Elements of Text Lessons (with printables)

Last week I reviewed and taught my students different elements of text. I am pretty fortunate to work for a county that provides good lesson plans for us to follow...now some of you work for the same county and may feel/think differently. I do like having them as a spring board. By having a good outline and given some ideas as to what I should be addressing/teaching it makes it a little easier to plan and teach. I usually take the plans, look through them, tweek/add/adjust, look at the plans again, compare them to last year's county plans, compare them to my plans from last year, make a worksheet, look up picture books to use, make a mimio...and DONE! I'm sure most if not all of that sounds familar.

Okay back on topic...last week my mini lessons were Elements of Text, narrowed down to four genres.

Here is the basic outline of my lessons:

Day One: Review the features of fiction and nonfiction

• Review the definition of genre
• I had spent most of last nine weeks discussing nonfiction in both reading and writing, so this was pretty quick. But the five main features we discussed for nonfiction were: facts (information, bolded/highlighted words, charts/diagrams, glossary, index)
• I read a few exerpts from different books or passages and they had to decide if they were fiction or nonfiction.
• Don't forget...especially in our county...they want the students to know that even though it could possibly happen (a trip to the ball game) it is realistic fiction!

Picture books used (due to the genre...I used mentor texts...books we had already read)

my kids can't get enough of this book!

great illustrations!

Day Two: Text features and elements of poetry

• I only spent one day on this because later in the year I do a whole unit of types of poems, writing poetry, and so on.
• We looked at a few examples of poems, both in books and online
• I then gave each student the three elements and the definitions for poetry (for interactive notes)
• I then gave them a copy of a poem and we underlined the different part of the poem

they were so excited to see a WHOLE book that was a poem

FUNNY

Day Three: Text features and elements of drama

• If you use/have the Otter Book  Anthology textbook...I had the students dust it off and open it up to the story Herbbie and Annabelle (this is a drama)
• They told me the things they noticed about the text features (not the story itself)
• We discussed the three features: character names (who is speaking and when), dialogue (conversation)...I did blow their minds a little excellerate a little when I mentioned and defined what a monologue was (it may have stuck with a few), stage directions
• I then gave each student a copy of a portion of a drama and again using the ineractive note taking idea...had them underline and circle these features.
• My media center did have a few books about dramas/plays, and I think one that actually contained reader's theater...so I used the internet and displayed a few reader's theater pieces.

Day Four: Review

• We reviewed each genre and the elements
• Made a chart in our journals
• Read/discussed different examples

Guided Reading
      I keep a tub in the front of the room with different picture books that are examples of the topic I am working on for that week. So this week I had books of poetry, drama, and a few fiction/nonfiction picture books. For Work on Writing they had to write a journal entry using one of those books. In their entry they had to identify the genre, explain how they knew this...giving and describing the elements of that text/genre.

So here is the good part...click the picture below to download the printable I am using as a worksheet/assessment on the Elements of Text. Stay tuned and tomorrow I should have a few pictures of my students notes and an interactive note bundle that goes with these lessons. ENJOY!

Okay so blogger isn't letting me download a picture, BOO...so just click the link below:
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B4-SUxXaRtQsYWE3NDYxZWQtMGY2Mi00ZWViLTlkNDYtN2U2ZDgzNzUxODkx