LESSON PLAN OUTLINE

JMU Elementary Education Program

● Quinn Albo
● Grade 4

A. TITLE/TYPE OF LESSON
Determining Text Importance and Comparing/Contrasting: ​Animals to the Extreme​ Chapters 2-3 (from
Benchmark Guide)

B. CONTEXT OF LESSON
The students spent last week performing a play about the Iditarod race during their Reader’s Theater, in
which they learned about Alaska and the race while working on fluency and comprehension with
level-appropriate text. The skills in this lesson fit neatly with the skills already taught as well as the skills
we are working towards. The skill of the last unit was “fix-up monitoring,” the act of checking oneself
while reading to keep an eye out for unknown words, confusing areas, important information, and other
elements. Moving forward to determining text importance and comparing/contrasting, the students will be
able to utilize their knowledge of fix-up monitoring to help them with these new strategies. The students
will have read through chapter 1 by this time and seen the strategies modelled.

C. LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Understand ​- What are the broad Know ​- What are the facts, Do ​- What are the specific
generalizations the students should rules, specific data the thinking behaviors students will
begin to develop? students will gain through be able to do through this
this lesson? lesson?

Students will understand: Students will know that: Students will be able to:
- Good readers decide what is - Determining text - Determine main ideas and
important or not important while importance is a crucial supporting details.
they read. skill when reading any - Use textual evidence to
- Identifying the author’s purpose, text, not just explain their reasoning
noticing new information, nonfiction. behind main/supporting
identifying themes, and - Comparing and ideas.
distinguishing between main contrasting can help a - Identify new information
ideas and supporting details are reader determine text about a topic.
important skills to have in order importance. - Use a graphic organizer to
to determine text importance. detail these findings.

D. ASSESSING LEARNING
During the activity, I will be observing students as they add to the Compare/Contrast chart, noting which
areas trouble individual students and the group as a whole. I will ask myself questions such as
 - Are students struggling with this strategy?
- What are the problems/areas of weakness?
- Are students mastering this strategy?
- How do I know (all of the above)?
I will use the following chart to guide my observations:

Student Fluency/ Finding textual Determining text Comparing and

Comprehension support importance contrasting

Student 1

I will take notes while observing, taking care to address the above questions. I will also collect any work,
mainly the graphic organizers, from the students to review after reading.

E. RELATED VIRGINIA STANDARDS OF LEARNING

4.4 The student will expand vocabulary when reading.
a) Use context to clarify meanings of unfamiliar words.
4.6 The student will read and demonstrate comprehension of nonfiction texts.
a) Use text features such as type, headings, and graphics, to predict and categorize information.
b) Explain the author’s purpose.
c) Identify the main idea.
d) Summarize supporting details.
e) Draw conclusions and make inferences using textual information as support.
f) Distinguish between cause and effect.
g) Distinguish between fact and opinion.
h) Use reading strategies throughout the reading process to monitor comprehension.
i) Read with fluency, accuracy, and meaningful expression.

F. MATERIALS NEEDED
- Animals at the Extremes​ books (10)
- Guide
- Graphic organizer worksheets
- Pencils
- Sticky notes

G. PROCEDURE
Introduction:
Students will review key topics and supporting details from their work yesterday.
 ➔ How does determining text importance help understand the chapter?
◆ Identifying key topics and supporting details is what good readers do to keep track of
their thinking and remember important information. (What strategy does this remind you
of?)
➔ Yesterday we looked at how to discriminate between key topics and supporting details (ask for
ideas from yesterday). Today we will learn how to identify new information about a topic.
◆ Good readers identify new information and think about how that affects what they know
about a topic.
➔ Read pages 10-11
◆ I didn’t know that a frog could be so small. I’m going to write the name of the frog and
its size on a sticky and place it in the book where I learned the new information.
● Students practice identifying new infor and using stickies
● Pages 10-13
➔ Purpose for reading:
◆ Students will finish reading chapters 2 and 3 to learn interesting facts about other
amphibians and birds.
◆ Note new information about key topics as you read and write ideas on stickies

Students will read chapters 2 and 3 independently.

Discussion:
➔ Students: Identify the key topics you read about in these chapters
◆ List on the board
◆ Students suggest supporting details for each
➔ Ask students to share their notes about new information and compare ideas with classmates
◆ Explain how you chose which information to write about.
◆ What was the most interesting fact you learned?

Comparing/Contrasting
Guide strategy:
➔ Review how to compare and contrast with graphic organizer
◆ As a group, we will revisit chapters 2 and 3 to compare and contrast some of the animals
you read about.
➔ Students: reread pages 11-13 to find out how the ​Eleutherodactylus iberia​ and the poison-dart
frog are alike and different.
◆ As they read about frogs, list the similarities and differences on the second diagram of
graphic organizer. For each fact:
● Is this true about both frogs or just one of them?
● Completed Venn diagram in guide
➔ Choose two birds on pages 14-17 to compare and contrast.
◆ Draw a Venn diagram and follow the same procedure for the two birds.

Conclusion:
Discuss the benefits of these two strategies (determining text importance and comparing/contrasting).
How are they helpful? Do they relate to each other? How can you use this outside of reading groups?
Listen to students’ ideas about the strategies.

H. DIFFERENTIATION
I will be observing students to see their mastery of the skills of determining text importance and
comparing/contrasting. While observing them for these skills, I will also take note of challenges or
strengths in vocabulary, fluency, comprehension, expressing ideas, and other areas. I have made a list for
tips, questions, and ideas to use with students who are struggling or lacking challenge:
- If you lose meaning, go back and reread the section where you lost concentration.
- Look for context clues to help define new words...or check the glossary!
- Use definitions to determine word meaning (What does the word ________ mean in this book?
Let’s look for clues on page ___)
For this specific group and set of chapters, I will guide students depending on their level of
comprehension. For lower-level students, this will begin by identifying facts and details. Then, moving on
to comparing and contrasting, I will use the following questions to guide students:
- How are most young amphibians and most adult amphibians the same? How are they different?
- How does the poison in a frog’s skin help protect it from disease? (cause and effect)
- Make inferences: from the information on page 15, you can infer that peregrine falcons have…
- Main idea: What is the second paragraph on page 19 mainly about?
- Analyze: The author uses examples to help readers know about amphibians. Find this in the text.
- Why did the author probably include the photograph of the albatross on page 17?

For guiding students who need help finding information in the text, I also have the list from Benchmark’s
guide for helpful hints:
- Vocabulary: Read and look for clues to help you define the unfamiliar word. Can you find a
synonym, a definition, text clues, or picture clues?
- The answers are right in the text. Reread to locate facts and details to answer the questions.
- The answers are in the text, but you may need to look in more than one place to find them.
- You’ll have to be a detective. You won’t find the exact answers to these questions, but you will
find clues and evidence to support your inferences and conclusions.
- As you reread, as yourself, “How did the author organize the information? Why did s/he write the
book?

I. WHAT COULD GO WRONG?

The level of focus and amount of distractibility is one of my main concerns. Related to this, I can also see
there being extreme focus on the wrong areas (“Oh, look at this picture! That fish can do what?!”). The
students have been excited about the new information and the images in the book, leading them to veer
off the main idea. Adding to this, this reading group has ten children in it, so the level of focus varies
greatly with so many students in a “small” group. I will implement my guiding questions when they are
needed to regain focus. I will also give assigned seats and move students to another seat if necessary.