read a book and ask questions to yourself as you read? Today we are going to learn how to question
and predict things in the story we are going to read. Good readers
always ask
questions as they read a text in order to remember and comprehend what
they
have read. One question that we are going to focus on today is the
question
"why?". Why are things happening? What are the possibilities for why
things are the way they are? We are going to act like detectives today.
We are
going to read the story and ask "why" questions to find clues to what
has happened, why it has happened and what do we think will happen
next..
2.
Teach the method to questioning.
What are some
questions that
we might ask ourselves when we read?
We often need to know the
basics of a story.
We need to find out Who. Who
is the story about? Who are the other characters?
We also need to know Where.
Where is the story taking place? Where do the major events happen?
Another question we have is
What. What is happening in the story?
We need to know Why. Why are
things/problems happening?
The last question is When.
When did an event take place? When did the story take place?
When we read we often need to
have these questions answered in order for us to really understand the
story.
More challenging questions
that we are going to focus on to help teach us to question the text and
be
better predictors are: why, and what do
you think will happen next?
(write these questions on the board)
When we ask why, we are trying to find out why
something happened, or why it is going to happen. (write under "why" section on board)
Many times we do not know
what will happen next, but this is o.k.
We are going to act like detectives.
We are going to put all the other answers together to try to predict
what
will happen next. (write under "what
do you think will happen" section)
3. Pass out
book Robert the Rose Horse to each
student, along with the worksheet.
4.
Model predicting what will happen just from looking
at the cover.
We are going to
read Robert the Rose Horse.
Now look at the cover of our book.
By the title and the pictures
we can make guesses about what will happen.
We can predict. What are some
of your predictions?
What do you think this book
will be about? Who will be the main characters?
5. Give booktalk.
Well this story is
about
Robert. Robert is a horse, who has many
friends. One thing that doesn't like Robert is a little red rose. We have to read to see why the rose doesn't
like
Robert and what the rose will make Robert do. I don't want to give away
too
much because I want to leave you little detectives to find the problem.
6. Read
briefly and model how to answer why questions and
prediction questions.
I want you to read
silently
while I read aloud.
"Robert was a happy
little horse. He lived on a farm. He lived with his mother and father."
-pg. 3
By reading this first page we
can answer some questions. Who?...Who is
our story talking about? (Robert). Who else? (mother and father) What?...What do we know so far? (he lives on
a farm with his mother and father).
Where?...Where does this story take place so far? (farm).
From this page can we answer
any of our "why" worksheet
questions yet? (No)
We can predict…we have only
read a little but we can still make guesses. What do you think will
happen
next? Do you think he is going to get in trouble? Do you think he will
show us
his farm? What do you think? (ask some
students to predict).
Let's keep reading
"One day Robert had a
party. It was his birthday. All his farm friends came to the
party."-pg. 4
We learned something
new. What did we learn just from reading
this page? (he is having a birthday party).
Were our predictions right? It is
o.k. if your prediction is not correct. Sometimes it is hard to guess
especially when we only know a little. That is why we need to find out
and
remember all the information about the book so we can better predict,
and be a
better detective.
Can we answer our first
question…Why did Robert's friend gather? Yes, we can. On your sheet,
you are
going to write in a complete sentence why they gathered.
On my sheet I am going to write (model
writing it)…Robert's friends gathered because it was Robert' birthday
party.
Did everyone write their
answer to the first Why question.?
Now let's read to page 9 so
that we can learn how to make predictions.
"They had a big cake.
"Happy Birthday, Robert, " said all of his friends. "Happy
Birthday to you.". The cake was very pretty. It had big roses all
around
it. Robert liked those red roses. He put his nose right into one. He
took a big
sniff. Then Robert got a funny feeling. His eyes began to itch. His
nose began
to itch. And then…"
On your sheet where it says
" Read until page 9. From what you have read, what do you think will
happen next?", you are going to do just that.
We read up until page 9 and
then stopped. Don't look forward, I want
to see what kind of prediction you can gather from only what we have
read.
So for these prediction
questions you write you very own prediction…without looking ahead.
On my sheet I am going to
write….I think that Robert is going to faint. Did you see how I wrote a
complete sentence for that answer?
We don't know much about our
story yet, but I am still making a creative guess. I am going to put
together
clues from what I have read so far to make my guess. Remember that you
are
going to be a detective!
7.
Assign reading assignment for children to do
independently.
Now you are going
to finish
reading this story. While you are
reading, you are going to write your answer to the why questions
and the prediction questions.
Questions
to answer from Robert the Rose Horse.
Why did Robert's
friends
gather?
Read until page 9.
From what
you have read, what do you think will happen next?
Why is everyone up
in the
air?
Why did the Doctor
want
Robert to smell the roses?
Why is Robert
leaving the
farm?
Read until page 23.
From what
you have read, what do you think will happen next?
Why is the milkman
mad?
Why is Robert out
of a job?
Why did Robert
intentionally
sniff the rose?
Read until page 62. From what you have read, what do you think
will happen next?
Why were all of
Robert's farm
friends in town?
Why did Robert not
sneeze
when the policemen gave him roses?
_____________________________________________________________
Assessment: As an
assessment, the teacher will look at
each students worksheet to see if they comprehend the questions, know
how to
predict, and to assess whether they understand how to answer questions
according to the text .
References:
Wright, Melanie.
The 5 W's.
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/persp/wrightrl.html
Cummings, Amanda.
Detectives
ask WHY!
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/odysseys/cummingsrl.html
Haffarnan, Jessica.
What Are
We Reading For Again?
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/persp/haffarnanrl.html
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