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Testing/Assessments & Learning Standards
July 31, 2015

Lesson Plan: Time to Eat

Source: Research and Educational Services

LESSON TITLE: Time to Eat

TEACHER: Christine Mathews

SUBJECT: Nonfiction Animal Behaviors

GRADE: Kindergarten

TIME FRAME: 4-5 Days

PLANNING AND PREPARATION:

Reading Level/Lexile: Pre-School Grade 3/920L

What rubrics will be used in this lesson? A rubric will be used for the writing component of this lesson. Student writing will be evaluated based on the following features:

  • Citing text-based evidence from describe what / how an animal eats in their own words
  • Using the text illustrations as support to create an illustrated informational poster
  • Sentence structure - using capitalization at the start of a sentence, an ending mark, and appropriate spacing. 

Any special seating arrangement for the students? Students will either work in partnerships (more support) or individually (less support) and will need sufficient space for this type of work.

LESSON MATERIALS:

RELATED LINKS:

NYS P-12 Common Core Learning Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy and Mathematics

NYSED Classroom Videos

The NYS Education Department has classroom videos available in ELA (3 elementary, 1 secondary), mathematics (2 elementary, 2 secondary), and a European history lesson. The videos are presented un-edited and formatted to highlight specific NYS Learning standards as they are implemented.

Go to EngageNY to view the videos.

MATERIALS/EQUIPMENT:

  • Multiple copies of Time to Eat for students to use while creating their informational posters. If multiple copies are not available, have students mark a fact they learned with a post-it note and copy that page for writing purposes.
  • Post-it notes to mark pages in text
  • Markers
  • Poster Paper

LESSON SUMMARY:

Summary: “It’s time to eat! How about a nice juicy worm? Or, if you’d rather, you can swallow a fly, an old shoe, or an entire deer. Even of ball of elephant dung is on the menu. Steve Jenkins and Robin Page invite you to dine with a group of animals that have fascinating - and often peculiar - eating habits. After reading this book, spinach may sound pretty good after all.” - Summary taken from Time to Eat .

What will students know or learn from this text?

Time to Eat describes how a few wild animals eat and how vastly different animals’ diets can be from humans.

Where is this text taking us? What unit will it be a part of?

This text is part of a non-fiction unit of study. In this lesson, students will engage in discussions and conversations based on the information presented in the text. Afterwards, they will create informational posters that tell others what they have learned from Time to Eat and create a digital book. If desired, this text and discussions could lead to continued learning about comparing and contrasting.

How will I know what they learned?

Individually, students will demonstrate their understanding by verbally describing one fact they learned from the text and by creating an informational poster using pictures and at least one sentence that share this information. Their pictures and sentences will be based on information gathered from the text. Their individual posters will cumulatively create a class informational text.

Enduring Understandings:

 1. Different animals eat have different diets

2.  Readers can teach others what they’ve learned

Essential Questions:

 1. How do different animals eat? What do different animals eat?

2.  How can I share the information I’ve learned from a text with others?

Student Objectives / Outcomes
1. Students will be able to identify one animal from the text and verbally describe it’s eating habits.

2.  Students will be able to use the text illustrations to create their own illustrated informational poster.

3.  Students will use text information to construct a sentence that tells a fact learned from this text

4.  Students will re-read their own writing with fluency and expression.

 

NEW YORK STATE LEARNING STANDARDS:

Reading Standards for Literature

  • RI.K.6 With prompting and support, name the author and illustrator of a story and define the role of each in telling the story
  • RI.K.7 With prompting and support, describe the relationship between illustrations and the text in which they appear
  • RI.K.10 Actively engage in group reading activities with purpose and understanding
  • SL.K.1 Participate in collaborative conversations with diverse partners about kindergarten topics and texts with peers and adults in small and larger groups

Writing Standards

  • W.K.2 Use a combination of drawing, dictating, and writing to compose informative/explanatory texts in which they name what they are writing about and supply some information about the topic.
  • W.K.6 With guidance and support from adults, explore a variety of digital tools to produce and publish writing, in collaboration with peers.
  • W.K.8 Participate in shared research and writing projects

Speaking and Listening Standards

  • SL.K.1 Participate in collaborative conversations with diverse partners about kindergarten topics and texts with       peers and adults in small and larger groups
  • SL.K.5 Adding drawings or other visual displays to descriptions as desired to provide additional detail

SHIFTS IN RELATION TO THE COMMON CORE STANDARDS:

This lesson incorporates these pedagogical shifts demanded by the Common Core State Standards

1.  Balancing Informational & Literary Texts

2. Text-based Answers

3. Writing from Sources

4. Staircase of Complexity

Academic Vocabulary: Isabel Beck, Bringing Words to Life, categorizes vocabulary into 3 tiers when considering which words need the most instructional attention. Beck suggests that students will benefit the most academically by focusing instruction on the Tier 2 Vocabulary Words. Tier 2 words are likely to appear in texts across content areas, essential for understanding this text.

*TIER 1,2&3 ACADEMIC VOCABULARY:

 

Tier 1 Vocabulary

Basic vocabulary that rarely require instructional focus (door, house, book)

*Tier 2 Vocabulary

High-frequency, multiple meaning vocabulary - words that appear with high-frequency, across a variety of domains, and are crucial when using mature, academic language (coincidence, reluctant, analysis)

Tier 3 Vocabulary

Low-frequency, context-specific vocabulary - frequency of these words is quite low and often limited to specific fields of study (isotope, reconstruction, Buddhism)

skin

plants

thrive

capture

venomous

little

grass

consuming / consume*

astounding

cocoon

dinner

drinks

wrap*

wedges*

regurgitated

breakfast

year

droppings/ dung

chisel*

kilograms

lunch

 

equivalent*

tuck*

 

warm

 

energy

burrow*

 

stretch

 

starvation*

impales

 

sharp

 

paralyzes

shed*

 

rocks

 

rouses

devour*

 

meal

 

underground*

detects

 

swallows

 

snags

prefer

 

milk

 

variety

stores*

 

stomach

 

cautious

companions

 

shoes

 

rich*

mucus*

 

 

 

gulp*

chamber*

 

DIFFERENTIATED INSTRUCTION:

Students will work in partnerships to create informational posters

When writing, one of the following accommodations will be used as appropriate:

  • Students will have a model of their sentence typed so that they can copy the words.
  • Have their sentence written in yellow marker to trace.

SEQUENCE OF LESSON ACTIVITIES:

Day 1:

  • Read Time to Eat for enjoyment and for the flow. (RI.K.5)

Day 2:

  • Act out “tier 2” vocabulary words and re-read Time to Eat for the gist.
  • Discussion based on text-dependent questions 1-4

Day 3:

  • Discussion based on text-dependent questions 5- 8
  • Have students identify an animal they learned about in the text and one fact that describes how they eat. Students will go back to the text and flag this information with a post-it note

Day 4-5:

  • Create informational posters with an illustration and a sentence describing how that animal eats based on the information in the text. Have students practice reading their writing for fluency and when they demonstrate they are ready, begin recording their sentences using recording software (ex.: Voicememo, Audacity, etc.).
  • Scan student work and use voice recordings to create a digital book to share with parents

TEXT DEPENDENT QUESTIONS:

C= central ideas/general understanding:
  1. What was this story about?

D= key details:
  1. What animals did we learn about in this text?
  2. What are some of the surprising ways that animals eat?
  3. How are the diets of an acorn woodpecker and chipmunk similar? How are they different?

V= vocabulary:
  1. Steve Jenkins says that a tick may not for years to eat, but when it does, it slurps down the equivalent of 6,000 milkshakes. He also says that a baby blue whale drinks a lot of milk. He says it’s the equivalent of 800 glasses every day. What does equivalent mean?
  2. The author says that the baby blue whale drinks the equivalent of 800 glasses of milk and “on this rich diet, a young whale can gain 200 pounds.” What does rich mean in this sentence?

S= text structure:
  1. There are some words in bolded print. What do these words have in common? Why do you think the author did that?

AP= author's point of view:
  1. Why did Steve Jenkins and Robin Page write this book?

TEXT DEPENDENT QUESTIONS SEQUENCE:

(Part to whole, literal to inferential/evaluation)

  1. What was this story about?
  2. What animals did we learn about in this text?
  3. What are some of the surprising ways that animals eat?
  4. Steve Jenkins says that a tick may for years to eat, but when it does, it slurps down the equivalent of 6,000 milkshakes. He also says that a baby blue whale drinks a lot of milk. He says it’s the equivalent of 800 glasses every day. What does equivalent mean?
  5. The author says that the baby blue whale drinks the equivalent of 800 glasses of milk and “on this rich diet, a young whale can gain 200 pounds.” What does rich mean in this sentence?
  6. How are the diets of an acorn woodpecker and chipmunk similar? How are they different?
  7. There are some words in bolded print. What do these words have in common? Why do you think the author did that?
  8. Why did Steve Jenkins and Robin Page write this book?

ASSESSMENT:

Formative Assessments:

  • Conversations and discussions
  • Identifying a fact learned from the text (words and/or the illustrations) with a post-it note, with prompting and support as needed

Summative Assessments:

  • The student-created informational poster will serve as the summative assessment, indicating each child’s ability to retell what they learned from the text using the text and illustrations

REFLECTION:

Process:

What was I thinking about during the lesson writing - the students and implementing the shifts

  • This is a complex text and I was primarily focused on engaging them in a way that would make the text comprehendible at their level. Using movement was the perfect avenue for this.
  • Sharing what they learned from this text using text-based evidence was another focus.

Why I chose the lesson

  • I chose this lesson because it was a great introduction to non-fiction texts. It also lent itself to do work around pulling evidence from the text through writing and re-reading our own writing for fluency.

Struggles to make the shifts come to life

  • The vocabulary in this text was challenging for kindergarteners, but using movement helped them really understand the meaning of the words and the author’s purpose for writing the text.
  • The sentences that students shared were as complex as the text, so writing all of those words was a challenging for kindergarteners.

Implementation

  • What was the effectiveness of the instructional design
  • What concerns or issues do / did I have?
  • How will / did I revise the lesson? 

The lesson took 4 days and a slower pace helped kindergartners achieve the expectations. I would break apart the text-dependent questions so that I am asking questions over three days, instead of two days. 

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

  • “Crosswalk of Common Core Instructional Shifts: ELA / Literacy” from EngageNY