Teacher : Rana Chaaban
School: Woodland Heights Elementary
Lesson Plan for A Pocketful of Opossums
Date: May 7, 2010
Lesson time; 40 minutes
Oral Language Objectives:
Vocabulary: Children will demonstrate understanding for the vocabulary terms that is related to opossum and identifying the names of the body parts of the opossums.
Grammar: Children will demonstrate understanding of adjectives by describe opossums
:
Reading
Children will activate prior knowledge to connect to a text.
With a model, children will respond orally to the inquiry questions.
Phonics: Students will demonstrate knowledge of vowels by identifying the short “o” and “u” sounds, then the long vowel –team “ou” . Students will identify words with short and long vowels.
Phonemic awarness: Childeren will demonstrate awarness of separate phonemes by isolating sounds.
Reading and Oral Language
Build Background
Display the cover of A Pocket of Opossums . Ask children , have you ever seen an opossums? What does an opossum look like? Then point to the picture on the cover. This is an opossum. . Point to the title and read it aloud. Explain that this is a nonfiction book about opossums and how they grow. Then I will ask students, tell about a book or story you have read last week? Was fiction or non-fiction?
Preview and predict I preview the book by discussing the title page and the pictures on each page. Then I ask children tp predict what the book will be about . We take turns with predicting what is the book about.
Model Comprehension and Vocabulary Strategy
Ask questions, I wonder what scaly tail means. How could I find out? Then I will have the vocabulary index cards have the words pouch, snout nose, hairless ,scaly tail . I ask students, Have you ever heard these words? Can you guess? What each word means? Have you seen these words before? After I get the feedback I will ask students to open their books to page 2 of A Pocket of Opossums, then I say this is a picture of an opossum lets name the body parts of the opossum, a snout nose is a long pointy nose lets put the card on the snout nose. Now lets find the scaly tail, I will point to the scaly tail and explain the difference between fur and scale and I will tell students that an opossum uses the scaly tail to hang from a branch. Then will move to the hairless word which part do you see hairless? Point to it. After the students point or guess I explain the suffix less means without so lets look at the hairless ear . Last the word pouch ,can you tell me what’s a pouch? Why opossum use a pouch? Then I will point to the pouch and explain it’s an extra skin pocket to hold babies.
After the students learned the meaning and pointed to each word at the opossum picture. Now we will practice reading the words .Last I will give them a picture of an opossum to lable the body parts.
Grammar: Adjectives
I will ask the students , Do you know what’s the word adjectives means ?Have you heard this word in your classroom? What kind of words are adjectives? Then I will explain what is an adjective then I will be modeling a bubble map describing classroom. Last I will give a student a blank copy of bubble map to describe an opossum.
Visuals for the lesson:
Index vocabulary card
Big book
Life cycle of the opossum
Picture of the opossum
Bubble map