Unit: Reading and Writing Informational Text Lesson Essential Question 6
Acquisition Lesson Plan
Topic: Reading/Language Arts, Grade 5
Informational Text
Lesson Essential Question: How do critical readers sift out the facts from opinions and bias?
Assessment Prompt #1: Students must be able to differentiate between statements of fact and statements of opinion.
Assessment Prompt #2: Students must be able to recognize the author’s purpose and point of view.
Assessment Prompt #3: Students must be to identify methods of persuasion.
Activating Strategy: To activate prior knowledge, I will display different objects and challenge students to create a fact and then an opinion about the object. After several objects, students are asked to arrive at a definition for fact and opinion. The definitions will be written on chart paper. To summarize the activity, students will distinguish between 15 written facts and opinions.
Key Vocabulary to Preview: bias, fact, opinion
Teaching Strategies:
Graphic Organizer: Fact and Opinion Chart, Critical Reader’s Checklist, Author’s Point of View Web
Instruction:
Conduct a class discussion about how we can become critical readers. Remind students that critical readers must not only recognize what a text says, but also how the text portrays the subject matter. For example, a critical reader might read our history book and not only get the facts from the text, but also see the perspective, or point of view, from which it was written. Critical readers also look at facts and opinions, examples, and the author’s purpose in writing the text.
Day 1: I will distribute copies of a non-fiction article on basketball player, Michael Jordan. I will read the first paragraph and model identifying the facts and opinions on a fact/opinion chart.
Assessment Prompt #1: How do critical readers distinguish between facts and opinions? Students will work in collaborative pairs to read the article and identify the facts and opinions. Students will summarize by completing the fact/opinion chart and reporting their results to the class.
Day 2: Students will use their Social Studies text, Chapter 9, “The Revolutionary War,” to identify author’s purpose and author’s perspective (point of view).
Assessment Prompt #2: How do critical readers recognize the author’s purpose as well as point of view? Students will summarize the lesson by completing an Author’s Point of View Web.
Day 3: Students will use a non-fiction newspaper article to identify facts and biased opinions.
Assessment Prompt #3: How do critical readers identify methods of persuasion and bias? Students will summarize the lesson by completing a fact/opinion chart.
Day 4: Students will use the fictional selection, The Ch i-lin Purse, to identify and apply critical reading skills. I will model reading a section from the story and evaluating the Critical Reader’s Checklist.
Assignment: Students will work in collaborative pairs to complete the Critical Reader’s Checklist, in response to the selection, The Ch i-lin Purse (Reading Street textbook, Grade 5, pages 190-203).
Summarizing Strategy: To answer the essential question and summarize the lesson, students will complete ten incomplete sentences with the first word that comes to their minds. Then, they must state if their responses were bases on biased opinions or proven facts.