Funding for the VITAL/Ready to Teach collection was secured through the United States Department of Education under the Ready to Teach Program.
Loading StandardsStudents will identify a main idea by analyzing, evaluating and interpreting new information and using personal experiences and prior knowledge to write a paragraph stating whether or not pigs make good pets.
Students' ability to identify the main idea of a text indicates they are skilled at distinguishing relevant and irrelevant information and they are able to analyze and synthesize ideas. Written, spoken and visual forms of communicating require analysis and synthesis if they are to be fully understood and useful to the students' learning.
50-minutes
1. Photocopy the Would Pigs Make Good Pets handout and the Pigs as Pets handout for each student. Distribute the handout "Would Pigs Make Good Pets?"
2. Brainstorm: Would pigs make good pets? List responses on chart paper or on the board.
3. Introduce the "Would Pigs Make Good Pets?" handout, and ask students to record the reasons they think pigs would make good pets in the first row and the reasons they think pigs would make bad pets in the second row.
4. Introduce the video segment about pigs. Tell students to focus on the information the video presents that supports the ideas that pigs make good pets or bad pets. Ask them to record information on the handout in the third and fourth rows.
5. After viewing the video, give paired students time to discuss ideas and add information to the handout.
6. Distribute the Pigs as Pets handout. Tell students to read the text, focusing on the reasons pigs might make good pets or bad pets. After reading, have students add ideas to the fifth and sixth rows of the handout.
For students who need additional teacher guidance:1. Distribute the Pig rubric. Next, students analyze and evaluate the information recorded on the Would Pigs Make Good Pets handout. Then they make a decision about whether they believe pigs make good pets or not. This decision should be stated in a sentence and used as the main idea of the papers they will write. Students write the main idea statement on the blank paper.
2. Following the main idea sentence, students write an explanation stating at least three reasons to support the main idea sentence. Reasons from students' personal knowledge and ideas from the video and text should be used.
3. Students share their explanations in small groups.
Portfolio:The explanation students write for the assessment may be included in their portfolios to demonstrate mastery of performance indicators.
Standards