Common Core (Reading)

Now that we have spent some time reviewing and building background knowledge on comparing and contrasting nonfiction text, it is finally time to jump into the common core standards.  The standards are broken up into RL (meaning reading/literature) and RI (meaning reading/informational text). For this portion of our unit unit we have been focusing on the standard:

 

RI.2.9-Compare and contrast the most important points presented by two texts on the same topic.

 

The plan for next week is to have the students interact with two different informational texts dealing with the same topic, dolphins. We will chart the relevant details as a class while the students record them on their personal sheet.  After identifying all of the relevant details the class will then come up with the main idea of the first book (dolphins are mammals that live in the ocean). 

 

The following day the students will be paired with a partner to read a second informational text on dolphins (an article focusing on how dolphins have been known to save people from sharks).  With their partners they will use Post-it notes to record relevant details. We will go over the details as a class and record them on our chart. Students will add them to their sheet from the previous day.

 

This is the anchor chart and recording sheet we are going to use to get started.

 

 

Okay so we're now half way through the week. We have read the book, Dolphin Talk and the article, Thank You, Flipper.  We have recorded facts from both and determined the main ideas. The students also added a column to their worksheet for text features. Here are a couple of pics of our work in progress... (and yes, some of it looks VERY messy but I promise there was some serious learning taking place ;) )

 

 

On Thursday my WONDERFUL UF (University of Florida) intern created a lesson for the students to wrap up their study on Dolphin Talk and Thank You, Flipper. Using their signal words, the students had to tell either a comparing or contrasting statement about the two texts.  She took their input and created an anchor chart for the students to refer to. She then split the class up into groups and had them create a newspaper article blurb telling about one of the two texts (she let them pick which book they wanted to write about).  Together the teams worked to write at least two fact statements about their text and added nonfiction text features (illustrations, labels, etc.) Here are a couple of the groups...