- Unit 1
- Level 1
- not specified
- not specified
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Standards Addressed:
- L.3.3
- L.3.6
- RL.3.1
- RL.3.2
- RL.3.3
- RL.3.4
- RL.3.5
- RL.3.10
- SL.3.1
- W.3.1
- W.3.4
- W.3.5
- W.4.9
- W.3.10
Lesson Materials/Resources
No Materials/Resources attachedObjectives
The goal of this five-day exemplar is to explicitly model the process of searching for and interpreting intra-textual connections. In this lesson sequence, the teacher poses an analytic focusing question and then guides students in gathering and interpreting evidence from the text in order to come to a deeper understanding of the story. Simple word play and art activities give students practice in closely attending to language and word choice, and in visualizing and recording their interpretations. Discussion and a short writing exercise help students to synthesize what they have learned.
Assessment/CFU
Rationale: Authors make intentional choices. Questioning those choices leads to a deeper understanding of literature. Access to this understanding often rests on the ability to identify patterns, connections, and anomalies within a text. While some children come to school in the habit of approaching literature inquisitively, many do not. Young children need experience with asking interpretive questions and using the text itself to answer them. More importantly, students need to feel the thrill of discovery, as their exploration leads them to a new understanding of the reading. Discussion and teacher “think-alouds” are valuable tools in this process; but for elementary students, active engagement through art, word play, and drama provide a deeper, lasting level of understanding and discovery.
Reading Task: Students will silently read the text independently. Then, a second reading is done together, with discussion, to ensure a basic, literal understanding of the story. In response to an interpretive focusing question posed by the teacher, students then engage with the text a third time as they work in small groups to re-read the text and mark evidence in it. Through art, students actively engage with the evidence they have found. Discussion and a short writing task help students to interpret their evidence and solidify their thinking. The goal is to provide students with repeatedly opportunities to engage with complex text and gain confidence in their ability to do so independently.
Discussion/Language Tasks: In this exemplar, students process information orally using both discussion and word play. It is important that this lesson sequence be taught in heterogeneous groups, so that discussion presents a variety of levels of thinking. Children learn to infer and to interpret literature largely by hearing others do so. This type of modeling is most effective if it comes from both teachers and peers. In addition to small and large group discussion, students use word play to understand, and become comfortable with, some of the differences between written and spoken language. “Playing” with words and sentences allows children to explore complex grammar and sentence structure in a developmentally appropriate way and increases their ability to learn words from context.
Writing Task: As a culminating activity, students synthesize their findings in an opinion paragraph, using specific references to the text. In this lesson, writing helps the children to organize and make sense of their thinking. For most third graders, writing is a relatively new tool for processing thought and one they will need to learn to use. Therefore, this task is highly guided and instructional, providing a model that can be used more independently on subsequent writing tasks.
Opening/Warmup/Connecting Prior Knowledge
No Opening/Warmup/CPK specified
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