1 Talking About Books to Improve Comprehension Resource Type: Lessons Discipline: Reading Grades: Grades 3–5 Professional Commentary: Meaningful conversations are a powerful tool to help students understand and share ideas about what they have read. This simple lesson, which is designed for repeated use with both fiction and nonfiction, provides a model for supporting students' conversations about texts.... 2 What If We Changed the Book? Problem-Posing with Sixteen Cows Resource Type: Lessons Discipline: Mathematics, Reading Grades: Grades 3–4 Professional Commentary: This activity demonstrates the strategy of problem posing (Brown & Walter, 1983/2005). A piece of math-related children’s literature, Sixteen Cows (Wheeler, 2002), is used as the springboard for this problem-posing activity.... 3 Using QARs to Develop Comprehension and Reflective Reading Habits Resource Type: Lessons Discipline: Reading Grades: Grades 3–8 Professional Commentary: Mature readers move from reading for literal comprehension to developing inferential comprehension strategies. This lesson provides a foundation for building reflective reading habits, which enables students to develop these higher-level comprehension strategies.... 4 Don't Buy It--What's in the Shopping Bag? Resource Type: Lessons Discipline: Reading Grades: Grades 3–5 Professional Commentary: To develop media literacy students need to be able to interpret visual media and understand the basic tactics of advertising and packaging. This PBS website offers activities that teach children how to evaluate the advertising and packaging of toys and snack foods.... Resource Type: Lessons Discipline: Reading Grades: Grades K–3 Professional Commentary: This resource describes how to use questioning the text as a teaching strategy to improve students' understanding of nonfiction material. The article outlines how to choose an appropriate text to model the strategy, as well as ideas to introduce the strategy, model the strategy, and provide time for guided practice.... 6 Questioning: A Comprehension Strategy for Small-Group Guided Reading Resource Type: Lessons Discipline: Reading Grades: Grades 3–5 Professional Commentary: In this lesson, students learn to recognize the difference between thin (factual) and thick (inferential) questions. The teacher begins by showing students how to compose question webs by thinking aloud while reading.... 7 Technical Reading and Writing Using Board Games Resource Type: Lessons Discipline: Reading Grades: Grades 2–3 Professional Commentary: Working in small groups, students create board games that review elements from a novel read by members of he group. An innovation on a common classroom activity, this lesson establishes criteria for students to follow in developing their game.... 8 Flying to Freedom: Tar Beach and The People Could Fly Resource Type: Lessons Discipline: Reading Grades: Grades 3–4 Professional Commentary: Comparing Tar Beach and The People Could Fly enables students to interpret themes of liberation and racism depicted in children's literature. Students work in small discussion groups to compare and contrast the two texts and develop Venn diagrams.... 9 Cyberspace Explorer: Getting to Know Christopher Columbus Resource Type: Lessons Discipline: Reading Grades: Grade 5 Professional Commentary: This lesson supports fifth-grade students' exploration of multiple online sources to gather information about the life of a well-known explorer, Christopher Columbus. After completing a cyber scavenger hunt, students use their notes to prepare a timeline and summary report.... 10 Guided Comprehension: Evaluating Using the Meeting of the Minds Technique Resource Type: Lessons Discipline: Reading Grades: Grade 2 Professional Commentary: Based on the Guided Comprehension Model developed by Maureen McLaughlin and Mary Beth Allen, this lesson introduces students to the comprehension strategy of evaluating texts. Building strategic reading allows students to monitor their own thinking and make connections between texts and their own experiences.... |