English Instructional Plan Comparing and Contrasting Details in Texts 6 Primary Strand: Reading 6.5 Integrated Strand/s: Communication and Multimodal Literacies 6.1
In this unit students dive into the world of Greek mythology. Over the course of the unit students will read the classic myths of Pandora, Arachne, and Echo and Narcissus. In reading the myths, students will gain a deeper understanding of the gods and mortals in ancient Greece and how the ancient Greeks used mythology as a way to make sense of and interpret the world around them. Students will also continue the thematic exploration from previous units about how a person's beliefs, ethics, or values influence that person's behavior.
Over the course of the unit, students will read multiple versions of the classic myths. The primary focus of this unit is on close reading and analyzing the differences among the versions and critically analyzing an author's choice of genre. In doing so, students will be challenged to think about how the structural elements of different genres, particularly prose, drama, and verse, allow a reader to better understand a story or text. Students will also explore how the point of view in which a story is written, either third-person point of view or first-person point of view, changes the way a story is told and the depth of information that a reader knows. Another focus of this unit is determining the central theme of the myths. Because the stories in this unit are shorter than the novels students have read so far, this unit offers students practice in finding the theme of a shorter text and explaining how the author uses evidence to develop the theme.
Fourth grade students are learning about the five geographic regions of Virginia and their characteristics. These comprehension “mix-ups” are a great way to monitor students’ understanding of the content along with checking reading comprehension.
Inform students that as they read the paragraphs, there is ONE word in each paragraph that is a “mix-up” (it is incorrect).
Teachers can choose to do these multiple ways in their classroom:
Whole group - teacher reads aloud the paragraph and students find the “mix-up”
Small group - the teacher works with a small group of students, modeling fluent reading and finding the mix-up
Students work in partners
Comprehension Mix-Ups are developed with a variety of conflicting information.information that is inconsistent with general knowledgeinternal inconsistenciesAdditionally, when given text with errors that are separated by several sentences, students will have to maintain sufficient accurate memory of the text in order to identify the error.
Comprehension Mix-Ups are developed with a variety of conflicting information.information that is inconsistent with general knowledgeinternal inconsistenciesAdditionally, when given text with errors that are separated by several sentences, students will have to maintain sufficient accurate memory of the text in order to identify the error.
Teachers read aloud an eBook about computer systems. Teacher guide includes questioning activities and suggested follow-ups for after reading.
The lessons included in the attached Google Slides incorporate standards from Computer Science, Math, Language Arts, and Physical Education. The lessons all focus on conditional statements (IF, THEN, ELSE) and can easily be adapted to fit any grade from kindergarten to fifth grade.
To review types of conflict in fiction text, students will create a storyboard highlighting each of the types of conflict. Students will develop a short story involving a form of literary conflict. Students will write and illustrate the story within the designated boxes of the storyboard. Students will create a total of six storyboards for each of the types of conflict - Individual vs. Individual, Individual vs. Self, Individual vs. Nature, Individual vs. Supernatural, Individual vs. Technology, and Individual vs. Society.
This video is part of the Continue to Know with WHRO TV series. Watch Kelly Sowden teach about conflict and resolution.
The teacher will review the six types of conflict found in literature (individual vs. individual, individual vs. technology, individual vs. nature, individual vs. self, individual vs. supernatural, and individual vs. society). Students will create conflict in the news presentations identifying the six types of conflict. Students will use current newspapers and credible online news sources to identify and correctly label current examples of conflict today.
This video is part of the Continue to Know with WHRO TV series. Watch Joy Phillips teach about identifying internal and external conflict.
This is a fun review activity to support connotation and denotation in the classroom. I use this while formally teaching connotation and denotation, but also use it sporadically throughout the school year as a fun way to review!
This video is part of the Continue to Know with WHRO TV series. Watch Kelly Sowden teach about connotation and denotation.
English Instructional Plan – Context Clues: Grade 3
English Instructional Plan – Context Clues Grade 4-5
This video is part of the Continue to Know with WHRO TV series. Watch LaTissha Boyce teach about how to use context clues to decode unfamiliar words.
This lesson will allow students to become more fluent with Context Clues
English Instructional Plan – Critical Reading of Nonfiction
English Instructional Plan – Cross-cultural Literary Analysis
Each student writes a one paragraph summary of a chapter of a book and then illustrates their chapter. It can be used for a book the whole class is reading so then all of the summaries are collected and bound together to create a “summary book” of the book read. This activity can be used for both fiction and non-fiction books in any subject and any grade, although this activity is linked to upper primary SOLs. This activity assesses reading comprehension and practices all writing skills. It also includes Art SOLs, and if you have students create their final products on the computer, then you would be incorporating the Computer Technology SOLs as well. If it is used for a non-fiction text in a different content class, then the activity would also cover those SOLs. It can be used for EL classes in middle school also.