Worthington Grant Multicultural Text Lesson Plan

Book Citation / Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters: An African Tale by John Steptoe
Grade Band / Grades 2-4
Approximate length of time to teach the lesson / 30 minutes
Overview of lesson / Teaching and/or reviewing questioning before, during and after reading via a teacher read and think aloud. After demonstration the students will try on their own with their independent reading book.
Type of Reading / Read aloud followed by independent reading
Learning Objectives / Students will learn that you can ask questions before, during and after reading to help understand the story better. They will then begin to formulate their own questions for their independent reading.
Washington State Standards Addressed / 2.1.6-Apply comprehension monitoring strategies before, during, and after reading: monitor for meaning, create mental images, and generate and answer questions.
Materials required / Book- Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters: An African Tale
Sheet of paper divided into three sections: Questions answered right there in text, Questions you need to search for, Questions that can’t be answered from the text but are good discussion questions.
Instructional plan / Preparation: Read and become familiar with the story. Use post-it notes to write down questions that you have generated before, during and after your reading so that you can think aloud during your read aloud.
Instructions and activities
Before Reading: If your class has not already done so, ask the students to help you generate a list of what good readers do when reading. If ask questions has not been included make sure to do so. Ask them when you should ask questions. If they don’t mention before, during and after reading do that for them. You might also choose to discuss where we find the answers to these questions. Sometimes they are right there in the text, sometimes you have to search for the answers and make inferences, and sometimes you don’t find the answer but you can discuss what might be the answer. Explain that today you are going to do a think aloud about questions.
Reading: Begin by sharing some of the questions you have even before reading. Examples: Who or what is Mufaro? What does the author mean by beautiful? If this is called and African tale, does it take place in Africa? The picture on the cover shows a girl combing her hair, is she one of the beautiful daughters? As you ask a question put it on the divided sheet where you think the answer might be found.
Now you should begin your reading of the story, thinking aloud with the questions you have previously marked. Again, place them where they should be on the divided sheet. At the end of the reading explain that sometimes after reading you are still left with questions. Share the questions you have. Examples: Does Manyara change at all after her sister becomes queen? Is the king good to both sisters? Does Mufaro ever get to see his daughters now that they live in the city?
After Reading: Tell the students that they are going to try this themselves with their independent reading books. Have them use stickie notes to write their questions down and place them in the correct column. You can be walking around and checking in on how they are doing.
Assessment / This would be an informal assessment, watching and seeing the types of questions the students are generating. If they are not able to generate questions you could repeat the lesson with another picture book and generate questions as a class. Depending on your group you might want to do this before sending them off on their own. As you conference with students make notes of good questions and have some students share out.
Extensions / This is a great story to do a compare and contrast lesson. The two daughters in the story are wonderful for this. You can also talk about character traits with the story.