Cluster 2: Craft and StructureArchived

This lesson is about a nine-year-old boy s personal experiences living with Tourette syndrome and how he gains the courage to tell his classmates about it. The author is 9-year old Dylan Peters. He provides clear information about Tourette Syndrome in a way that students can easily understand. This lesson plan addresses the following literacy skills: asking and answering questions to demonstrate understanding of a story, referring explicitly to the story as the basis for the answers; distinguishing their own point of view from that of the author of a text; and writing an opinion piece in response to a text-based question.

Type: Lesson Plan

Have you ever wondered what makes a reptile a reptile or a mammal a mammal? In this lesson, students will learn the physical and behavioral characteristics that represent reptiles and mammals. Students will be able to organize new information on a T-Chart, sort reptile and mammal picture clue cards, and complete a Venn diagram demonstrating their understanding of what represents reptiles and mammals. This lesson intentionally only covers mammals and reptiles, the other animal groups will need to be covered for full mastery of the aligned science standard.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will use the Book Hottest, Coldest, Highest, Deepest by Steve Jenkins to explore our amazing world. Students will be involved in a series of vocabulary development and review activities to aid in the understanding of an informational text. Students will also practice writing and answering text dependent questions.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will learn about heat through a video, a kinesthetic activity and summarizing informational text. This lesson can be completed in two 40 minute time period or over two days. Students will be able to demonstrate and explain the way heat moves from one object to another.

Type: Lesson Plan

Rocking through the Regions (of the United States) is a 27-day third grade research project on the five regions of the United States and the states that are located within the regions. Students will begin by writing letters to states" Departments of Tourism requesting information about their state. Then, students will work in groups to use the information received along with other print and digital resources they locate to gather information about their region. Once all information is gathered, students will begin writing an informative report and publish their report in an engaging presentation. By the end of this unit, students will be able to identify all five regions on a blank map of the United States and label all 50 states.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will learn how to classify animals. First, they will learn vertebrate versus invertebrate. Next, they will learn the animal classifications: mammal, bird, fish, reptile, amphibian, and arthropod. They will practice sorting these animals by different attributes and then do a short research project on one animal classification, which they will share with the class.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students sometimes erroneously think that to be a "good reader" it means they should know ALL the words in the text they are reading. However, students need to know that good readers often encounter words that are unknown or unfamiliar to them in any fiction or nonfiction text that they are reading.

Context Clues are hints that the author gives to help define a difficult, unfamiliar, or unusual word. The clue or clues may appear within the same sentence as the word to which it refers, or it may be in preceding or following sentences. Since a large percentage of a student's new vocabulary is acquired through reading, it is important that they are able to recognize and use context clues effectively as they read.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will learn about some of the behaviors of light, specifically refraction, through a video, a kinesthetic activity and summarizing informational text. Students will be able explain what causes a shadow by understanding the way light travels as well as explain refraction of light. This lesson can be completed in two 40 minute time periods or over two days.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will be able to identify characteristics of electrical energy. This lesson can be completed in one 80 minute time period or over two days. Students will learn about electrical energy, circuits, conductors and insulators through video, a hands on exploration and summarizing informational text.

Type: Lesson Plan

This is a week long lesson which helps children explore the three states of water: solid, liquid, and gas. Students will explore examples of where and what conditions the states of matter occur and investigate how to collect observations on the various states of water.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson students watch an introductory video, read an essay and identify appropriate vocabulary words" meaning within context, and complete an activity on plant classification. During the activity, students will cut out pictures of plants from magazines, classify them, and identify similarities and differences between them.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will learn about mammals using the book Mammals by Melissa Stewart. Through this book, the students will practice identifying and using text features to understand the text, as well as determine key details and main idea. The students will then create a newspaper article about a mammal of their choice using the main ideas, key details, and text features from Mammals.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson tied to academic standards for English/Language Arts, students receive support as they read a complex informational text about gravity. The teacher facilitates a close reading and writing a response-to-text. This lesson accompanies the CPALMS Lesson "Stop the Drop - An Engineering Design Challenge."

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, the students will identify and use text features to learn about reptiles while reading the book REPTILES by Melissa Stewart. As the students practice identifying and using text features, they will also identify key details in the text. Using the text features and key details, students will work to identify main idea. The students will then create a Reptile Poster using the main ideas, key details, and text features.

Type: Lesson Plan

Have you ever wondered why animals hibernate or why they migrate? Have you also ever wondered which animals do? In this lesson, students will learn which common animals hibernate and which ones migrate. They will also learn the importance of hibernation and migration on animals during the winter season. Students will be able to write down their learning, sort picture cards, and complete a Compare and Contrast Chart demonstrating their understanding of hibernation and migration.

Type: Lesson Plan

This lesson uses an assortment of books about jobs to review main idea, details, and nonfiction text features.

Type: Lesson Plan

This lesson is a good review of main idea and details. It uses informational books about bats in the lesson. Students will use informational text features to help find the main idea and details. They will also use the knowledge of main idea/details and informational text features to complete a simple research sheet and/or book.

Type: Lesson Plan

This lesson plan provides students with real life and hands on experience to the freezing process. Students learn what temperature water freezes at and how freezing can affect the environment.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will be able to identify characteristics of sound energy, such as pitch and volume. This lesson can be completed in one 45 minute time period or over two days. Students will learn about sound through video, a hands on project and summarizing informational text.

Type: Lesson Plan

This lesson focuses on helping students identify text features, understand their purpose, and apply this knowledge to understand the non-fiction text Great Migrations Elephants by Laura Marsh (770L) by asking and answering text-based questions.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will collect evidence from nonfiction books and the internet to show the importance of a historical figure.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this activity, students will locate text features and explain how they help the reader understand the text.

Type: Student Center Activity

In this activity, students will describe a target word using a graphic organizer.

Type: Student Center Activity

This web resource provides an introduction to the discrimination and segregation that triggered the Civil Rights movement, through the eyes of some of the youngest activists at the time.

This teaching idea supports the exploration of the purpose of rules and laws in society, as well as some of the basic tenets of the Constitution that address equal rights for all citizens. Also included are ideas on how to help students examine historical examples of segregation to consider their impact and analyze how civil rights activists responded to segregation laws to promote change.

Type: Teaching Idea

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. This article is a description of how a plant responds to light, gravity, and heat.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. This article describes the function of the different parts of a plant.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. The article explains how tree rings are used to determine the Earth's climate many years ago.

Type: Text Resource

Science captures even the most reluctant readers and writers. Students are naturally drawn to the colorful photographs and layouts of nonfiction science texts. This lesson supports students in grade 3 as they explore the organizational features of nonfiction texts, such as labels, captions, headings, fonts, and so on. Students then have an opportunity to work together with their classmates to create a two-page spread using those features to present information about their local environment.

Type: Unit/Lesson Sequence