Materials to Prepare in Advance of the Unit See the chart below for details about the teaching resources and materials we recommend you prepare before you begin the unit.
Materials
Instructions to Prepare
Assign students into research groups
Students will work in research groups, studying text sets related to plants. You’ll need to group students into research groups with other students who are reading at roughly the same level. Ideally, groups will include four students, with two partnerships. On the online resources, we’ve provided suggested text sets on a host of topics, including: plants and how they grow; how plants change across the seasons; farming and gardening; plants and pollinators; plants in extreme environments; plants and how they communicate; rainforest plants; ocean and wetland plants. You’ll also find start-here texts that you can print and copy for each group. If students have access to devices, you’ll find links to articles and videos that can supplement their text sets. In Bend II, students will swap bins with another partnership, so no new materials will be needed. Students will work in research partnerships or groups to study self-selected topics. On the online resources, we’ve provided suggested text sets for topics that are sure to interest your students, including: robots, insects, space exploration, the human body, cars, and cool jobs. We encourage you to develop any text sets you think will interest your students, based on the texts you have available in your class- room. See Bend III Session 1 for more information about how to help students develop their own text sets, including start-here texts. Starting in Bend I, each student will need a reader’s notebook. They will use this notebook each day as they jot notes about their topics and track key vocabulary they are learning. Preview the main texts you’ll read aloud to students across the unit. See Let’s Gather for the title list and rec- ommendations for how to prepare for teaching these texts Clear a space in your room to build a Vocabulary Word Wall. You’ll add to this wall across read-aloud and close reading time, your reading minilessons, and your vocabulary extensions. From the online resources, print a set of the vocabulary cards that you’ll use across the unit, and cut them apart, so they are ready to add to your Vocabulary Word Wall as you teach. Print the anchor charts you’ll need to display across Bends I, II, and III. It is very important that you do a slow reveal of the bullets on an anchor chart so the chart is built across the bend rather than revealed up front. z Bend I: Nonfiction Readers Research New Topics z Bend II: Strategies for Determining the Main Idea of a Text z Bend III: Nonfiction Readers Learn Topic Words
Prepare student text sets for Bend I and II
Prepare student text sets for Bend III
Prepare reader’s notebooks Preview read-aloud texts Set up a Vocabulary Word Wall
Prepare the follow- ing charts
If you have limited time and resources, and want advice about how to make adjustments to the curriculum that we especially recommend, please visit Mossflower.com for detailed recommendations.
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WELCOME TO THE UNIT
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