Lesson Plan Grade Level: Kindergarten Backgrounds: English Number of Students: 16 Students Linguistic

Instructional Location: Kindergarten Classroom a day Standard(s) Addressed

Length of Instruction: Four Days 30 minutes

Common Core: W.K.2. Use a combination of drawing, dictating, and writing to compose informative/explanatory texts in which they

name what they are writing about and supply some information about the topic.

Content Objectives
Students will be able to read informational text and pull important information from it. Students will be able to write their own informational text given what they know about penguins

Language Objectives Student will be able to communicate the difference between fiction text and nonfiction text.

Text To Use Title: Cuddley Duddley, Jez Alborough Genre: Fiction Title: Penguins in Antarctica, Mary Pope Osborne Genre: Nonfiction

Strategy Focus: Get students to understand the difference between fiction and nonfiction text

Materials Needed:

Assessment(s): Conference with students to see if they are understanding

Super Swimmers worksheet, pencil, writing journal, pencil, penguin lined paper, construction paper for concept map

the difference between fiction and nonfiction text. Make sure the topic they writing about is nonfiction. Collect materials after each day to check on student progress. Add any relevant information that is essential to understanding the context of your lesson: This Unit is used in my co-ops class as a cross curricular unit. She picked penguins because there is a lot to do with all of the four major subject areas: reading, writing, science, and social studies. I then decided to do a mini lesson on informational text with the students because as a student I always had a hard time with nonfiction text.

Vocabulary: blubber, enemy, Antarctica, rookery, iceberg, waddle, taboggan

Day 1 MINILESSON Preview the skill

I will read the book Penguins in Antarctica by Mary Pope Osborne. This is an informational text about penguins that will allow students to hear informational text read aloud.

Connect to prior learning I will ask students if they remember what the difference between fiction and nonfiction books are. Here I am looking if students remember the terms fiction and nonfiction. If they use the terms real text or fake text that will be acceptable as well. I will then ask for a volunteer to come to the front of the room and show me a fictional book we have read and a nonfiction book we have read. If one of my ADHD students (K.C., B.S.) raises their hands I will call on them to give them an opportunity to get out of their chair and participate in the lesson. One book a student may point to as a fiction would be Cuddley Dudley.

We will then go through the reason why this is fiction (the penguins talk, the penguins wear clothes, ect). Then the student will point out a nonfiction text we have read. This could be a number of our nonfiction penguin texts. Reasons it is nonfiction would include that it tells us what real penguins do like swim, eat fish, ect. Setting the Purpose The activity we will be doing will be explained to the students. We will be reading a short nonfiction passage and using this passage to answer nonfiction questions about penguins. We will do this as a class together since this is the first time we will be working with answering questions from nonfiction text. Strategy Teaching Explicit Explanation of Strategy- What, Why, When I will pass out the worksheet titled Super Swimmers and allow the students to try and read the passage to themselves. This worksheet has lines which will help the writing of my student with fine motor skill issues K.C. I will then ask for volunteers to read a sentence at a time. After we read the passage as a class we will answer the questions. I will call on volunteers to answer each question asked on the worksheet. After we finish students will independently draw food for a penguin and write what they drew. Although the passage only talks about fish, we have talked about them eating other things in class. Any food we have discussed would be okay here. Modeling- How During this activity I will be modeling my thinking as to how to find the answers to the questions for the students since this is their first time pulling information from a text to answer questions like this. Active Engagement Engage students in a quick 1-2 minute practice of the new strategy In small groups I will have students figure out the answer to the final question. I will give them 1-2 minutes then we will come back as a class to discuss what each group found.

Link to Independent Writing Reiterate to students how the strategies demonstrated and practices can be utilized in their own writing. At the end we will share what we wrote and drew for our last question. We will then talk about the difference between writing about informational text and writing about fictional text. Here we can discuss information text and I will inform students they will be writing informational text in their journals tomorrow. What does that mean? What kinds of things will we be writing in our journals tomorrow if we are writing informational or nonfiction text? INDEPENDENT WRITING Explicitly describe what the students and teacher will be doing during this time? Although we will be doing the worksheet as a group, students will be independently writing the answers on their own sheet of paper. During this time I will walk around to make sure they are spelling words correctly. The students have the paragraph on each of their sheets and therefore should be spelling words correctly. I want them to get used to using resources to figure out unknown words. TEACHER-STUDENT CONFERENCES Who will you hold conferences with? What will you ask during your conference? How will you record the information you gather? I will hold a conference with one of my students with ADHD after the lesson to see what he took away from it. I will simply want to know if he knows the difference between fiction and nonfiction texts at this meeting. This will be an informal meeting and I will take a mental note of his answer. SHARING TIME What will be the focus of your sharing time? How will you structure the sharing? (Authors chair, partners, etc) I will be asking for volunteers throughout the assignment. We will not share as a group. Assessment: After the activity is completed I will have students turn in their worksheets. I will make sure they were following along with the class when we were discussing the answers to the questions. Do they have the correct answers? Do

their answers make sense? Are they responding using the facts we read about of are they responding using nonfiction text as prior knowledge? For example, for the questions asking penguins can? did they write swim or did they write talk? How might you extend this lesson? To extend this lesson I would come up with additional questions that are not on the sheet and ask the students that really seem to understand the assignment these questions. This would be an enrichment activity. Discuss how you differentiated instruction for your learners during the lesson? I supplied a worksheet with lines to help my student with fine motor skill issues. I also allow for my students to move around a bit to help my students with ADHD. Brief Reflection notes: Most of my students understood the assignment and pulled information from the passage quite well however some of them are still getting fiction and nonfiction mixed up. Day 2 MINILESSON Preview the skill Connect to prior learning Hook students to prior learning that has occurred throughout the workshop and other parts of the day. I will ask students to remind me what we did yesterday in terms of informational text. Do students remember we read a nonfiction text about penguins and then answered questions using this text? I will ask what is the difference between nonfiction and fiction text? What does informational or nonfiction text tell us? (Tells us what real penguins do).

Setting the Purpose I will then remind them that we will be writing in our journals today about penguins but that it has to be informational text. If another kindergartner walked into our classroom and never learned anything about penguins they would be able to read your journal entry and learn at least one thing about penguins. Could be where they live, what they eat, how they move, or any other true information about penguins. By now the students have learned a lot about penguins through experiments and read aloud stories. Strategy Teaching Explicit Explanation of Strategy- What, Why, When Students should begin thinking about what they would like to write about. What do they think is the most interesting thing they have learned so far about penguins that they would like to tell someone else? The students will begin their entry with a picture, all of our journal entries start with a picture that relates to what they will be writing about. They will then need to write at least one fact about penguins. We are starting with one fact and will up the number next time. Modeling- How I will not write or tell my students an example of a sentence because I do not want 16 journal entries saying exactly what I said so I will allow them to use books at the front of the room to pull information from or remind themselves about penguins and what they do. Active Engagement Engage students in a quick 1-2 minute practice of the new strategy * Participant Structures: Whole group, small group, partners Before our journal share I will share a piece of my on writing. I will mix fact with fiction and will let students know that I want them to be listening for the fact and fiction in my writing. I will then call on volunteers to tell

me what was fact and what was fiction. We will write this on the board and again talk about the difference between fact and fiction. Link to Independent Writing Reiterate to students how the strategies demonstrated and practices can be utilized in their own writing. One thing I want my students to be thinking about during this mini lesson is if their writing is fact or fiction. I will want them to ask themselves Do penguins really? If the answer is yes then it is fact and not fiction. INDEPENDENT WRITING Explicitly describe what the students and teacher will be doing during this time? During independent writing the students will be composing their own informational text about penguins in their journals and I will be walking around conferencing with students. TEACHER-STUDENT CONFERENCES I will walk around and conference with individual students to see what they are thinking about writing. I will ask them what they are thinking about writing about? What penguins eat, what they do, how they move, ect. This will be a time when I can mini conference with students to see if they are really understanding how to write Informational text. Are they referencing information we read in nonfictional text or fictional text? If students are off on the wrong track I will allow them to get an informational text book from the front of the room and flip through the pictures so they can be reminded of what we have learned about penguins. SHARING TIME What will be the focus of your sharing time? How will you structure the sharing? (Authors chair, partners, etc) When the class is finished they will partake in a journal share. This is when one student is called to the front of the class while the rest of the class sits on the carpet and listens to them read their journal entry. This will allow for students to listen to what their peers wrote. They can use some of these ideas in future journal

entries about penguins. Assessment: As I am walking around the room I will informally assess the process students are taking to arrive at what they write. Are they thinking about the informational text we read? Are they writing about one of the core topics we have been discussing, food, where they live, how they move, or family structure? When students are sharing what they wrote during journal share I will see if students I had a conference with took my advice or fixed any issues they were having in their writing. I will also be listening to see what students I need to mini conference with the next day. How might you extend this lesson? To extend this lesson I may have students critique one anothers writing to make sure what they are writing is fact and not fiction. Discuss how you differentiated instruction for your learners during the lesson? I allowed students to reference back to books we have read in class to help them with their own writing. Not all of my students are brave writers and spellers to this allowed them little direction with their writing. Brief Reflection notes: My students did a really good job with this assignment. They all had at least one fact about penguins and really enjoyed sharing their writing with their classmates. Day 3 MINILESSON Preview the skill Connect to prior learning

Hook students to prior learning that has occurred throughout the workshop and other parts of the day. Setting the Purpose I will let students know what we will be doing over the next two days. Today we will be recording all the information we have learned as a class onto a web diagram and then we will use this information to write an informational text rough draft in our journal. This rough draft must include at least three facts about penguins. Tomorrow we will write our final draft on nice paper and display these facts in the hallway for everyone to read and learn about penguins. We want to inform the rest of the school about everything we have learned!

Strategy Teaching Explicit Explanation of Strategy- What, Why, When Modeling- How As a class we will come up with the categories of our web and then the information we have learned about each category. This is a good interactive activity for my students with ADHD and keeps all students involved. Everyone will be held accountable to distributing to our web. Once the web is complete it will be displayed at the front of the class and students will begin working on their rough draft at their seat. Active Engagement Engage students in a quick 1-2 minute practice of the new strategy * Participant Structures: Whole group, small group, partners Before beginning to write on our web I will have students talk with a partner to see what they think is important and belongs on the map.

Link to Independent Writing Reiterate to students how the strategies demonstrated and practices can be utilized in their own writing. I will explain that writing on a map like we are is a great way to organize your ideas. Since we know so much about penguins we need a way to organize all of the information. Now that we have created this web as a class, students can use the information on the web i n their own writing. They will be reminded that the expectation is they write at least three facts about penguins, they may write more if they would like. I will walk around the class and make sure students are working. I will conference again with students that I noticed INDEPENDENT WRITING Explicitly describe what the students and teacher will be doing during this time? Students will be writing at their seats while I am conferencing with students that I noticed struggling yesterday. TEACHER-STUDENT CONFERENCES Who will you hold conferences with? What will you ask during your conference? How will you record the information you gather? I will hold conferences with students that seemed to be struggling yesterday. I will see if they are using the map we created to direct their writing. SHARING TIME What will be the focus of your sharing time? How will you structure the sharing? (Authors chair, partners, etc) As pairs, students will share what they wrote that day. This is a time for them to showcase their work and for them to conference with a peer to see if their writing is in fact nonfiction. Assessment: At the end of the day I will sit down with each students rough draft. I will use a sticky note on each students draft

and supply ideas that they may better their draft. This allows me the opportunity to enrich students work that is written almost to perfection. How can they make their writing even better? Adding voice? Catching the reading attention with a sound? I can also help students that are still struggling with certain mechanical errors such as capitals at the beginning of a sentence or periods at the end. I will be able to see which students understand the concept of writing informational text by sitting down with each journal. How might you extend this lesson? To extend this lesson I would make copies of every students rough draft and have my students do peer evaluations. I will organize it so that my students names were not on their work so no student feels uncomfortable. Discuss how you differentiated instruction for your learners during the lesson? We created a web as a class which can help my ADHD students stay on track as well as my ELL students. Brief Reflection notes: I noticed that some students were copying information right off of our web. Although I do want students to use this as a guide, I do not want them to copy it word for word I want to see their own thoughts and ideas. Bring this up tomorrow. Day 4 MINILESSON Preview the skill Connect to prior learning Remind students that they are more than welcome to use our web to direct their ideas but that they should not be copying word for word off of our map. This is their work and I want to see what they know about writing nonfiction text not what they know about copying.

Setting the Purpose I will let students know we will be writing our final drafts today! That means that anything they would like to change on their rough draft before raising their hand and getting penguin paper needs to be done now. I will let them know that I have written comments on a sticky note and placed it in each of their journals. They do not have to use my suggestions. They are only suggestion. Ultimately this is their work and they should be proud of it. Strategy TeachingExplicit Explanation of Strategy- What, Why, When Students will begin revising their rough drafts. When they feel their rough draft is what they want to display, they will raise their hand and read what they wrote to me out loud. (Often when the students read them out loud they catch mistakes they had made that they didnt catch before). If we both agree that they have written informational text including three facts about penguins, I will give them penguin paper to begin transferring their rough draft onto. Modeling- How I will show them my rough draft and read it out loud. I will then show them how I decide what I like and dont like and how I cross things off on my rough draft. They are usually very proud of their work and do not like to cross things out so if I show them how this is done they may be more at ease about it. Active Engagement Engage students in a quick 1-2 minute practice of the new strategy * Participant Structures: Whole group, small group, partners I will have them read the suggestions I made on the sticky notes and allow them time to decide if they would

like to use my suggestions or not. Link to Independent Writing Reiterate to students how the strategies demonstrated and practices can be utilized in their own writing. I will tell students that our overall goal is to write something that will inform incoming kindergartners about penguins so their writing should be nonfiction and interesting! INDEPENDENT WRITING Explicitly describe what the students and teacher will be doing during this time? Student will be revising their rough draft and then transferring their rough draft to their final draft paper. I will be walking around offering any help students request. If students do not ask for my help I will allow them to decide how to revise their draft. TEACHER-STUDENT CONFERENCES Who will you hold conferences with? What will you ask during your conference? How will you record the information you gather? SHARING TIME What will be the focus of your sharing time? How will you structure the sharing? (Authors chair, partners, etc) At the end I will invite volunteers to read their final draft to the class. This provides an opportunity for students to share and be proud of the work they have done. I also believe this it is important as a writer to share your work verbally with others. At the end of everyone who wants to share sharing, we will close with volunteers telling the class what the difference between fiction and nonfiction is. Assessment:

At the end of the entire lesson I will look at where students started and where they are at the end of the four day lesson. Did students use what they know about penguins to compose their own informational text to be displayed in the hallway? Did they revise their rough draft to ensure their final draft is the best it could be? How might you extend this lesson? To extend this lesson I would have students do more informational text writing about a topic other than penguins. Discuss how you differentiated instruction for your learners during the lesson? I am available for students that need my help but do not force my help onto those that do not want it. I also model how to edit a rough draft for the class. Brief Reflection notes: I am very happy with the outcome of my students writing! Although I did end up reading my own writing out loud, my students did not copy what I wrote which makes me think they are becoming braver writers.