3.4 Take a PEEK!
| Site: | Cowichan Valley School District - Moodle |
| Course: | ELA5, CSS, Sferrazza |
| Book: | 3.4 Take a PEEK! |
| Printed by: | Guest user |
| Date: | Saturday, 23 November 2024, 7:57 AM |
Learning Target
By the end of the lesson, you should be able to say YES to the following questions.
- Can I use strategies for determining importance and finding the main ideas?
Introduction
I'm sure you may have noticed that many nonfiction books have a LOT of information. Some of the information may be important for what you want to find out; some of it may be interesting details that have been added.
Good readers are learning to sort out information and figure out what is really important. They can determine importance. There are different ways to try to figure out and locate the most important parts of nonfiction texts.
To get started, let's play a little game to get our minds thinking about determining importance. Imagine that you and your family have an opportunity to live in a far away country for the next five years; however, you are only allowed to choose 15 items (not including clothes) from your home to take with you. On a piece of scrap paper, list items you will take. Think carefully - you need to live without all of your other items the next five years.
When you have your list of 15 items, record them in the Introduction activity in your Learning guide.
Change of Plans
Oh no! Now that you have your list figured out, the company that is taking your family on this journey has changed the rules. Now you are only allowed to take ten items. You need to cut out five of your items. How will you decide?
Choose five items to cut from your list and make sure you can justify why they may not be as important as the other items.
Go to your Learning Guide. Neatly cross out each of the five items. Then explain why you chose each one as "less important" under Change of Plans.
Not Again!
You've agonized over your list. You have it down to ten items. But the offer has changed again?!?! You have to remove four more items in order to be considered for this amazing journey.
You still think you have a chance. What four items will you remove now? In your Learning Guide, under the heading Not Again!, record your list of six items - your final list.
You've Been Chosen
Great job! You've been chosen for this experience! You worked hard at determining importance - of finding the main items that were most important to you. But you were also using an important thinking strategy that active readers use:
determining importance.
You did it by thinking and by choosing what you felt was most important for your time away. If you removed all the unimportant items, carefully chose, and can justify your choices, you were successful.
This is something to keep in mind when you are reading - finding the main idea is about thinking through the text to figure out what you want to take away from it. It is about deciding what information you think should be left behind and what information should be "brought on the journey".
Introducing a New Strategy
In this lesson, you will learn a strategy that can help you to determine importance:
Take a PEEK!
Sometimes when you look at a page from a nonfiction book, there is so much information all over the page that it is hard to know where to start! When you are reading and trying to figure out what information is important, you can use the PEEK strategy. This can help, before starting to read everything, to "take a PEEK" at what is there so you can figure out, before you start to read, what things might be important. It is a great way to prepare for reading the page.
Let's take a peek!
Take a PEEK!
What is this strategy and what does each letter stand for?
P - Pictures
Before reading the page, look at all the pictures (and captions, if they have them). Looking at the pictures helps to get your brain focused on what the page is about and things that might be important.
E - Each Heading
We know that information is sometimes organized into sections. Reading the titles and headings on the page helps get the brain focused on the information and even hints at what the "main ideas" are.
E - Ending
Sometimes at the end of an article, book, or chapter, there is an "ending" or concluding paragraph that retells important facts or ideas. Reading the ending of a nonfiction text first can help to focus the brain on what is important when reading the text from start to finish.
K - Know
What do you already know about this text? Remember, you haven't read it all yet, but sometimes if you think about what know from your PEEK, then it helps you to better understand what is important when you read the "whole thing".
Now What?
The "Take a PEEK!" strategy is helpful for trying to determine what is important in a piece of informational text. It's also a way of helping you to get your mind ready for understanding what you will read. If you can figure out what a piece is about before you even start to read it, then it makes the reading that much easier. And often, after you have read the main body of the text, you may discover that you have already found the most important information that you need to know, because you know how to "Take a PEEK"!
Try It!
Download the article, Inspiring Youth Can Be Seen and Heard at TedXKids@BC. In your Learning Guide, use PEEK to help you to determine the main ideas of the article. After you've used PEEK, you can read the article in full and answer a couple of questions.
Go to your Learning Guide and complete "Take a PEEK.