Blended Learning Lesson Plan

Lesson Title: Making Sense of Books We Read

Objectives:
Students will be able to demonstrate understanding of the main points of a text.
Students will be able to relate key ideas to a reasonable conclusion before finishing a book.
State Standards:
Standard 5: Determine meaning and develop logical interpretations by making predictions,
inferring, drawing conclusions, analyzing, synthesizing, providing evidence, and investigating
multiple interpretations.
5.1 Ask and answer who, what, when, where, why, and how questions to demonstrate
understanding of a text; use key details to make inferences and draw conclusions in texts
heard or read.
Context:
This is a first grade English Language Arts lesson that focuses on the basics of comprehending a
text. I am teaching this lesson because it is important for the students to not only be able to
decipher words in a text, but to understand what is happening within the text too. Before this
standard, the students learned how to read with accuracy and fluency to support comprehension.
This means that the students will be coming into this lesson with the ability to read a text at an
appropriate rate and use context clues to figure out meanings to unknown words. This is
important knowledge to bring into this lesson because if the student cannot read fluently and
accurately, they will struggle to comprehend what the text is about. After this lesson, the students
will learn how to summarize key details to support analysis. To prepare the students for this, I
will be teaching them the basis of comprehension. I will be teaching the students how to assess
simple questions about a text and how to use the answers to those questions to draw conclusions.
This way, after the lesson students can further their comprehension by thoroughly analyzing the
key ideas.
Data:
The students will be split into 3 groups. These groups will consist of a high, middle, and low
group. These groups will be based on a formative assessment that the students completed during
class the day before. The formative assessment focused on the understanding of Standard 4:
reading with sufficient accuracy and fluency to support comprehension. This assessment
involved me going around and asking each student to read me 3 lines from a selected text. I
created the groups based on each student's fluency and accuracy. After this lesson, the students
will independently complete a worksheet that assesses what they learned.
Materials:
Part of lesson Material used Link
Introduction Smart Board, Youtube, white https://youtu.be/0Bz4-
board, whiteboard markers 1YKI1M

Teacher Directed Student iPads, RoomRecess https://

website www.roomrecess.com/
Stories/
HowFlySavedTheRiver.html

Collaborative Student iPads, RoomRecess https://

website, graphic organizer
worksheet, pencil
www.roomrecess.com/
Stories/OneBadMorning.html
Link to worksheet:
https://www.edrawsoft.com/
templates/pdf/story-elements-
graphic-organizer.pdf

Independent Digital Student iPads, IXL Learning https://www.ixl.com/ela/

website grade-1/what-will-happen-
next

https://www.ixl.com/ela/
grade-1/what-am-i

Closure Worksheet, pencil Link to worksheet:

https://
www.liveworksheets.com/
worksheets/en/Reading/
Reading_Comprehension/
Reading_Comprehension_zj2
03398dk

Procedures:
Introduction (15 minutes):
At 9 a.m., during our English Language Arts time, this lesson will begin. I will ask the students
to come to the carpet in front of the Smart Board and to sit in their assigned block. I will call the
students to the carpet by tables so not everyone is walking there at once. To begin this lesson, I
will explain the importance of comprehending a story. I will introduce comprehension by saying
it is when you read a story and understand what happened during it. I will say that
comprehension is the most important part about reading a story, and without it you will not
understand what is going on. In order to comprehend, or understand, a story, you need to be able
to remember what is going on in the text as you read. To know if you are comprehending stories
properly, you can ask yourself questions after finishing a story. You can ask yourself who the
story was about, when are where did the story take place, what happened in the story, how did
the story end, and why did the events in the story happen. If you are able to answer these
important questions after reading something, then congratulations, you are on the path to
comprehension! After explaining the basics to the students, I will inform them that I am going to
show them a fun video that will help them remember these questions. I will play this video on
the Smart Board. The video is titled “6 Questions | Fun Reading & Writing Comprehension
Strategy For Kids” and is approximately 3 minutes long. After playing the video, I will solidify
the information learned by asking who could tell me 1 of the 6 questions we are supposed to
answer after reading a story. I will choose students based on them raising their hands quietly.
After that, I will explain to the students that they will be split into 3 groups during todays lesson.
I will tell them that the groups will be rotating from being with me (teacher), working in a group,
and working independently. I will then direct their attention to the board where I have written the
names of everyone under their assigned group. I will thoroughly explain what the students will
be doing at each station and inform the groups where they will be starting.

Teacher Directed (20 minutes):

In this portion of the lesson, I will begin by explaining to the students that we will be reading a
story and answering questions about it. I will direct the students to the RoomRecess website
where they will find the story to follow along. I will read the story, “How Fly Saved the River”
out loud to the group while they follow along on their iPad. After reading the line “the animals
grew worried,” I will stop reading and ask the group what they think is going to happen next. I
will scaffold them by asking who is in the story so far and what are they doing. I will encourage
the students to work together. The students should be able to figure out that the animals are going
to get rid of Moose. We will then go over which details led them to making that inference. I will
continue reading the story and do this again after reading, “All the animals laughed at Fly. How
was such a tiny creature going to help?” I will ask the students what Fly is feeling and what they
think he is going to do next. We look for details that led to those inferences. I will continue
reading and do this once more right before the end of the story and ask the students how they
think the story will end. I will finish reading the book. Once we have discussed making
inferences and drawing conclusions, I will ask the students the 6 questions for comprehension
that we went over in the introduction. The students should be able to help each other and answer
all 6.

Collaborative (20 minutes):

In this portion of the lesson, the students will work with their groups to complete a
comprehension worksheet on a story they read together. Students will use their iPads to access
another online story through RoomRecess titled “One Bad Morning”. Students in the group will
take turns reading each line from the story. Once they have finished reading, they will have a
worksheet to complete together. They will only have one worksheet to complete per group to
promote working as a team. The worksheet is a graphic organizer that asks the students to list the
characters in the story, describe the setting, identify the problem, identify the solution, and write
down a general theme. The worksheet is seen below. Once the students have completed the
worksheet they are to put it on my desk so I can monitor their progress.

Independent Digital (20 minutes):

During this portion of the lesson, students will use their devices to complete 2 game-based
comprehension activities. These games are located on the IXL Learning website under ELA
grade 1. The first activity is to be done for 10 minutes and the second activity is to be done for 10
minutes. The first game is called “What will happen next?” which consists of an image and the
student has to choose another image that is going to happen after the first image. This promotes
students to make inferences and draw conclusions. The second game is called “What am I?”
which consists of a few short phrases and asks students to pick what is being described in the
phrases. This game promotes comprehension by making the student analyze what they are
reading.

Closure (20 minutes):

At the end of our lesson, I will have the students go back to their assigned seats and take out a
pencil. I will ask if they have any questions or if anyone is confused about what we learned
today. If there are any questions, I will answer them as thoroughly as possible. If no one is
confused, I will pass out a worksheet that includes a very short story with a few accompanying
comprehension questions. The students will be asked to complete this worksheet independently.
It should take them anywhere from 7-12 minutes to complete. After they complete the
worksheet, I will collect them and use them as formative data. The worksheet can be seen below.
Rationale:
6 Questions YouTube Video:
I chose this piece of multimedia because it does a great job of solidifying the information I had
already told the students. Learning something more than once increases the likelihood for
memorization, so I picked this video. This video directly correlates with my student learning and
standards objectives by going over the “ask and answer who, what, when, where, why, and how
questions to demonstrate understanding of a text” part of the standard. It is definitely a high-
quality video because it was created by Jack Hartmann, who is very popular for creating
educational videos for kids. Using the LORI Dimensions, the video rates in the 2’s. The content
is free of error, aligns with our learning goals, is motivating, is presented in a catchy and fun
manner, and is made up of meaningful content. This YouTube video provides a fun, upbeat song
to remember the 6 questions of comprehension, which can facilitate learning for children who
are easily distracted.

RoomRecess:
I chose this piece of multimedia because it provides online short stories for respective grades.
This piece of multimedia allows each student to have the text in front of them from their device
rather than me reading a hardcover book where they can’t directly follow along. It supports my
standards and objectives by facilitating the information in them. Without the texts, the students
would not be able to practice comprehension, therefore not following the standards and
objectives. I know these texts are high quality because I personally read both stories the students
will be reading and they are both good comprehension stories. Using the LORI dimensions, this
website scores mostly in the 2’s. I especially like how the words are interactive, so if a student
taps on a word, it will tell the student its definition. RoomRecess also has audio versions for all
of their books to differentiate instruction in case a visually impaired/blind student would like to
hear the story.

IXL Learning:
I chose this piece of multimedia because I saw that it provided a variety of game-based activities
that align with my goals and objectives. The first game I am having the students play aligns with
the making inferences and drawing conclusions part of the standard by having students choose
what they think is going to happen next based on a picture. The second game I am having the
students play aligns with the who, what, when, where, why, and how questions to demonstrate
understanding of a text part of the standard by having students use the informational phrases to
decide what is talking to them. I know it is high-quality because I have heard other teachers talk
about how great the website is. It gives tons of feedback to the learner and tracks how many
questions they answered, their time, and their score. It scores high in most of the LORI
dimensions, but I think its interaction usability could use a little improvement. It is slightly
confusing making your way through the website. This multimedia differentiates instruction for
all learners by giving a fun alternative to learning rather than just lecture material. Students who
get distracted easily or have trouble paying attention will benefit from these games.