Sarah Smith

11/03/15

Teaching Reading: Mini Lesson Format (Calkins, 2001)

Targeted Literacy Strategy or Skill: Visualizing in Nonfiction Text: Making Comparisons
Grade level: Second Grade
Objective: The student will be able to use visualization to better understand the dimensions of size, space,
and time.
Common Core State Standard/ PASS Standard: RI.2.7 Explain how specific images (e.g., a diagram
showing how a machine works) contribute to and clarify a text.
Prior knowledge: (What students already know)
The students know the size, space, and time of everyday objects and ideas. For example they know how
big a banana is, how long their favorite TV show is, how long it takes for Christmas to come around every
year, how big a loaf of bread is, etc.
Observations/Rationale: (Before Lesson) What did you notice in your students work that let you
know this lesson was necessary? (This will be an approximation this semester.)
The students need to understand the power of comparisons and why authors use them.

Materials Needed:
Lesson from (Name your source including page number): Strategies That Work: Teaching
Comprehension for understanding and Engagement by Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis (page 135)
Visualizing In Nonfiction Text: Making Comparisons
Mentor Text: Seahorses by Jennifer Keats Curtis and illustrated by Chad Wallace
Materials: Reading notebooks and makers or colored pencils.
Student Groups (whole/small group/partners): The class will start as a whole group for the reading of the
book, and then the students will work individually to create their own comparison pictures.
Mini Lesson Format:
Connect (AKA~ Anticipatory Set, Engagement/Pre-reading): Today we will be learning how to
visualize in our minds comparisons of things that we already know, our background knowledge,
with the new ideas that we are reading about. This will let us have a better understanding of our
text. Today I am going to read you guys the book Seahorses by Jennifer Keats Curtis and
illustrated by Chad Wallace

Teach (Model/Explain): Read the book Seahorses by Jennifer Keats Curtis and emphasizing the

author use comparisons on the first and third pages of the book. So the author compares the baby
seahorses to performing gymnasts. I am not picturing the flips and turns that the gymnasts in the
Olympics perform. Read till the third page. Now I would like for you to turn and look at your
neighbor. I want you take a look at their eyelashes. Look how small they are! Thats about the size
of a baby seahorse! How crazy is that? Continue to read the rest of the book and tell the students
to be on the lookout for other comparisons in the book. Then show the students the comparison
drawing I have made.

Active Engagement (AKA~ Check for Understanding: students try it out, teacher observes):
Assign each table group a comparison made by the author. Have each of the students draw their
assigned comparison pictures in their reading notebooks. Allow the students to have access to the
book at this time. After the students have had some time to draw have one person from each table
share their comparison picture.

Link (AKA~ Closing the Lesson [with accountability for the skill/process])
Authors use comparison by using something we know to better understand something we might
not know. So I would like for you guys to be on the lookout for comparisons in our readings and
how it better helps you understand the information. I would also like for your guys to use
comparisons when we are writing our information papers next week. This will really help the
reader of your papers understand the information better.