In addition to determining if a book is just right for you, I taught a lesson that took this idea a step further to include various purposes for reading. During the lesson, I utilized shoes as a talking piece and encouraged students to discuss how different types and sizes of shoes would relate to reading. The outcome of the lesson was for students to be able to identify reasons for reading and strategies to keep in mind when choosing books that are a good fit for independent reading.
As an introduction to research and taking notes on important information, I facilitated a sketchnoting lesson with first grade students on penguins. We watched a short video with interesting penguin facts to engage their interest, followed by a non-fiction read-aloud. As I read the book, students shared information they felt was necessary, and we drew pictures to help us remember. Upon completion, students shared the facts they learned based on their sketchnotes.
I did several lessons to support third grade students with their research project on Plants and Animals living together. We discussed using print and non-print resources, paraphrasing information to avoid plagiarism, and citing your sources.
Around Halloween, fourth grade students did a creative writing activity based on the book She Made a Monster: How Mary Shelley Created Frankenstein. Students built their background knowledge through a News-O-Matic article and video about the history of Frankenstein, followed by creating their monster and writing a descriptive paragraph about it.
Fourth grade students participated in an introduction to poetry lesson. Students worked in groups to explore different types of poetry and discuss what characteristics they noticed. From there, we tried to match the elements to describe a haiku, acrostic, free verse, and limerick poem. This was the first lesson for the fourth grade objective to explain figurative language the poet uses to create images. The student outcome was correctly identifying a type of poetry.