Ready-to-teach lesson
Whole-Book Plan
Meet the Meerkat - Grade K - Short lesson
TIME
OBJECTIVE
18 minutes Read the whole book and work out what it is for and how it is put together.
Essential question: This is not a story. So what is it?
Materials
Text to mark
PRODUCT
Rows for each question the book asks, in order, with what the meerkat answered
- • The book
- • Passage 1 - a meerkat's face filling the page against clouds
- One chart started on the board
- Passage 6 - a bare tree with meerkats on the sand behind it
- Prepared passages: Passage 1, Passage 6, Passage 10
Lesson sequence
1 Before reading - 3 min
- Passage 10 - a wide desert view with a cloud bank and a flat-topped tree
- Focus:
- Questions of the class's own, before the book's
- Teacher direction:
- Ask what the class would like to find out about meerkats.
- Prepared text:
- Passage 1, Passage 6, Passage 10 2 Read it through - 7 min
- Focus:
- A book with no story in it
- Teacher model:
- Read the whole book, questions and answers.
- Prepared text:
- Passage 1 3 The chart - 8 min
- Teacher direction:
- Fill in each question and what the meerkat answered.
- Expected answer:
- Eagles and jackals, and taking turns to watch - and at the end, that meerkats care for the sick and hurt.
- Prepared text:
- Passage 6, Passage 10
Support & extension
Above: Say what a reader could do with this book that they could not do with a story.
Below: Say what this book is about and name two things you learned.
Assessment
- Says it is an information book rather than a story
- Describes the question-and-answer shape
- Names at least two facts from the book
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