Information Writing- Day 4

Grade: 5 Subject: English Language Arts Unit: Information Writing Lesson Duration: 55 mins

OUTCOMES FROM ALBERTA PROGRAM OF STUDIES

General Learning Outcomes: (for the unit)

GLO 3- Students will listen, speak, read, write, view and represent to manage ideas and information

GLO 2- Students will listen, speak, read, write, view and represent to comprehend and respond personally
and critically to oral, print and other media texts

Specific Learning Outcomes: (for this lesson)

2.1.4 (Use strategies and cues) Students will use textural cues to identify structural elements of texts to
access and comprehend ideas and information

3.3.1 (Organize, Record and Evaluate) Students will organize ideas to emphasize key points for the
audience

3.1.1 (Plan and Focus) Students will show focused attention by summarizing important ideas in media
texts and express opinions about them

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Students will:

1. Become familiar with different methods they can use to organize their information

2. Practice using these methods and discover which methods will work best for their topic

3. Use what they have learned over the past week to develop their Information Book

ASSESSMENTS

Materials and Equipment: Key Questions:

*Chart paper Essential Question (for unit): How might Information

Writing help us explore different topics of interest?
*loose-leaf paper
Other questions to consider:
*Student Information Book Journals
-How can we aim to be successful writers?
*Power point presentation
-How can we aim to be successful readers?

-What are some skills we need to organize information?

-How can we clearly communicate our ideas in a way

that can be easily understood by other people?

Written/Performance Assessments:
Students will spend time throughout the lesson practicing different methods of organization. They will
choose the one that works best for them and use it to organize information for their Information Book

LEARNING RESOURCES CONSULTED

Resource #1: Alberta Program of Studies- English Language Arts

Resource #2: Lucy Calkins, “The Art of Information Writing”

Introduction (5 mins):

Hook/Attention Grabber:

-Get students to pick up their work from last class from the green bin

-See if any students did any research on their topic last night and if they want to share what they found

-Review what was learned last class: How to properly structure a Table of Contents

-Go over agenda for the lesson (poster on power point): Explain that today we are going to wrap up our
lessons on strategies that help organize our information and then next week, we will start doing some
drafting of our Information Book

-Connection Activity: Read the following story and connect it to today’s lesson of coming up with new
structures to organize your ideas:

“Have you ever been to the beach and played in the sand? One time I was walking across the beach and I
saw some kids playing in the sand. I expected that they’d have buckets that they fill and dump, fill and
dump, and I expected they’d use those buckets to make sand castles. What I actually noticed was very
different! There were three kids, all playing in the same spot on the beach, each doing something
completely different. And none of them were making sandcastles. One of the boys packed sand into a
square mold and then made them into bricks and stacked them into a sand brick wall. One of the girls
created these hills and valleys with the sand and she was driving her toy car across it. The third kid was
creating a sand-person, just like you would do when making a snow angel. Although they were all using
the same material, each child was structuring the material in an absolutely unique way.”

-Explain that so far, students have been playing in the sand with their topics, but maybe now they want to
start building new structures that they have never thought of before.

Expectations for Learning and Behaviour:

-I expect that students will be engaged throughout the lesson and follow instructions

-Students will participate and respond to each other’s ideas

-Students will find ways to connect their own ideas and experiences to those mentioned in discussion

Transition to Body:
-Explain that we will be moving away from just organizing our ideas with our hands and figures and more
towards using different strategies that will be even more helpful to create our Information books

Body (30 mins):

Learning Activity #1 (15 mins): Discuss different ways we can organize our information

-SAY: “Today I want to teach you that writers try different organizational structures on for size. They
explore a few different structures, noting how they affect the way we think about a topic”

-Have students watch demonstration then try it out for themselves

 Boxes and Bullets

 Cause and Effect/ Problem and Solution (If I…When I…)
 Pros and Cons (t-chart)
 Similarities vs. Differences (Taking care of dog vs. taking care of cat)

Assessments/Differentiation:

-I will walk around and observe to make sure students are on task and help those students who may have
a difficult time coming up with ideas

-I expect that students are listening and writing down different ways that these strategies fit in with their
topics

Transition:

-Reiterate how these are different strategies that help us organize our ideas. Have students choose one or
two strategies that they liked best

Learning Activity #2 (15 mins): Work on Information Books

-Have students choose one or two of their favourite organization strategies that they just used, and make
a good copy of it one a new piece of paper

-Students can revise their table of contents, write long about an unexplored aspect of their topic, or pick
up where they last left off on their topic

-Independent work period

Assessments/Differentiation:

-Walk around and help students with their work

-Make sure students are on track with their Information Books

Transition:

-Have students flip pages over so that I know when they are done.

Closure (5 mins):
-Hand out post-it notes- Exit Slip: “What is your favourite organization strategy?” OR “What is another
organization strategy that you can think of?”

-Have students submit these on their way out for lunch

Transition To Next Lesson:

-Remind students that we will start making rough drafts of our Information Books next week