Literacy Lesson Literacy Lesson Plan - Maybe an article about Thanksgiving or Veterans Day, or

the election

Pedagogical Focus - How can I incorporate open ended discussion into purposeful instruction?

What?
The students in my class are transitioning to making inferences about narratives to using
these skills to better understand non-fiction texts. I am hoping to help them transition to
informational texts using open discussion and helping each other make inferences through
learning from their peers

How?
Most of my teaching is going asking students guiding questions that can help direct them
to the important parts of the texts based on their inferences. I want to act as more of a facilitator
than a leader of the group and allow discussions between students to really flourish. In my
classroom, students are given the opportunity to talk to their tables but rarely are they given the
chance to partner one on one with another student, and then share with the whole group. A pair
share is a new and different way to expose students to voice their opinions. I also want to be
able to hold a group discussion about the text .

Why?

The bulk of my students reading instruction is through teacher directed skill lessons and test
prep questions on reading passages. There are no texts they read as a class no extended read
alouds no literature circles. There isnt a set time in the class where students read a text and
have a conversation about it, Additionally as my students transition to informational texts to be
discussion and inquiry based, using rather than purely test preparation passages . I know that
the common core is more informational text driven than the old state curriculum and I also know
that it can be troublesome to be engaged with and understand. Fountas and Pinnell believe that
students will be more successful if they are exposed to texts that are alike, they say, knowledge
of similar texts helps readers interpret new texts (1996, 146). By gaining the experience of
reading and comprehending an informational texts, these students will be better prepared for the
heavy emphasis on informational texts.

Great discussion of the collaborative structures to be used and the rationale for these structures.

Introducing informational texts in a subject that all the students have background knowledge on
will also make it more accessible. Non-narrative nonfiction work can be extremely daunting
when it is first presented to students so helping them ease into these essential readings can
really help. Adults, for the most part, read mostly informational texts and that makes it an
important skill that needs to be taught in school. By having a literature discussion around an
informational text I hope to build more familiarity with these types of texts.

Yes! If the students dont already have a shared background, what can you do to help them
build a background?

I hope the literature discussion will start the work of building this background

Goals/Objectives - Students will be able to make inferences after reading an informational text.
Students will be able to use evidence from the text to help explain and write their inferences.

Standards
CCSS. ELA-Literacy.RI.4.1 - Refer to details and examples in a text when explaining what the
text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text.

Materials and Preparation

Actual text we have them reading
Graphic organizer to help them organize their thoughts
Marker
White Board
Scratch paper for coloring

Classroom arrangement and management issues

Students will be organized in a circle at a the back table some bouncy stools will be provided for
more active students . Students will partner with the student on their left using the routine of turn
and talk. I will call attention with our 4,3,2,1, method and explain the objective of the lesson and
explain how we will now apply our inference skills to nonfiction texts

(Hook:)

I will ask them some things they know about the moon:

Then i will give students pictures of super moons from around the world from New Zealand, New
York and Philadelphia so the subject feels relevant to them
ask them what they notice about the pictures?
i anticipate they will notice the moon looks really big/close . I will then ask them why they think
that is and then we will read the article to find out.

Think about how you can open the lesson to hook or engage the students. How can you make
the lesson relevant to their lives and/or interesting to them?

In response to this suggestion I included some pictures of supermoons and included one from
philadelphia so that the phenomenon felt relevant to the students city and lives. I also asked

questions like who knows what a supermoon is and if anyone watched the last supermoon in
Philadelphia.

Each student will then be given the Newsela article, What is a super moon?
https://newsela.com/articles/lib-nasa-super-moon/id/23783/

consider building background on the topic of the reading before diving into it. Introducing the text
would be a nice way to lead into a discussion or preview of the text before students are given the
text.

I built background through having a picture based discussion about the photos of supermoons
and asking students if they had seen one. A student ended up eagerly chiming in and talking
about how he had watched the supermoon in October with his mom. This gave the other
students some background on the topic.

My students have made inferences with narrative texts previously so most readers know how to
make an inference but not necessarily with informational texts
Before students start,I will ask an advanced student to model how to make an inference and
provide evidence from reading a text. Then I will have another student restate what his/her
classmate said.

Direct students to the first paragraph of the article and then chunk it by

paragraph stopping to take questions. After the reading of the text I will ask students to write an
inference they can make on their graphic organizer

Consider how you want to present the point of making inferences and how it can be useful to the
students.
If students havent done this in class before, you might want to model it first, and then have
students model it.

I also cut something from this lesson in response to watching my partners lesson. My partner
had given an example of a inference his students all latched on to that example and produced
the exact same inference. I avoided modeling a specific inference for the group for this reason
and instead asked questions like who can remind me how we make an inference as they have
done this in class with narrative texts.

(The Body - 20 Minutes): Students then will be told to read the article and told to think about
how they would describe a super moon after reading the text. Students will be given the graphic
organizer to follow along with the text. Students must make two inferences and come up with
two or three pieces of evidence from the text for each of the inferences.

You may want to model how to use the graphic organizer.

While I forgot to edit my lesson plan to reflect this i did end up modeling how to use the graphic
organizer in response to student questions

Students will then be told to discuss with their partner the two inferences and evidence that they
came up with. The purpose will be to choose one of the inference and share it and its evidence
with the entire group. If students finish early, they will be allowed to draw what they think the
super moon looks like or if they saw it what it actually looks like.

(The Closure - 10 Minutes): We will then come back together as a full group and student groups
will share the one inference they have made and the evidence that they have from the text that
supports it. Students will then be told to watch out for the super moon in December (that the
article mentions) and encourage their family and friends to look as well.

If you think it would be helpful to students, you could have two versions of the graphic organizer:
One version would be blank. An alternative graphic organizer might have one inference already
filled in, and the student would need to come up with one more inference and two-three pieces

of evidence for each of the inferences. Or the alternative graphic organizer can have a hint or
two (written or illustrated), and the student would need to fill out the inferences/evidence based
on the hint.

I ended up giving students a blank graphic organizer but in hindsight it would have been helpful
to have provided some more scaffolding

Anticipating students responses and your possible responses 3 Student Responses:

Assessment of the goals/objectives listed above Teacher will collect the students graphic organizers; students can keep their scratch paper.
Teacher will also take notes as they walk around viewing student discussions and the final large
group discussion.
Accommodations -

If there was a student in the group selected that needs a differentiation, the first place I would
start is with the graphic organizer, allowing them to just come up with one inference and the
evidence for that. I could also just allow the student to find one piece of evidence for each
inference and yet another way is to give the student the inference and force them to find the
evidence from the article that supports it. I think both of these ways still force the student to use
a lot of their cognitive abilities but it is more doable than both finding two inferences and the
evidence.
If the student is a lower level reader, the article can easily be changed to the level that
fits that students particular needs. I think that working in partners will also help students see a
more diverse range of inferences.