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Teaching Literacy Strategies for Content Area Reading Lesson Plan

Whitney L. Williams

College of Education, Health, and Human Services, Longwood University

READ 550: Literacy and Learning in the Content Classroom

Dr. A. Blanchette

April 08, 2022

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Teaching Literacy Strategies for Content Area Reading Lesson Plan

Your Name: Whitney Williams Grade Level: 4th

Content Area: Virginia Studies Theme/Topic: Virginia in the 20th

Century/Civil Rights Movement
**Depending on the class period, this lesson could be completed in one sitting or over a span of multiple
class periods.

Bibliographic Entry for Text Used in this Lesson

Cricket Media. (2021, February 22). A movement’s soul: The music of the civil rights movement. Cricket
Media via Newsela (Ed. Newsela Staff, Version 660L). Retrieved from
https://newsela.com/read/ela-soul-of-a-movement/id/2001018566/
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Objective(s)
After this lesson, the learner will be able to develop comprehension skills by using a concept map to write
a summary that depicts the importance of music during the Civil Rights Movement. The learner will be
able use the concept map and written summary to create an artistic summary by means of visualizing.

Techniques Selected

Name of Reference for Technique (book & page # or website)

Technique

Before Think-Pair-Share https://www.readingrockets.org/strategies/think-pair-share

During Concept Map https://www.readingrockets.org/strategies/concept_maps

After Summarizing https://www.readingrockets.org/strategies/summarizing

THROUGH-OUT Visualizing https://www.readingrockets.org/content/pdfs/summarizing

_ArtSummary.pdf

Before Reading: Think-Pair-Share

Purpose
Using the Think-Pair-Share strategy before reading allows students to use their schema and activate
prior knowledge about the Civil Rights Movement to share with a partner and/or small group their
thoughts. This strategy also promotes active participation among students and builds on communication
skills.

Procedure
1. Tell students they will have one minute* to think about what they have learned so far about
Virginia in the 20th century, and more specifically, the Civil Rights Movement. Explain to students
they should not blurt out answers and/or raise their hands during this time because it is just for
thinking.
a. Depending on the group and/or student needs, students can record their thoughts on the
Think-Pair-Share Recording sheet to use for this strategy and/or for accountability.
2. At the conclusion of one minute*, have students pair up and share their thoughts with one
another.
3. If time permits, repair students and have them share their own thoughts again and/or the thoughts
of their first partner.
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4. Ask for volunteers to share with the class what they have learned about the Civil Rights
Movement from class or from sharing with a partner.
5. Ask students to share what image(s) they visualize, or see, when they think of the Civil Rights
Movement in our country.
6. Tell students to keep in mind what they have already learned and know about the Civil Rights
Movement as they read today’s text selection.
*Time can be adjusted as appropriate/needed.

During Reading: Concept Map

Purpose
Utilizing a concept map during reading will help the learner make sense of new information learned in an
organized manner. The concept map helps the reader comprehend portions of the information at a time
to gain a comprehensive understanding of the entire text.

Procedure
1. Show the concept map to students and explain that this graphic organizer will be used throughout
reading the text to help students gain meaning from the text.
2. Discuss as a group what should be put in the middle circle and why. (Ways music was used
during the Civil Rights Movement; It is the overarching idea of the article that we get from the title)
3. Discuss as a group what should go in each of the boxes based on the subheadings in the article.
(Introduction; Songs Unite People; Songs during the March on Washington; Children Singing to
Protest)
4. After each section of the article, have students stop reading and write down a few key pieces of
information from that section that supports the section’s subheading.
5. Have students complete a Think-Pair-Share of what they visualize, or see, after reading each
section.

After Reading: Summarizing

Purpose
Summarizing helps support students after they have read because it helps students to share only the
most pertinent information from the text. Using summarizing builds on one’s memory and aids students
in distinguishing between the important and not-as-important details. Students have to gain an overall
understanding of the text to be able to provide a true summary of the text.

Procedure
1. Read through the “Sum It Up” directions with students.
2. Give each student the “Sum It Up” sheet. Ask students to think about the main idea of the text,
as well as how each section of the text supports the main idea.
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3. Prompt students to remember what was discussed during the Think-Pair-Share time, what was
“seen” or visualized while reading, and what was included in the Concept Map that was
completed when reading the article. Let students know they can refer back to these techniques
to help them with the summarization of the text. Additionally, ask students if there is any
information included in the concept map that can be excluded from the summary without taking
away from the main idea of the text.
4. Students should refer back to the concept map and/or the text when including key ideas/words
while summarizing the article.
5. Remind students to give consideration to capitalization and punctuation when writing the
summary.
6. As an extension and/or if time permits, have a partner read aloud the other person’s summary so
that he/she can hear their own summary and make edits if needed.
7. To further enhance students’ summaries, have students create an Artistic Summary to share with
classmates. This can be completed by hand or digitally. The artistic summary allows students
another means of comprehending the information read and making connections with their
thoughts to summarize the information through means of a picture and orally with others. Having
discussed what was “seen” or visualized throughout the article should create a segway to this
portion of the lesson.

Additional Sections

Other Materials Needed

● All materials needed are hyperlinked throughout the lesson plan.

Adaptations

● To best meet the needs of all students’ reading level, variations of the text based on Lexile level
can be used. While this lesson plan is based on the 660L article, it is
also available at the 570L, 800L, 960L, and MAX Lexile levels.
● For those ELL students, the following supports may be appropriate for
this lesson:
○ Entire lesson: Make cognates known of key vocabulary from the
article.
○ Think-Pair-Share: Provide sentence frames and key vocabulary
for sharing.
○ Concept Map: Prefill the graphic organizer with the key headings
for each section and have vocabulary readily available.
■ Example:
○ Summarizing: Have sentence frames and vocabulary list
available for writing the summary.
○ All Written Portions: Having a scribe for the ELL may be appropriate, depending on the
level of student.
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Assessment of Objective(s)
The assessment of the objective(s) shall include the completed concept map, summary statement, and
the artistic summary. Being able to produce these work samples from the lesson and being scored using
the rubric will demonstrate the student(s) competency, or lack-there-of, of the specified comprehension
techniques.

Evaluation
Student performance will be evaluated using a rubric. A student will have accomplished each objective
of the lesson if having received a score of 3 or 4 in each subcategory.

COMPREHENSION TECHNIQUES RUBRIC

4= 3= 2= 1=
Advanced or Proficient; Working on it, Reteaching is
Value above and competent in but not quite necessary
beyond using the there YET
technique

4 3 2 1
All four components All four components All four components Less than four
are complete with are complete with are complete but components are
most important and accurate information lacking accurate complete and/or are
Concept Map
accurate information information; OR 2-3 lacking accurate
components are information
complete with or
without accurate
information

4 3 2 1
A complete summary A complete summary A summary of a A summary is written
Summarizing of the text is written of the text is written portion of the text is that lacks the
using adequate and using accurate written and/or is overarching idea of
accurate information information from the hinting at the main gist the text; no summary
from the text text of the text is developed

4 3 2 1
A visual A visual A visual A visual
representation from representation from representation from representation from
the text is shown and the text is shown and the text is shown and the text is shown and
Visualizing
the rationale for the the rationale for the the rationale for the no rationale for the
picture is explained in picture is provided picture is lacking in picture is provided; no
detail explanation visual representation
is provided
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Documentation of Student Performance

An example of how student performance could be documented for this lesson (and other comprehension
techniques lessons) is below.

Technique Think-Pair-Share Concept Map Summarizing Visualizing

4=Advanced or above 4=Advanced or above 4=Advanced or above
→ (Observational notes)
✔ Participated
and beyond and beyond and beyond
3=Proficient; competent 3=Proficient; competent 3=Proficient; competent
∂ Partial participation
➖
in using the technique in using the technique in using the technique
No participation 2=Working on it, but not 2=Working on it, but not 2=Working on it, but not
Date quite there YET quite there YET quite there YET
↘ 1=Reteaching is
necessary
1=Reteaching is
necessary
1=Reteaching is
necessary

Student Name 4/08 4/08 4/09 4/10

Student A ✔ 3 3 4
Student B ✔ 4 4 4
Student C ∂ 2 1 2
Student D ✔ 3 2 3