Lesson Calendar Briefing

Lesson 1 This introductory lesson is meant to give the students an overview of

Monday, nonfiction once more, but to also expose them to text features and text
April 17 structures of nonfiction. These features include the title, headings, table of
Teacher: Alba contents, captions, labels, bolded, italicized and underlined print, as well as
text structures, such as description, sequence, compare and contrast, cause
and effect, and problem and solution. The main objective of this lesson is for
the students to be able to identify these elements in a text, and to understand
how they are useful to them as readers. The activity for this lesson could be
to give the students a structures and features Scavenger Hunt. This would
include hanging up nonfiction articles and texts all around the room, giving
the students a worksheet that requires them to find all of the structures and
features in articles, and to keep track of where they found that information
and how they found it. This game is an activity and an assessment in and of
itself, and the teachers will be able to check the students understanding.

Lesson 2 On the second day, the students will be exploring what it means to analyze a
Tuesday, April text, rather than just reading it for pleasure. For example, the students will be
18 learning to note-take as they read, whether it is on the margins of a paper or
Teacher: Sara on a document on their computer. The students will also learn how to
annotate a text and how to react to it, which extends to highlighting
vocabulary words, underlining important claims, and circling something they
may want to refer back to and reread. The students will observe the teacher
modeling her thoughts as she analyzes and questions a text, and as she
models how to annotate a text, and will then be asked to analyze and annotate
a text. The main activity for this lesson will be creating a symbols chart,
where the students will decide what symbols they will use to markup their
readings. The students will be sharing their ideas throughout the lesson that
the teachers will assess for being on the right track, and they will also be
annotating a reading on their own.

Lesson 3 The third day of the unit will be set aside for showing the students multiple
Wednesday, strategies that they can use to respond to a question in a full writing response.
April 19 The students will be shown what it looks like to set themselves up for success
Teacher: Alba in this task by reading the comprehension question first and then reading with
and Sara a purpose. This will be modeled to the students and then they will do this on
their own. The students will then be shown how to write a RACE paragraph,
which is a strategy for writing a response. The students will see this strategy
modeled and will be asked to go off on their own to do this too. Both of these
strategies will be modeled to the students and they will be asked to practice it
on their own or with a partner. The students will be turning in their strategy
work for assessment.

Lesson 4 The fourth day of the unit will be another strategy day for the students to
Thursday, practice comparing and contrasting. Since they have practiced annotating a
April 20 text to the best of their abilities, as well as forming written responses to a
Teacher: Sara text, on this day, they will be introduced to readings two texts, and then being
able to write about them. The students will be asked to practice comparing
and contrasting as a warm-up, and then will be shown how to complete a
Venn diagram when comparing two items. They will be completing a Venn
diagram for two nonfiction texts as a full class, and then they will be asked to
go off and put their diagrams into written form. The students will be sharing
their ideas throughout the lesson, as well as at the end of the lesson, as a form
of assessment.

Lesson 5 The fifth day will be used as a mid-way assessment day to see how the
Friday, April students are doing with pulling important information out of a text that
21 contributes most to the main idea. The students will be put into small groups,
Teacher: Sara and each group will be assigned an animal from the rainforest. Each group
and Alba will be responsible for creating a poster, and on this poster they will be
displaying two nonfiction texts and they will have to write a paragraph or
two writing about the main points from the articles and how the articles are
similar and different. The students will get the entire period to work on this
and the posters will be presented and later hung up in the classroom for them
to look at. If there is not enough time at the end of the period, presentations
may have to be pushed to the beginning of the next day. The teachers will
assess the posters for accuracy and will thus be able to tell which students are
on the right track.

Lesson 6 The first day of the second week will be dedicated to analyzing poetry, and
Monday, ultimately comparing it to nonfiction. Before this lesson begins, however,
April 24 they will be first sharing their home-school connection with the class. The
Teacher: Alba students will have been coming off of a poetry unit, and will be comfortable
with it, but they will need to focus on the content of the poetry and pulling
information from the poem to provide textual evidence for a written
response. The objective will be for them to identify and thoroughly analyze
the poem in order to compare it to another written text and formulate a proper
response to a prompted question. The students will spend the beginning of
the lesson annotating and analyzing a poem with the teacher. They will create
T-charts in the journals and decide what information is most important.
During the second half of the lesson, the students will work with partners to
analyze a separate poem, alongside a nonfiction article and compose a
response to the prompted question. The students will be asked to compare
both texts.

Lesson 7 On this day, we will be having a guest speaker come in for the students to
Tuesday, April interview. The guest speaker will hopefully be either a journalist or a
25 volunteer parent that has a career with a focus on reading information and
Teacher: Alba then utilizing it. The students will be writing up interview questions to ask
the guest speaker, and they will be able to relate the speakers experience
with what they are learning in their writing unit. The students will be getting
 as much out of this speaker as they want to, but the main objective is for
them to see that this skill can indeed be something they will need in the real
world. The second half of this period will be meant for practicing watching
informational videos and how to pull out the most important information
from it. This activity will include discussing possible strategies for how to set
themselves up for success when watching an informational video. They will
then watch a video and practice their note-taking and picking out the key
points to jot down and later use to respond in a writing piece. This will be
assessed by having the students share what they have jotted down and how it
is necessary. They will also be assessed on their participation and behavior
while the guest speaker is present.

Lesson 8 Lesson 8 will be analyzing fiction in comparison to nonfiction. The

Wednesday overarching objective of this lesson is for students to clearly understand that
April 26 they can still gain information from fiction, and then be able to compare it to
Teacher: Sara information gained through nonfiction. They will be reading both a fiction
text and working with a nonfiction video that they have seen before and
answering a question that comes with it. This will be assessed by the students
ability to write a RACE paragraph and identifying a common theme between
the two different genres.

Lesson 9 The ninth period of this unit will be dedicated to having the students formally
Wednesday, test on their ability to read, compare, and answer questions about nonfiction
April 26 texts and other texts. The students will be given two texts at random and of
Teacher: Sara random genre, and will be asked to read the texts, analyze them, and answer
and Alba the question that follows in a lengthy and completed writing response. This is
the culminating production of the entire unit, and the students will be
expected to do their very best after having been given a lot of the tools that
they need to succeed. The final writing response will be reviewed by the
teachers to assess how far the students have come.

Lesson 10 The final day of the unit is the day after the final assessment, so there will not
Friday, April be any new material to be covered in a lesson. Instead, since it is also the
28 student teachers final day in the school, this Friday will be used to celebrate
Teacher: Alba how far the students have come and how appreciative the student teachers are
and Sara to the students for welcoming them into their classroom. It will also serve as
a day to thank the cooperating teacher for all of her help, support, and
hospitality. The class will be partaking in a publishing party. They will be
given a folder showing their first written response along with their final
assessment that has been graded and see how far they have come as a writer.
We will then as a class, discuss what they learned throughout our unit and ask
the students what worked best for them. We will them show a video which
will be composed of pictures of them working throughout the unit. The rest
of the writing period will simply have the students celebrating their work,
eating snacks, and hanging out.