Bend I: Strengthen Nonfiction Research Skills While Researching Plants In Bend I, you and your students will embark on a whole-class study of plants. Across minilessons, read-aloud and vocabulary, you and your students will collaboratively study plants and their adaptations, building knowledge about this important topic. Students will work in research groups of four students to study various topics related to plants, including how plants change across the seasons, plants in extreme environments, how plants communicate, and plants and pollinators. Research groups will be equipped with text sets, allowing students to build vocabulary as they read across books, articles and videos on their topic. Your whole-class teaching will focus on helping students build a bank of nonfiction research skills they can draw on whenever they want to research a new topic. Students will learn to begin their research by activating their prior knowledge, and then to read start-here texts that overview their topic. You’ll emphasize the importance of previewing texts before reading to get a sense of the content of the text, as well as its structure. You’ll teach students how to keep a bank of new vocabulary words, as well as how to ask and answer questions about the text that drive their reading. Bend I: Overview Session 1 Session 2 Session 3 Session 4 45 min.
Access Prior Knowledge About Your Topic Before Starting to Read Students will create concept maps that access and organize their prior knowledge about plants, and then begin to research using start-here texts that overview their topic.
Preview the Text to Deter- mine What it Will Teach and How Students will learn to preview a text prior to reading it so as to deter- mine the text’s content and structure. Then, they will continue to research their topic.
Use Teaching, Acting, and Gestures to Solidify Learning Students will learn to teach important or tricky content they’ve learned about, as a way to solidify their own learning. Then, they will continue to research their topic.
Use Sketching and Writing to Take Notes Students will learn another way to hold onto important information they are learn- ing—writing about their reading in their reader’s notebook. They’ll review notetaking strategies from second grade and work to apply these to their new research.
Session 5
Session 6
Session 7
45 min.
Learn From the Text and the Text Features Students will study text features closely in order to better comprehend the text and to synthesize between the paragraphs and the text features. They’ll draw on this and other skills as they research their topic.
Word Consciousness: Develop a Content Word Collection Students will collect and define important topic words, and they’ll discuss how these words relate to one another. As they research their topic, they’ll also continue to use text features to guide their learning.
Elaborate on Learning to Help Knowledge Stick Students will learn that one way to build knowledge about a topic, and to better comprehend texts, is to ask and answer questions. The session will end with students sharing important information they’ve learned about their topics.
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