Bare Bones Lesson

Rationale
We will be teaching this lesson because it incorporates the students writing portion of the day,
along with Halloween, because the lesson will be taught on October 29th.
Standards
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.4.2
Determine the main idea of a text and explain how it is supported by key details; summarize the
text.
Objectives
Students will be able to determine the main idea of the non fiction text.
Students will explain how the main idea is supported by key details.
Procedure
We will gather the students to the carpet, and have them bring their article and a pencil.
This lesson will all be based off of the article Bare Bones. We will be using the document
camera to display the article as we read it aloud to the students. The students can follow along
in their personal article, circling and highlight the important parts as they follow along.
After were done reading the article, we will have the students think, pair, share, in order
to come up with the three main ideas of this article; how your skeleton supports your body, how
your skeleton protects your body, and how your skeleton moves your body. They will have a
minute or two we will call the group back to a discussion and have them talk to us about what
they think the three main ideas of the article are. We will lead this discussion, prompting when
needed, to ensure they are understanding the article. Along with this, we will be working with the
students to help them come up with the supporting detail for the first main idea, so that they are
prepared enough to come up with the supporting detail for the second and third main idea on
their own. The details that we discuss as a group will be needed to complete the follow up
activity.
After the discussion, the students will pair up to construct a skeleton on the main idea
and supporting details of the non fiction article. The students will use index cards to make the
body of the skeleton. The three index cards will have main ideas as headings; how the skeleton
supports us, how the skeleton protects us, and how the skeleton moves our body? The students
will go back to their seats and find detail to support each of the main ideas, and write that on the
corresponding index card. When they complete this task they will be able to use the index cards
as the body of the skeleton. They can glue the index cards onto black construction paper. The
students can then use their own creativity to finish the rest of the skeleton; heads, arms, legs,
etc with white crayon or chalk.
Assessment
The students will be assessed in a few different ways. First, they will be assessed through
teacher observation. We will be walking around throughout the whole lesson observing the
students as they work collaboratively on their lesson. Not only that we will be able to observe
them as they talk to one another and us about what they got out of the article. As the students
come up with the main ideas of the article, this will give the teachers a better understanding if
the students reached the objective. Lastly, we will collect the activity and look them over to
ensure that they did reach the objective for the day.