TITLE: Reading About The Rainforest
GRADE: First
LENGTH: 30 minutes
CONCEPT: The rainforest is a habitat where living things grow and reside.
RATIONALE: The students have heard of jungles before. Rainforests are jungles and this lesson provides them with a better understanding of those things that are inside the rainforest while giving them further practice reading. There are many words with which the students are not familiar. This gives them the chance to employ their strategies for reading.
STUDENT OBJECTIVES:
- Each student in the reading group will read a page of the Rain Forest booklet following the teacher's reading of the Rain Forest booklet to the group.
- The students in the reading group will recall a fact about the rainforest from the previous full-class activity following the small book reading with the group.
- The students in the reading group will write the rainforest fact on the last (blank) page of the Rain Forest booklet after it is modeled by the teacher. They may draw a picture to accompany the fact later.
MATERIALS: Rain Forest booklet
: White board and marker
LESSON BODY:
ANTICIPATORY SET:
- Ask the students to recognize and read the words "rain" and "forest" on the cover of the reading booklet.
- Indicate that they can recognize the books in the class library about the rainforest because they can read the words "rain" and "forest".
PROCEDURE:
- Read the Rain Forest booklet to the group. Ask the students to pay careful attention to the words and pictures as it is read to them because they will read it back to the teacher.
- Following the teacher's reading, ask the students to look through the booklet themselves first.
- Have each student read a page in the booklet aloud alone, or with another student if there are more students than pages. Remind the students to use their reading strategies to figure out words they might not recognize or have never seen.
CLOSURE:
- Ask the students to recall a fact from the previous full-class brainstorming activity about the rainforest.
- Have the group pick one rainforest face and develop a sentence about it. The teacher should write it on the white board.
- Have the students rewrite the sentence on the last (blank) page of their Rain Forest booklet. This is part of their booklet now. They may illustrate it if then have time later.
