Spring+Literacy+Plan

 We are in the final stretch. We have been reading various authors and stories for 6 months. Now, it's time to up the challenge and get my students thinking even more. They have been working hard to improve their literacy skills. Let's keep it going. These are all lessons I would use where appropriate during our reading of literature. All students would have their reading textbooks out to use as needed.

1. Organizing Text Information by Sculpting the Main Idea and Summarizing //Who + Did What?// At first, students will want to retell the whole section. If that happens, stop and explain once more. When retelling, we tell the main points of the story in our own words. When summarizing, we express the main idea in as few words as possible. When writing headline summaries, we take the game one step farther: 4-6 words only. Writing shorter requires the ability to determine what is most important to include. In addition, the most successful summarizers pull from their extensive vocabularies. When summarizing, encourage students to look for patterns. Their summaries may be worded differently than each other's, but the gist of the writing, the main ideas, should match. 6. Reread the summaries to determine the main idea. 7.Show students that when they take the time to write the summaries as they read, determining a theme is easier. Assessment: Did they consider the purpose? Can they recall important details that relate to the author's purpose? What strategy did you learn today? How can you apply it to your reading life? -LiketoRead.com
 * The 6 Compehension Habits**
 * 1) **Connect.** Bring in several stories from the newspaper. Ask students to copy as many headlines as they can and look for patterns as to how they are written.
 * 2) Lead students to understand that a headline is a summary of sorts; it usually is 4-6 words and includes "//who//" + "//did what//."
 * 3) Tell them that they are going to practice writing summaries, like headlines, as a strategy to improve their comprehension.
 * 4) **Model summarizing.** I will choose a reading selection.

2. Connecting to Background Knowledge Thieves- acronym Title, Heading, Introductions, Everything you know, Visuals, End of Chapter guess, So what? We will choose one of our reading selections and become thieves. After we have read the first chapter, we will go through as a class and fill in the THIEVES worksheet What did the title of the chapter tell us? If there are headings, what questions can we make from them? Was there an introduction? If so read it and tell why the author chose to write this book. Think about your life and write down some facts and ideas about the topic of this story. If there are pictures, why are they included and what do they depict? At the end of the chapter, what question did the author think were important? Why did we read the story? Does it connect to my life at all? //Assessment:// Can they combine their previous experience with text descriptions to create pictures in their mind? Can they connect to related background?

3. Making Inferences and Predictions Cause and Effect Timeline - This can b used wonderfully for narratives. This is a graphic organizer that asks students to determine the sequence of events and to infer the cause of those events. Make a copy of the Cause and Effect Timeline in Jeff Zwier's book. Above the line write events that happened in the story. Put the causes of the events below the line, insid the arrows. Causes can be inferred. Draw additional lines to connect upper events to their causes below. Share your timeline with a partner. //Assessment:// Can they reflect on previous information to make connections or assumptions? Can they use cause and effect and fact and opinion to predict why something happened?

4. Generating and Answering Questions Question The Author- Why did you write this? What are you trying to tell me? Why are you telling me this? etc. //Assessment:// Did they come up with good questions the author would want them to know? Did they use questions before, during and after they read?

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