Looking After Tide Pools / The Smart Little Crab Lesson Plan

Blackline master Lesson Plans Xx Fluent

Xxxxxxxxx reading stage Level K (20)

Looking After Tide Pools is an interview with a marine biologist.

The marine biologist explains what a tide pool is, what lives in a tide pool, why tide pools are important, and how we can look after them.

The Smart Little Crab is a narrative about a group of animals who do not look after their tide pool, causing it to become very unhealthy. At last, they listen to the little crab, who helps them clean up their home.

Running words: 544 Text type: Interview

Running words: 725 Text type: Narrative

Content vocabulary

anemone beach crab hermit crab marine animals marine biologist Marine Discovery Center ocean octopus plankton sea snail sea star sea seawater seaweed shells shore shrimp snorkeling tide tide pool waves

Phonics

• Identifying “c” making the /sh/ sound as in ocean and special • Identifying “ea” making the long /a/ sound as in great

Text features Looking After Tide Pools

• Questions and answers; labels; diagrams

The Smart Little Crab

• Dialogue • Contents page; chapter headings

Reading strategies

• Recognizing how a book is organized (interview) • Recognizing cause and effect in a story

Correlations with State Standards Reading literature 2.RL.7 Use information gained from the illustrations and words in a print or digital text to demonstrate understanding of its characters, setting, or plot.

Informational texts Xxx? 2.RI.5 Know and use various Xxx?text features to locate key facts or information in a text efficiently.

Foundational skills 2.RF.4b Read on-level text orally with accuracy, appropriate rate, and expression on successive readings.

Assessment

Flying Start to Literacy Lesson Plans Xx / Xx © 2010 EC Licensing Pty Ltd.

Writing 2.W.2 Write informative/explanatory texts in which they introduce a topic, use facts and definitions to develop points, and provide a concluding statement or section.

Speaking and listening 2.SL.4 Tell a story or recount an experience with appropriate facts and relevant, descriptive details, speaking audibly in coherent sentences.

Language 2.L.1d Form and use the past tense of frequently occurring irregular verbs.

Lesson 2 The Smart Little Crab

Lesson 1 Looking After Tide Pools

Key concepts • T ide pools contain animals and plants that depend on each other and a healthy tide pool for their survival.

• P eople’s actions can impact on the health of tide pools.

Returning to the book Provide multiple opportunities for the students to reread and interact with the book – with teacher support, with a partner, and independently. Choose activities that are appropriate for your students.

Before reading

After reading

Getting ready to read

Talking about the book

Word work

Support the students in activating their prior knowledge.

Talk about tide pools. Ask: What is a tide pool? Who has looked in a tide pool? What did you see? If necessary, show students pictures of tide pools in books or on the Internet. Say: Tide pools are pools of water in rocks on the shore of the ocean. Rocks on the shore are covered in water when the tide comes in. When the tide goes out, some of the water is left behind in pools.

Have the students talk about the book. Promote discussion by choosing questions that are appropriate for your students. Ask them to support their thinking by referring to the photographs and the text in the book.

What animals and plants live in tide pools? What rules should we follow when we visit tide pools? (Literal) Do you think Karly likes her work? What makes you think so?

(Inferential) Do you think it is important to look after tide pools? Why? (Synthesizing) Why do you think the author chose to write this book as an interview? Do you think it is a good way to present information about tide pools? Why? (Critical)

Students could work with a partner to list the names of animals and plants that they think might live in a tide pool. List students’ ideas on a chart.

Introducing the book Give each student a copy of Looking After Tide Pools and have them read the title. Ask: What do you expect to be reading about in this book? Draw the students’ attention to the Q and A on pages 4 and 5. Say: This book is an interview with a marine biologist named Karly. The Q is the question and the A is Karly’s answer. Have the students look at the book and discuss the photographs. Prompt them to link the photographs with the question Karly is being asked.

Reviewing reading strategies Encourage students to identify what they did to help themselves as readers. Ask: What strategies did you use? Can you find a place where you did some problem solving? If appropriate, comment on how the students recognized and used the question-and-answer format as they read.

ELL support

During reading Ask each student to read the text independently. Monitor the students as they read and support them where appropriate. If necessary, ask the students to stop reading and remind them to use the reading strategies you are focused on. For example, are the students reading the book as an interview? Do they recognize the purpose of the questions and answers in providing information?

Ask: What information are you getting about tide pools from Karly’s answers?

• Question and answer format.

• Labeled diagrams support the written text.

• Tide pools contain animals and plants that depend on each other and a healthy tide pool for their survival.

• People’s actions can impact on the health of tide pools.

Developing fluency Students could read the book in pairs. One student could be the interviewer and the other student could be the marine biologist. Say: Think about your role. For example, if you’re the interviewer, you could raise your voice at the end of each question.

Vocabulary building

Key concepts

Phonics Write a list of words on a chart that have the /sh/ sound in them, including the word ocean (e.g. show, station, chef, sure, push, ocean, etc). Ask: What do these words have in common? In what different ways is the /sh/ sound represented? Which is the most common way to represent the /sh/ sound? Students could locate and list words from the book with /sh/ in them, and categorize these words according to how the /sh/ sound is represented.

Exploring words Refer students to the lists of animals and plants made before reading the book. Ask students to check which words the author used, and then compare the two lists.

Writing Students could create a brochure that encourages people to visit the beach and explore tide pools. The brochure could also include information about what can be seen in tide pools, what people need to do to stay safe, and what rules should be followed to keep the tide pools clean and healthy.

Sharing and presenting Students could work in small groups and take turns talking about their brochures.

Returning to the book Provide multiple opportunities for the students to reread and interact with the book – with teacher support, with a partner, and independently. Choose activities that are appropriate for your students.

Developing fluency

Before reading

After reading

Students could read the book in small groups. They could then choose parts and act out the story as they read it.

Encourage students to focus on reading with fluency and expression. Say: How would the sea star have felt when he said that? Try to make your voice sound that way.

Getting ready to read

Talking about the book

Word work

Support the students in activating their prior knowledge.

Show the students the photographs in Looking After Tide Pools. Ask: What animals live in tide pools? What do these animals need to stay healthy?

Have the students talk about the book. Promote discussion by choosing questions that are appropriate for your students. Ask them to support their thinking by referring to the photographs and the text in the book.

Why did the sea star want to change the tide pool? How did the animals know that their tide pool was dying? (Literal) Why didn’t the little crab agree with what the animals were doing?

(Inferential) What can we learn from the experiences of the animals in this tide pool? What might this tide pool look like in ten years?

(Synthesizing) Have you ever felt like one of the animals in the book? What made you feel this way? (Critical)

Vocabulary building Write a list of words from the book (tide pool, sea star, fresh sea water, crab, seaweed, sea snail family, trash, octopus, clean, healthy). Say: Let’s tell a story using each of these words in the order that they are listed. How can we begin? Use students’ ideas to help you tell the story.

Introducing the book Give each student a copy of The Smart Little Crab and have them read the title. Refer the students to the contents page and have them read the chapter headings. Ask: What do the title and the chapter headings say about the story? What do you expect from this story? Look though the book and find a page to support your thinking.

During reading Ask each student to read the text independently. Monitor the students as they read and support them where appropriate. If necessary, remind them to use the reading strategies you are focused on. For example, do the students understand the cause and effect pattern in the story? Say: Think about why things are happening the way they are. What is the cause? What is the effect?

Reviewing reading strategies Encourage students to identify what they did to help themselves as readers. Ask: What are some of the things you did that helped you make sense of this book? Can you find a place where you did some problem solving?

ELL support • Main characters are introduced in the first chapter.

• Chapter headings clearly signal content.

• Illustrations support and extend the story.

Phonics Students could talk with a partner about words they know that contain the long /a/ sound. Say: Does the word great have the long /a/ sound in it? What letters make /a/ in this word?

Explain that this is an uncommon way of representing the /a/ sound.

Exploring words Make a two-column chart. In one column, list words and phrases that describe the tide pool when it was a good place to live (e.g. clean, healthy). In the other column, list words that describe when it was not a good place to live (e.g. dirty, unhealthy). Compare the two lists, noticing when words are opposites.

Writing Say: This story sends messages about how we can help look after the environment. What message/s did you get from this story? Discuss this with the students. They could then each write about the message/s they think the author was sending through this story.

Sharing and presenting Students could read their messages about looking after the environment to the group.

Synthesizing: Talk about the pair After students have read both Looking After Tide Pools and The Smart Little Crab, ask: What new information have you learned about tide pools? What would you expect to see in a healthy tide pool? What things do you need to remember

when exploring tide pools? Why is it important to keep our environment healthy?

Students could work further with these books by completing the Activity card.

Activity card

Blackline master Retell the story

What makes a tide pool healthy?

What to do:

Describe what is happening in each picture. Cut out the squares and staple them in the right order to make a book that retells the story of The Smart Little Crab.

1. F old a large sheet of paper in half. Write the heading Healthy tide pool on one side and Unhealthy tide pool on the other.

✂

2. D raw an empty tide pool on each side of the paper.

3. C ut out the pictures below and paste them into the correct tide pool.

4. A dd other pictures and labels to your tide pools.

Flying Start to Literacy Lesson Plans Looking After Tide Pools / The Smart Little Crab © 2010–2015 EC Licensing Pty Ltd.

Assessment Can the student describe what is happening in a picture?

Is the student able to sequence the main events in a story?

Flying Start to Literacy Lesson Plans Looking After Tide Pools / The Smart Little Crab © 2010–2015 EC Licensing Pty Ltd.

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