Grade Levels: 4th-6th
Duration: 2-3 30 Minute Sessions
Standards Addressed: (These are the ones used in my district, but you may need to find ones appropriate from your district or state.)
EL.04.WR.01 - Use a variety of strategies to prepare for writing, such as brainstorming, making lists, mapping, outlining, grouping related ideas, using graphic organizers, and taking notes.
EL.04.WR.25 - Write informational reports:
- Ask and then address a central question about an issue or event.
- Include facts and details for focus.
- Develop the topic with simple facts, details, examples, and explanations.
- Use more than one source of information, including speakers, books, newspapers, other media sources, and online information.
Learning Target:
Today I will write important information about a story and put it into colored groups.
Materials Needed:
-Learning Target printed on a piece of paper.
-White sheet of paper
-Three different colors of crayons
-Pencil
-The origin of Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends (Available to rent at a video store or the episode is available on Youtube.)
Lesson:
- Display the learning target and post it for the class to see. Read it to them then have them repeat it a couple of times. Tell them the goal of this lesson will be for them to learn how to take notes about a person, story, or event and to put their facts into groups so that they can then turn them into paragraphs.
- Have them take out their white sheet of paper and draw a circle in the center of it. Tell them they are going to do a graphic organizer called a web. Show them on an overhead or whiteboard.
- In the center, have them write the word "Spidey Friends".
- Tell them that each time they see a good fact or piece of information that they should draw a line off the circle and write their fact. Show an example on the overhead/board.
- Introduce the video they will be using to take notes on - the origin of Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends.
- Instruct them that as they watch the video, they should write them onto their web - the characters, setting, events etc.
- The video is broken up into three eight minute segments. Show a few minutes at a time and stop to show them the details they should be writing.
- Characters - Iceman, Firestar, Spider-Man
- Setting - school campus
- Powers - Iceman has ice power,s FIrestar has fire powers, Spider-Man is strong and can shoot webs.
- Events - a fire breaks out in a school and the three heroes go to fight it. Spider-Man learns of their identities from his camera, Spider-Man gets them together to start a team
- Secret Identities - Peter Parker/Spider-Man, Bobby Drake/Iceman, Firestar/Angel Jones
- Other - They are all friends
- Team name ideas - ex X-men, Iceman and his fans, Spidey Friends
- After you have watched the segments, show your finished web to the class. With each color, decide which to group together. Some ideas could be:
-How they get together.
-Their powers.
-Their secret identities.
-How they come up with their team name.
- Show that these colored sections will be used to make up our paragraphs.
Extensions:
- Take the three colored web sections and turn them into paragraphs.
- Use the web colored section on a sample biography story to closer link it to their work.
Integration Ideas:
- Have a web with basic facts already made for struggling students. Have them color code it as you go along. You might already have the colors decided for the categories.
- Encourage low readers to draw different parts of the story.
- Have high achievers do more than three colors. Perhaps five.
Credentials:
I am a licensed teacher working in Title 1 schools in the Portland, OR area. I have taught fourth grade for seven years and am now teaching the second grade. I have used comic books and superheros as a large part of my teaching for many years.
