Title and Lesson Plan #: Determining Importance - Lesson 1

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Lesson Overview: Students should be familiar with the cognitive reading strategy of E
determining importance from previous years of English courses. This lesson will review the S
strategy and provide students with the opportunity to show their grasp of the skill. S
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Resources or Materials Needed N
 Student Writer’s Notebook 1

 Whiteboard and markers

 Projector with screen OR Smartboard

 Power Point: Determining Importance [Appendix A]

 Digital or Print text: “The Mantis Shrimp has the World’s Fastest Punch” by Ed Yong

 Highlighters if print text is used

Performance Objective 1:
Given a text, students will create notations on important information with at least four out of
five notations justified appropriately.
Time: 60 minutes
Step 1: Pre-Instructional Activities: Reflect and Discuss

 Teacher shares the lesson’s objective with the students.

 Students will have around 5 minutes to respond to the following prompt in their

Writer’s Notebooks: Since remembering everything you read is nearly impossible, how

do you know what to “keep”?

 Students will volunteer to share thoughts. Teacher records ideas on white board.

 Teacher guides students as they find patterns in students’ responses.

Step 2: Content Presentation: Determining Importance

 Teacher presents mini-lesson on determining importance while reading

[Power Point – Appendix A]

o Tap into what the author has drawn attention to…

 Repetition

 Special placement
  Lengthy description/discussion
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o Tap into what you, the reader, notices… E
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 Contradictory/Confusing portions S
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 Connections (self, world, and texts) N

 Emotional points (shocking, exciting, upsetting, etc.) 1

 Students are encouraged to record notes during lesson.

Step 3: Learner Participation: Highlighting Important Information

 Students receive digital/printed copy of “The Mantis Shrimp has the World’s Fastest

Punch” by Ed Yong, and teacher displays for class.

 Teacher does a think aloud where title and first paragraph are read aloud. Teacher

verbally draws attention to information that stands out to her as important. Marks on

text.

 Students have time to finish reading the text independently and highlight at least 5

things that stand out to them as important.

Step 4: Assessment: Formative: Pair and Share (with teacher observation)

 Students choose partners and discuss what they highlighted as important. Students

should also share why they highlighted the text.

 Teacher moves throughout the room listening to students’ reasoning. Teacher should

ask guiding questions and work with students struggling to verbalize reasoning.

Step 5: Follow-Through Activities: Annotating Highlighted Text

 Teacher models creating an annotation in the margin of the text as a companion to

the highlighted text. Annotations are notes that reveal thinking at the time of reading.

 Students will create an annotation and label it for each of their five highlights.

o Q: Student records a question Q: How can the shrimp break glass?

o R: Student records a reaction R: I don’t like that Rick ran away.

o C: Student notes a connection C: This reminds me of the movie Jumanji.

 o K: Student notes a key point K: This goes with the theme of friendship.
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 Teacher collects student work to check annotations as a micro summative E
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assessment. Four out of the five annotations should logically connect to its S
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corresponding highlighted text. N
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