Lesson Plan:

General Goals:
By modeling , teaching, and guiding students’ practice using those strategies that good readers use, a teacher can empower her students to get more out of what they read and to connect what they have read to their own knowledge so that it is accessible in the future.
The teacher will model her own use of each of the reading strategies.
Students will practice using the demonstrated strategy on their own.
Students will discuss their understanding of the strategy by using the terminology modeled.
Throughout a series of such lessons, students will learn and practice the 7 strategies that good readers use.

Specific Objectives:
Upon completion of these lessons the students will be able to:
Identify the specific reading strategies that they are using.
Recognize when meaning has broken down and use a strategy to reconstruct meaning.
Use the 7 reading strategies independently and across a variety of genres.

Materials Needed:
Strategy Charts:
Predict
Connect
Visualize
Question
Clarify
Infer
Summarize
large chart paper to make examples charts
Strategies Book Mark
picture books that illustrate the use of each strategy
additional texts for practice sessions
Questioning Story

Activities
Lesson 1 Modeling the strategy
Explain to the children that you are going to read a book to them and while you are reading, you are going to “think aloud” to show them how good readers help themselves understand what they are reading. Explain to students that there are strategies or skills that good readers automatically use and you want them to “see” how these strategy is used. Display the Connections Chart and explain to the children that connecting is when the story reminds you of something else--something that happened to you, another book, or something else in life. Begin reading and as you make a connection, (be sure to choose a short text that you can connect to! See bibliography at the end.) explain your connection to the children. Write your name, the book title, your connection, and the code for the type of connection you made in the columns on a Connections Chart. Connections are coded: T-S, T-T, or T-W: text-to-self for those connections we make to our own lives and experiences, e. g. “That reminds me of how my dog and I play together.”; text-to-text for connections we make between two books, e. g. “She is acting just like Ramona when she...”; and text-to-world when the connection is to something in the world around us, e. g. “That reminds me of the way the Eskimos hunt.”
If you choose the right stories, children will naturally begin to share their connections. Accept the children’s connections, explain again, what the text-to-self, text-to-text, and text-to-world code labels mean, and add their connections to the chart along with the name of the child making the connection and the code. Children quickly become adept at making connections between a piece of text and themselves, other stories they have heard or read, or events in the world. Charts displayed in the room remind children of this new skill they are learning.

Lesson 2 As you read to your class, continue to reflect on your own connections and to accept connections from your students. This can sometimes interrupt the flow of a story, so you may want to read a book once without connections and then reread it, inviting students to share their connections to the story. continue to add stories and connections to the chart.

Lesson 3 Have pairs of students read a selection together and share their connections. Small sticky notes that are coded: T-S, T-T, and T-W can be given to each pair, so that they can make special connections that they want to share with the whole group. After this reading/sharing session, bring students together to share their experiences with the whole group.

Lesson 4 Assessment: Have students choose a book that they think they can find connections to and read a section of it. They can mark with a sticky note, , or write down their connections to share with the teacher.

Further Lessons
This structure of modeling and “thinking aloud,” then practicing in a whole group, further practice with a partner and finally practicing alone is repeated to teach each of the remaining strategies.
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Teaching Strategies
1. Modeling a behavior.
2. Illustration of terms with visuals, graphic organizers, charts,
3. Display charts of use of each strategy
3. Group practice
4. Partner practice
5. Individual practice and reporting out (written or oral, depending on writing skills/grade