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Part B: Lesson Plans
Lesson 1
TOPIC: Science
Year Level: 4
Time: 60 minutes approximately
This assessment task addresses the broad AC English: Content
Descriptor from the Literacy Sub Strand: Interpreting, analysing,
and evaluating. Use comprehension strategies to build literal and
inferred meaning to expand content knowledge, integrating and
linking ideas and analysing and evaluating texts (ACELY1692).
Relevant Elaborations: Finding the main idea of the text.
During this lesson students will: Students will extend their
ability in finding the main idea of a piece of text to deepen their
reading comprehension awareness. They will learn to use the clues
within a text and text organization as an aid to comprehension and
to value the use of this particular strategy.
LESSON INTRODUCTION:
The Hook: Using the class set of iPads, in pairs, students will
visit the website Sheppard Softwares Life Cycles
(http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/scienceforkids/life_cycle/games.htm)
to explore three animal life cycles; dragging and dropping
animations to complete them.
Literacy learning intentions
We are learning to understand and use the comprehension strategy
finding the main idea of a piece of text to capture the most
important information.
Learning behaviours
I need to refer to the poster to recognize and value it as a
scaffold to tracking down the main idea.
Success criteria for whole class
I am doing well if I can capture the most important aspect of
the text into my headline.
Success criteria for focus teaching group
I am doing well if I can determine important ideas to condense
the information within the paragraph.!!
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Shared Text for whole class: Classifying Animals, Mammals Sarah
Wilkes.
Consider your role for whole class and focus group instruction:
The whole class instruction is the visible thinking strategy
Headlines and the focus group will be participating in the
reciprocal teaching strategy.
BEFORE: Finding the main idea involves the reader being able to
determine and recall important information. Finding significant
details helps the reader understand the points the writer is
attempting to express. Ask students:
! Why is it important to find the main idea/s?
! Is it easy to find the main idea when you read?
Concede that the class has been learning about life cycles and
making observations about living things. Refer to The Hook and
discuss what each life cycle showed us.
Introduce the text, Mammals.
DURING: The purpose of informational text is to convey
information about the natural or social world, with language
features including headings and technical vocabulary to help
accomplish that purpose.
Show the students the monotreme page. Discuss, what do the
headings and subheadings tell us. Read a section of the text and
clarify unfamiliar vocabulary. E.g. monotremata, mammals, species
and cloaca. Re-read the text and discuss how we improved our
understanding after learning the unfamiliar words.
Introduce the detective poster and use it as a platform for the
Headlines activity. As a class create a headline for the first
paragraph of the text, first identifying key words.
AFTER:
1. Whole class activity/thinking routine to explore the text
using the reading comprehension strategy:
Headlines encourages students to capture the essence of the idea
and concept about monotremes. The routine asks one core question:
if you were to write a headline for this topic after what we have
read and discussed that captured the most important aspect that
should be remembered, what would it be? Students will work
individually creating 3 headlines and share with a partner.
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2. Focussed teaching group: 17028542, 17643042, 82392273, and
89996161.
The focus group will be participating in the reciprocal teaching
strategy that asks students and teachers to share the role of
leading discussion. Each student will have a paragraph each
focusing on Marsupials. The activity involves four strategies that
guide the discussion: predicting, question generating, summarizing
and clarifying.
While students discuss they will be assessed through
observations if they have recalled the most relevant
information.
LESSON CONCLUSION:
Students will share their headlines to create a class poster on
the topic. A member of the focus group will share what they did and
tell the class the main idea of one of the paragraphs read.
Lesson 2
TOPIC: Science
Year Level: 4
Time: 60 minutes approximately
This assessment task addresses the broad AC English: Content
Descriptor from the Literacy Sub Strand: Interpreting, analysing,
and evaluating. Use comprehension strategies to build literal and
inferred meaning to expand content knowledge, integrating and
linking ideas and analysing and evaluating texts (ACELY1692).
Relevant Elaborations: Making connections.
During this lesson students will: Students will learn and apply
the comprehension strategy of making connections through defining
and understanding the three types of connections. In addition, they
will discover meaning within the digital environment.
LESSON INTRODUCTION:
The Hook: Using the class set of iPads, in pairs, students will
visit the WWF website and calculate their ecological footprint
(http://www.wwf.org.au/our_work/people_and_the_environment/human_footprint/footprint_calculator/).
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Literacy learning intentions
We are learning to enhance the comprehension strategy making
connections; in order for us to better understand the text we are
reading. Whilst, exploring the connection between words, images and
sounds in digital texts.
Learning behaviours
I need to refer back to the poster if I have trouble remembering
what it means to make connections with the text.
Success criteria for whole class
I am doing well if I can connect a new idea to prior knowledge
and reflect on what I have just learnt.
Success criteria for focus teaching group
I am doing well if I can make 3 clear connections (text to text,
text to self, text to world) between ideas from the video.
Shared Text for whole class: Food Eco-Footprint
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAybZOfCN6g)
Consider your role for whole class and focus group instruction:
The whole class instruction is the visible thinking strategy
Connect, Extend, Challenge and the focus group will be completing a
Double Entry Journal.
BEFORE: Making connections involve the reader drawing on their
prior knowledge and experiences to connect with the text. Making
connections while reading helps the reader better understand the
text that they are reading. Ask students:
! What are three different kinds of connections?
! Is it difficult to make connections with text? If so, why and
how?
Animal life cycles and eco footprints are similar as they both
represent a progression and have a beginning and end. What else do
they both have in common? Referring back to the topic and The Hook,
discuss the students food eco footprint with a screen shot of the
video in the background. Discuss how meaning is conveyed through
digital text.
DURING: The purpose of this informational video is for us to
discover the consequences of the food we eat, how it is produced
and the connection between food and the environment. It will also
allow us to explore the text using the semiotic system. Ask
students, what are the five semiotic systems. Give examples
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for each. Emphasize that this lesson will focus on visual and
audio systems. Watch to 0.52. What unfamiliar words do we need to
clarify? E.g. proportion, consumption and reabsorb. What did you
notice about the sound effects and visual movement?
Introduce Connect, Extend, Challenge table on the whiteboard.
Watch the rest of the video and list questions in appendix 2 to
prompt students.
AFTER:
1. Whole class activity/thinking routine to explore the text
using the reading comprehension strategy:
Connect, Extend and Challenge supports students to make
connections between new ideas and prior knowledge. In groups of 3
students will use sticky notes to write ideas addressing the video
under the headings in the Connect, Extend and Challenge table
explored in the during phase.
2. Focussed teaching group: 10906789, 31249379, 61100916, and
50582413. The Double Entry Journal will help learners struggling
with phrase and sentence level meaning. Students will choose a
quote or idea from the video in one column and in the other write a
response to that idea.
The journal will be used as a brief assessment to reflect the
students connection to the text. After, teachers will pile sort the
journal into three groups.
LESSON CONCLUSION: Each group of 3 will share to the rest of the
class highlighting a connection they made within the three
headings. The students from the focus group will share their
journals. The class will further discuss which types of connections
were the easiest and the hardest to make.
WORD COUNT Part B: 348
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APPENDICES:
APPENDIX 1: Text for whole class
Author: Sarah Wilkes
Title: Classifying Animals, Mammals
Date of Publication: 2006
Publisher: Hodder Wayland
Place of Publication: Great Britain
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Text for focus group
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Whole class instruction: Headlines is a visible thinking
strategy where students grasp on the idea of newspaper-type
headlines as a vehicle for summing up and capturing the essence of
an event, idea, concept and topic encouraging them to only
accentuate the important ideas of the text.
Focus group instruction: The focus group will be participating
in the reciprocal teaching strategy that asks students and teachers
to share the role of teacher by allowing both to lead the
discussion about a given reading. It involves four strategies that
guide the discussion: predicting, question generating, summarizing
and clarifying. The strategy supports students to determine
important ideas while discussing vocabulary, developing ideas and
question whilst summarizing information.
Tips and Questions During the Three Phases
Before:
! Emphasise that being able to identify the main idea is a good
check on ones own comprehension, a good way to study and remember
information, and
an excellent way to summarise information quickly.
When discussing The Hook:
! What did we learn about in the life cycle of the bird?
! Was it difficult to understand the cycle fully without
supportive text?
During:
When introducing Mammals, ask the students:
! To predict what we will expect to read about.
! What genre does this book fit in?
! What key vocabulary do you think we will find?
The poster used in this lesson is a valuable visual tool to
prompt students and allow the time they need to practice what is
being asked. It encourages learning and independence plus
advantageous for students with disabilities (Visual
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Aids for Learning, 2014).
After
Whole class: Critical to restate the success criteria of, I am
doing well if I can capture the most important aspect of the text
into my headline.
Focus group: Critical to restate the success criteria of, I am
doing well if I can determine important ideas to condense the
information within the paragraph.
The reciprocal teaching strategy will extend interpretive
reading elements specifically for these students. This includes:
identifying the main idea, summarising, linking new information to
prior knowledge, recognising/using print features and questioning.
The strategy supports students to determine important ideas while
discussing vocabulary, developing ideas and question whilst
summarizing information.
This link shows a video recording of the strategy in action:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXgMJVyCdeY
Questions and prompts:
! Predict: I think this (paragraph/section of text) will tell us
aboutbecause
! Clarify: Well, there is a few words that Im not sure aboutwhat
does X mean? (E.g. nocturnal, dusk, subclass, dependent).
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Lets reread the sentences again now that we know what those
words mean.
! Question: I wonder ifI wonder whywhat questions and wonderings
do others have?
! Summarise: In this paragraph of text we read about(who, where,
what, when, why and how).
Teachers can also use the rubric below as a guide to assessing
through observation.
Lesson conclusion: Teacher should strengthen the questions from
the before reading phase.
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APPENDIX 2: Text for whole class
Food Eco-Footprint
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAybZOfCN6g)
Text for focus group (important for students to have watched the
complete video, no particular shots will precisely trigger
connections).
Whole class instruction: Connect, Extend, Challenge is a visible
thinking strategy where students will make connections between new
ideas and prior knowledge, reflecting on what they are learning.
They will display their ideas in a table with the appropriate
headings.
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Focus group instruction: The focus group will be completing a
Double Entry Journal where students will choose an idea from the
text in one column and in another record their response. This
reinforces the fact these responses should make a connection
between the text and themselves, another text, or the world. The
activity also supports vocabulary and locating key words from the
text.
Tips and Questions During the Three Phases
Before:
! Discuss each connection, brainstorming on the whiteboard.
! Encourage students to give examples.
Discussion in regards to the topic focused in the digital
text:
! What is it?
! What ways do we leave our footprint on the planet?
! What do you think this video will be about?
! What key vocabulary do you think we will hear?
Because this text is not a book, how will the words, images and
sounds be effective?
During:
As a class discuss these questions to address each heading in
the visible thinking strategy (Connect, Extend, Challenge).
! How are the ideas and information presented connected to what
you already knew?
! What new ideas did you get that extended or pushed your
thinking in new directions?
! What is still challenging or confusing for you to get your
mind around? What questions, wonderings or puzzles do you now
have?
After watching the rest of the video. Ask students:
! What does this story remind you of?
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! Does anything in this story remind you of anything in your own
life?
! How is this text similar or different from other things you
have read?
! What does this remind you of in the real world?
! How are events in this story similar or different to things
that happen in the real world?
In relation to the semiotic system:
! What was the movement of the objects like? Fast? Slow?
! What sound effects did you notice?
! How about the colour?
! Discuss the symbolism of the footprint.
After
Whole class: Critical to restate the success criteria of, I am
doing well if I can connect a new idea to prior knowledge and
reflect on what I have just learnt.
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Focus group: Critical to restate the success criteria of, I am
doing well if I can make 3 clear connections (text to text, text to
self, text to world) between ideas from the video.
The double-entry journal encourages students to gather ongoing
questions, puzzles and difficulties as they reflect on what they
are learning and connecting with.
Students in the focus group will be assessed through pile
sorting. The journal will be used as a brief assessment to reflect
the students connection to the text. This helps teachers assess
construction of meaning. Teacher then reads and sort their
responses in three groups: those who got it, those who sort have
got it, and those who didnt get it. Identifying three groups of
students with whom the teacher can meet and do the following:
provide deeper examples for the group who got it, give
opportunities to review and move into deeper examples for the group
who sort of got it, reteach and provide intervention for the group
who didnt get it.