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Utah Core State Standards (UCSS)

Elementary English Language Arts (Grs. 2-6)

Comprehending and Composing Template

1Salt Lake City School District

Core Theme 5 Grade 2

What is the theme?
What is the essential question I would like students to engage at the end of the theme?
Universal Theme: Communities Grade Level Theme: Better Together
Essential Question: How can we work together to achieve common goals?
Essential Question Writing Task (Week 5):
BEFORE READING
What is the essential sub-question for each lesson, as it relates to the theme?
Background knowledge: build or activate students’ related knowledge to the theme or topic.
Week 1 Lesson 21
Title of Main Reading Selection:
A Chair For My Mother
Genre: Realistic Fiction
Essential Sub-Question: / Week 2 Lesson 22
Title of Main Reading Selection:
Serious Farm
Genre: Fiction
Essential Sub-Question: / Week 3 Lesson 23
Title of Main Reading Selection:
The Bee
Genre: Nonfiction
Essential Sub-Question: / Week 4 Lesson 24
Title of Main Reading Selection:
Watching in the Wild
Genre: Nonfiction
Essential Sub-Question:
DURING READING
What reading instruction is needed? (skills, strategies, higher level questions)
Focus Comprehension Skill: Plot
Focus Comprehension Strategy: Use Story Structure / Focus Comprehension Skill: Use Graphic Aids
Focus Comprehension Strategy: Summarize
What is the intended comprehension objective of student learning?
Comprehension Objective:
To understand features of realistic fiction / Comprehension Objective:
To understand characteristics of fantasy / Comprehension Objective:
To recognize features of nonfiction / Comprehension Objective:
To understand characteristics and features of nonfiction
AFTER READING
Short Response (Weekly Writing Tasks)
Create the writing task by turning the sub-question into a prompt. Discuss the sub-question and answer it orally before students write.
Writing Task: / Writing Task: / Writing Task: / Writing Task:
Theme 5 / Possible Theme Essential Questions
·  How are people better when they work together?
·  How can we work together to achieve common goals? / Possible Theme Essential Writing Tasks
·  Explain how working together can help us achieve common goals. Use examples from the stories.
Possible Main Selection Sub-Questions / Possible Main Selection Sub-Question Writing Tasks
Lesson 21 / What problem do the characters in the story have?
What did the little girl learn by saving money for so long?
What is the families goal and how did they work together to achieve it?
How did the family work together to buy a new chair? / Explain the problem the characters had in the story.
Describe what lesson the girl learned by saving money for so long. Use details from the story.
Describe the family’s goal and how they work together.
Describe how people are better when they work together.
Lesson 22 / How can you tell that Farmer Fred cares about the animals?
How did the animals work together to get F.F. to laugh?
How did the animals work together to make Farmer Fred laugh? / Explain how you can tell that Farmer Fred cares a lot about the animals. Use examples from the story.
Summarize how the animals and F.F. work together to solve their problem.
Describe how the animals work together to make Farmer Fred laugh.
Lesson 23 / What are the various jobs bees have?
How do the three types of bees cooperate to run a hive?
How do bees work together to make honey? / Describe all the different jobs the bees have to make the hive successful. Use examples from the story.
Select one bee and describe how the group cooperates.
Explain how bees work together to make honey.
Lesson 24 / What did Jane Goodall help us learn about chimpanzees?
How did Jane work with the chimps to understand them?
In what way did the chimpanzees work together? / Describe what Jane Goodall discovered about chimpanzees. Use details and information from the story.
Summarize how scientists learn about chimpanzees because of Jane Goodall. Use details and information from the selection.
Explain four ways that Goodall’s chimpanzees worked together.
Lesson 25 / Return to essential question / Respond to writing task

Principles of the CCSS found in this template:

1)  Working around an essential question that binds selections together.

2)  Facilitating extended thinking and reasoning.

3)  Reading across multiple texts for different purposes.

4)  Writing to deepen reading comprehension.

5)  Scaffolding and extensive practice using oral language to support written language.

6)  Learning of academic language and vocabulary.

7)  Learning to write in different genres.

8)  Using on-line resources to support learning.

9)  Ability to substitute CCSS standards for basal reading and writing skills and strategies.

10)  Using various elements of the writing process.

11)  Practicing short responses to a prompt.

12)  Practicing extended responses to a prompt.