Nonfiction Unit 1st-2nd Grades

The amazing 1st grade team in my building, Wildflower Elementary, has embraced the reader's workshop mini-lesson with reckless abandon.  I'm just utterly impressed by the quality of their lessons and hope we'll continue to see our kids grow as readers and deepen their thinking about books.  

They have taken the original 3rd grade nonfiction teaching points and are breaking them down to support with more days on a single teaching point to provide additional practice toward mastery.  Hats of to everyone on the team for collaborating!

1st-2nd Grade Nonfiction Unit: Good readers use a variety of strategies to understand nonfiction text.  

Teaching Point 1: Good readers identify important details about a topic as they read. 

Day 1: Good readers identify important details about a topic as they read. 

-Using Bats by Lily Wood as model/try

Day 2: Good readers identify important details about a topic as they read.

-Using All About Frogs by Jim Arnosky as model/try

Day 3: Good readers identify important details about a topic as they read.

-Using Giraffes by Sally Morgan

Day 4: Good readers identify important details about a topic as they read.

-Using Pigs by Gail Gibbons

Day 5: Good readers identify important details about a topic as they read.

-Using Sharks by Sally Morgan

Integrating Technology

Almost the entire first year I taught Reader's Workshop I resisted the SMART Board.  I wanted nothing more than for it to go away and to have a whiteboard.  Then, something happened... I embraced the board AND the ability to scan and integrate images from books.  Since my software was just restored today by the wonderful district tech people, this first file is very basic in regards to ideas for integrating graphic organizers/journal pages into the workshop.  (It also includes the skeleton for bell ringer, fluency, and word study).  

I'll add more generic unit files in the weeks ahead AND include digital anchor charts for the units!

Tuesday-Friday Literacy/Reader's Workshop SMART Board Example

Nonfiction Unit (Grade 3-ish) Lessons

Fearless co-workers and Literacy teammates jumped in headfirst and started to create lesson plans for a nonfiction unit (much gratitude and thanks!). Given that we're in the last push before the state test, the lessons aren't in a typical sequence for introducing nonfiction text in the workshop setting.  As we revise the scope and sequence for future years, I would add in multiple additional lessons and not jump immediately into main idea and relevant details.  I think students need to spend considerable time processing through details (significant vs. insignificant) and then work to synthesize the details into an accurate main idea.   

Unit: Good nonfiction readers use a variety of strategies to understand what they're reading. 

Good readers get help identifying the main idea of nonfiction text by reading the title of the book or chapter. Good readers can identify significant details to support the main idea of the text they are reading. Good readers identify important details about the topic as they read.  Good readers ask themselves, "What do all of the important details have in common?" to help them identify the main idea.  Good readers use the main idea and important details to retell what information they've learned. Graphic Organizers to Support Unit: Identifying details to determine main idea - post-it "mat" and space to write main idea (There is room for 4 post-its within the "details" box). Teaching Points 3 & 4 Differentiated organizers to support what all of the details have in common to identify main idea. Teaching Points 3 & 4