Reading Lesson #1

Reading Lesson Plan #1- Comprehension


Date lesson was taught:  4/16/12   Number of Students: Four

1) Rationale:

Prior to teaching this mini lesson, I had many experiences observing comprehension lessons in my classroom.  I actually taught my ELA lesson on comprehension and was able to get an idea of which students understood summarizing strategies and which students did not.  Joe, Cale, Andrew, and Jane will have practice retelling main events that happened throughout the story.

2) List which reading skill/strategy is the main focus of your lesson (select ONE area):

Content Area Comprehension Instruction: Summaries

3) Objective for this lesson (performance, condition, criteria):

Students will create a story map with words and/or pictures in order to recall and retell major ideas and details of a narrative text.


4) Materials & supplies needed:

• Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs by Judi Barrett
• Story map
• Pencil
• Crayons, colored pencils, markers (if students desire to create a picture)

5) OUTLINE OF LESSON PLAN (Provide a bulleted list of ideas):

• Introduction to the lesson  (5 minutes)

• “Today we are going to do a lesson on a book called, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs.
• “We are going to work on our comprehension today.  Can someone tell me what comprehension means? Comprehension is engaging with text, constructing meaning of it, using the reader’s background knowledge.”
• “Comprehension is an important part of your literacy development, and I have observed many lessons in your classroom in which your teacher asked questions requiring you to comprehend the text.”
• “Remember Ms. Hale’s and my Language Arts lesson a couple months ago? I asked many questions throughout that lesson, because I wanted to see if you second graders comprehended the text.  Do you remember that?”
• “Being able to comprehend will help you to be a successful reader!” 

• OUTLINE of key events (20 minutes)

• “Today we are going to learn about summarizing for comprehension.  Has anybody heard of summarizing before?  Well, summarizing is a strategy in which we pick out the most important ideas and relationships between them and restate them (Tompkins, 265).”
• “Summarizing is a great skill to learn because it allows you to reflect back on what you read, and remember the story.”
• “In order for you to learn the summarizing strategy, I will read the first three pages of the book were reading, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, and then summarize it for you.  That way, by modeling the strategy you can see it in action!”
• “While I am reading please follow along and be respectful of our no blurting rule.”
• Will read first three pages to students
• “Okay, so the main points I took from these pages was that a family was getting ready to have breakfast and one of the pancakes landed on Henry.  However, all of the pancakes were eaten by the family including the one that landed on Henry’s face!”
• “As you can see, to use summarizing I first read the text carefully and then began to summarize the major events and important ideas.”

• “Now it is your turn to practice summarizing.  I will read the rest of the story out loud to you and afterwards everyone will create a story map summarizing the major events and details of the story.”
• Read the rest of Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs
• Pass out Story Map worksheet
• “Now we are going to fill out this story map!  You can draw a picture for each main event in the story; including any details you feel were important or you can write a sentence for each event describing what happened.  You can do both if you want too!”
• Students create story maps
• For students who are struggling, I plan on asking them questions to prompt their work, ex. “What happened first?  What do you think was the most important event in the beginning of the story?”

• Closing summary for the lesson (5 minutes)

• “Wow! You second graders did a great job on your story maps!  Let’s take a few minutes to share with the group.  Would anyone like to share their story map first?”
• Point out the main events and important ideas from the text that were included on the story maps.  
• Ask students if they feel comfortable using the strategy again in the future, and answer any questions they may have

6) Ongoing-Assessment:

Take notes, carefully observe students, and collect any written protects created during Reading Street lessons.  Listen for answers to comprehension questions regarding text.

7) Based on what you know about your focus students, what Academic, Social and/or Linguistic Support will be needed during the lesson?

I will use short, simple stories so students will be able to focus and keep their attention during the lesson.  I also created story map templates so students can easily fill them out and get an idea of the number of main events that occurred in the story.  I plan on paying close attention to students who may blurt or act out.  I will remind students of the Classroom Pledge and tell students to stay on task or they will be asked to leave the lesson.