Lesson plan
Fantastic Fables: 5 W's
Learning Objectives
After completing this lesson, students will be able to successfully ask and answer the “who, what, when, where and why” of a given story.
Introduction
(5 minutes)
- Hold up or project an image of a short fiction book that your class has read as a whole group.
- Display an index card with the phrase “5 W’s” written on it.
- Ask your class who was in the story, what they were doing or trying to accomplish, when did it all take place, where and why.
- Have them turn to their nearest partner and share their answers to these questions.
Explicit Instruction/Teacher modeling
(15 minutes)- After the brief discussion, display or draw the Star Graphic Organizer using a projector, interactive white board, or white board.
- Model finding the answers to the who and what questions using the fiction text. Provide evidence to your answers by revisiting the pages in which the answers are found.
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Make sure to write the page, paragraph, and line number next to each answer, and explain why evidence is so important when providing an answer.
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Pause the activity and explain to the students that the 5 W’s are supporting details that can help readers discover the main idea.
- Next, display the Main Idea Anchor Chart, and inform students that the main idea is a short sentence that describes what the story is mainly about.
Guided Practice
(15 minutes)- Ask for three volunteers or choose three students who can help you complete the remaining questions on the Star Graphic Organizer.
- Encourage students to cite their evidence.
Independent working time
(20 minutes)- Tell students that today they are going to work as a group of detectives to find the 5 W’s in the story Little Red Riding Hood.
- Review the vocabulary words and their definitions with the class at this time.
- Focus the attention back to the activity by explaining that instead of using a magnifying glass to look for clues within the text, they will be using glass pebbles instead.
- Break up your students into groups of five, and provide each group with five different colored highlighters or crayons.
- Tell students to read the story as a whole group. Once they finish, each member of the team is responsible for finding one of the 5 W’s.
- Assign colors to each W. For example, blue is who, green is why, etc.
- Have students color code the sentences in which the “who, what, when, where, and why” are found.
Differentiation
- Enrichment: Challenge students by adding the task of having them find out how the character managed to complete the what in the story.
- Support: Assist students by reversing the activity. Provide them with a reading handout that is already highlighted and color-coded and then have them figure out which of the 5 W’s it is addressing.
Technology Integration
- A projector or interactive white board should be used to project the images and handouts used in this activity.
Assessment
(20 minutes)- When the class has finished color-coding the reading worksheets, issue each student a copy of the Star Graphic Organizer and have them complete it individually.
- Remind them to cite in which paragraph and line they found each of the 5 W’s.
Review and closing
(5 minutes)- Remind students of all the new vocabulary and definitions they learned today.
- Ask them to practice using one of the vocabulary words in a sentence with their nearest partner, through think-pair-share.
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