Title of Text: Desert Food Webs
Author/Illustrator: Paul Fleisher GRL: N Series: Early Bird Food Webs Genre: Nonfiction, Science Standard: Determine the meaning of general academic and domain‐specific words and phrases in a text relevant to a grade 3 topic or subject area. Use text features and search tools (e.g., key words, sidebars, hyperlinks) to locate information
relevant to a given topic efficiently. Lesson Objectives: to use academic vocabulary correctly, to use text features to help understand the content, Comprehension Strategy: Key Ideas/Determining Importance Skill: Cause and Effect Fluency: Accuracy Academic Vocabulary: explain or research the meanings of the words below. Discuss the morphology of the words: suffixes, taking a root word and adding to it to change the meaning of the word. Have students talk about the meaning of each word, using antonyms, synonyms and situations where each word can be used correctly. a. carnivores b. herbivores c. omnivores d. decomposers e. consumers f. photosynthesis Before Reading: ENGAGE! THINK! 1. Build Background Knowledge a. Let’s look at the front and back cover. What do you know about the desert? b. What would you like to learn about desert food webs? c. Use the picture on the front cover. Tell me what a possible food web could be in the desert. d. Look at the Table of Contents. What chapter would I go to, to find out how humans interact with the desert? e. Let’s look at the food web on page 4. Tell me what you see. f. Go to the glossary in the back of the book and read the definitions. 2. Skill Introduction: a. Cause and effect – we are going to read a book where cause and effect will be very easy to understand. For example, an effect of the desert being hot and dry is that cactuses can grow there. 3. Strategy Introduction: a. Key Ideas/Determining Importance – we are going to be working on identifying the reasons an author gives to support points in a text. 4.
Fluency: Accuracy – because we are reading a nonfiction science text, it will be very important to read carefully and accurately so we learn the correct information. Standard – there will be text features for us to use to help us read the text. Let’s look at pages 6, 8, and 14 to find some. Copyright © 2012 by Lerner Publishing Group, Inc. Lerner Digital™ and Lerner eSource™ are trademarks of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. www.lernerbooks.com During Reading: Don’t Wait Until It’s Too Late! Check for Understanding (Stop Midway through the Book) 1.
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3. Read to page 26 and stop. What was the main idea of chapter 1 and key details. What about chapters 2 and 3? Tell me about a part you didn’t understand? Turn and Talk: how is using the strategy of Key Ideas and Determining Importance helpful in your reading? 4.
Standard: On page 8, the author writes about environments. Why did the author choose to include this? 5. On pages 16‐17, what is one cause and effect you can tell about? After Reading: EVALUATE! 1. What is the most important thing to remember from this book? What are the details that can help you remember this? 2. What more do you want to learn about deserts or desert food webs? 3. Where does energy in the desert come from? Find evidence in the text of this. 4.
Standard: How did the captions help you? Is it better to read those before you read the main paragraphs? Why or why not? 5.
Standard and Academic Vocabulary: On a piece of paper make 3 columns. Write carnivore for one column, herbivore for another and omnivore for the last. Write information for each under their titles. Writing Standard: Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, descriptive details, and clear event sequences. a. Establish a situation and introduce a narrator and/or characters; organize an event sequence that unfolds naturally. b. Use dialogue and descriptions of actions, thoughts, and feelings to develop experiences and events or show the response of characters to situations. c. Use temporal words and phrases to signal event order. d. Provide a sense of closure. Task: Transfer what you learned from the book. Write a story about an animal from the book coming alive and living in the desert. Include vocabulary from the book. Use the points above to help you. IF/THEN: Cause and Effect ‐ begin with an effect, then choose one student to give the cause. This cause now becomes the new effect and another student is chosen to give the cause of that effect. For example, you might say,"I heard a loud noise." I would then choose a student and he may say, "because a book dropped." Then the next student would say, "because the shelf was loose." So the cause of every sentence becomes the effect. It also teaches that some effects can also be causes. Copyright © 2012 by Lerner Publishing Group, Inc. Lerner Digital™ and Lerner eSource™ are trademarks of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. www.lernerbooks.com