Easiteach - Example Literacy Lessons


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Covers and Contents
Year:	1	Range:	Non-fiction: information texts
Term:	3

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Covers and Contents

Year 1

Aims

	to consider how different non-fiction books can be used to find answers to questions;
	to consider how the contents page can be used to find where information is located within a book.

NLS Framework Objectives

Word:	(8)	new words from reading and shared experiences, and to make collections of personal interest, significant and topic words.
Text:	(19)	to identify simple questions and use texts to find answers. To locate parts of texts that give particular information, including labelled diagrams and charts;
	(21)	to use the language and features of non-fiction texts.

Lesson Overview

Whole class: Given a list of book titles and a set of questions, the pupils are asked to identify the book that would provide the answer to each question. Given a Contents page and a set of questions, they are asked to locate which chapters in the book will provide the answer to each question.

Guided group: The pupils plan a piece of research.

Independent group: The pupils identify which books in the class or school library are likely to answer a series of questions.

Plenary: The pupils explain what they have been doing. The teacher assesses the pupils' understanding of how information texts can be used to find information.

Before this Lesson

It would be helpful if pupils have been reminded of the ways non-fiction books are shelved in the class or school library.
Key words: diagram, chart, caption, picture, contents page, chapter.

Resources and Tools

Easiteach tools and features used: Word Highlight, Freehand Line (or Straight Line or Single Arrowhead).

Shared Whole Class Work

Screens 1,2

Screens 1 and 2 each show three questions in speech bubbles, and three non-fiction books.

Show Screen 1. Point out the questions, and remind the pupils how they know these are questions. Ask pupils to move each speech bubble to a book that will answer the posed question.
Ask the pupils to explain their choice of book for each question.
Repeat for Screen 2.

As an extension activity, you could ask pupils to write their own questions on the board and ask other pupils to move them to the book that would most probably answer them. (This also provides an opportunity to remind pupils that questions need question marks!)

Screens 3,4

Screen 3 shows the contents page of a non-fiction book on cats. Screen 4 shows the same Contents page, together with six questions about cats.

Show Screen 3. Ask the pupils what a contents page is. How do they know how long a chapter is? Discuss the key words from each chapter heading, using the Word Highlight tool to draw attention to these. How is an index different from a contents page?
Show Screen 4. Point out the six questions in yellow boxes, and ask pupils which chapter would help them answer each one. Ask the pupils to move the number of the chapter (in the blue box) beside the appropriate question, and explain their choice.

As an extension activity, you could ask pupils to write their own questions on the board, and ask other pupils to decide which chapter would most probably answer them.

Guided Group Work

Screens 5,6

Screen 5 shows pictures about gardens and a box to write in. Screen 6 shows a selection of book titles.
In this activity, you will help the pupils to plan a piece of research.

Ask the group to plan a garden that will be built within the school grounds. They should decide what features they want in their garden. Their ideas can be recorded in the box on Screen 5.

Show Screen 6. The group must decide which books, from titles provided on screen, are likely to provide the information that they would need to make their garden. Ask them to show their choices on screen by drawing lines from the titles to the plant pot with the word "Garden" on it in the centre of the page.

Suggestions for Independent Work

Screen 7

Screen 7 shows all the questions from Screens 1 and 2, so they can all be viewed together.

You could ask the pupils to choose books from the class or school library that are most likely to answer these questions. Clearly, they will need access to a range of non-fiction texts. You will need to decide whether the pupils should use a narrow selection of texts to tackle this activity, or whether they could use the complete class or school library.

Alternatively you could prepare a different set of questions for the pupils to investigate using information texts.

Plenary

1.	Ask pupils to report back on what they have been doing.
2.	Compile a list of things to do when trying to find answers to questions using books.
Assess the pupils' understanding of how to use books to answer questions.

Using ICT to Extend the Lesson

	With an able class you could set research questions to be answered using the Internet.
	You could set pupils a research topic and ask them to design a contents page on the subject, and produce the page using a word-processing package.
	Pupils could research a topic such as 'How to care for a pet', selecting the pet they would like to research; or a research topic could be set related to the work being done in the current term.