Lesson Topic: Newspaper Sharing Using Science Journals

Standards:
RST 6-8.1 Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of science and technical texts.
WHST 6-8.2 Write informative/explanatory texts to examine a topic and convey ideas, concepts,
and information through the selection, organization, and analysis of relevant content.

Learning Outcome:
-Students will find information and be exposed to new vocabulary.
-Students will have the opportunity to read for information and meaning.

Instructional Design/Delivery
Orientation (e.g. engagement, teacher demonstration)
The teacher will introduce the lesson by showing a recent science article related to
science that may be of interest to the class
Presentation (e.g. explicit instruction, modeling, pacing)
The class will discuss the article and may choose to set it in a convenient place for
students to look at later.
Structured Practice (e.g. questioning feedback, corrections, peer-mediated instruction)
The teacher will lead a class discussion on why it is important to know what is happening in
our world.
Briefly preview the different sections of the science magazine and the purposes for each.
Pass science magazines journals to each student with instructions to find an article that
the rest of the class may be interested in.
Allow 15 to 20 minutes for the students to do this. They may want to show and discuss
material with their neighbor.
Independent Practice (e.g. opportunities for students to show their level of mastery)
Three learning centers will be set up for students to complete tasks in relation to their
article.
1) Vocabulary learning center- Students will bring their cut out article and highlight the
words that they do not know. They will take these highlighted words and use leftover
newspaper to cut out the letters to spell their three words. They will predict what they
think the word is from the context of the sentence. When finished, they can use the
computer already set to childrens dictionary website where they enter their vocabulary
word and write down the correct definition.
2) Summarization learning center- Students will bring their article and
underline the key moments. These key moments will then use their underline information
and form it into a paragraph; that has a beginning, middle, and end.
3) Illustration learning center- Students will create an illustration to go along with their summary.
The picture should reflect the information they read about in their article.

Assessment
Entry Level for Instructional Planning:
I will determine the skill level of students in this content by asking them about the article
I read to them and why they think it was relevant for it to be published in science journal.
Monitoring Students Progress:
Students are assessed by teacher observation of their participation in sharing their article with a
partner. Teacher will also be monitoring each of learning centers by walking around to
each of them and looking at the work the students are producing.
Post-Test or Summative:
Students final product will consist of a summary, a picture, vocabulary words from
article, and their article highlighted and underlined. Summary should include important
events, picture should tell about the article, vocabulary words should have a hypothesis
and a appropriate definition, and article should have highlighted words and underlined
sentences.

Universal Access
Struggling Readers
These students can be given an article that uses day to day terminology. The reading
should be as close to their reading ability/level as possible. The newspaper is written at
the academic level of an eighth grader. Finding an article with simple sentences and with
a few complicated vocabulary words should allow them to be successful on this
assignment.
Students with special needs
The article they choose should be read to them if they are incapable of doing so
themselves. When a word they do not know comes across, they can raise their hand and
the teacher can assist them in figuring out the meaning of the word. The picture they
can draw out or act out. The summary can be orally expressed to the teacher and
recorded by the teacher.
Advance Learners
These students will be asked in addition to the summary to take on a role of someone
mentioned in the article and write about the same situation from that particular persons
perspective.
English Learners/Speakers of Non-Standard English
These students will be guided to pick an article that relates to something of their culture,
such as sports, food or events. They will be able to interact with the text if they have
some background knowledge on the subject. Since there may be a lot of words
highlighted on their article they are to pick their top five and these top five should be
ones that they are positive they are going to see again. (no one time learning words).
They summarizes can include three actual sentences of the article (one from the
bringing, one form the middle, and one from the end). In the middle of these sentences
they can put bullet points that consist of words or phrases that describe what happens in
between the sentences written down.

Instructional Materials:
-current edition of newspaper
-scissors
-crayons
-glue
-paper
-access to computer and online childrens dictionary