The Rainbow Fish – Lesson Plan- Second Grade

Grade Level : Second Grade

Subject : Language Arts

Duration: 40 minutes

Benchmark Description : Florida Sunshine State Standards

LA.A.2.1.1: The student uses the reading process effectively – determines the main idea or essential message from text and identifies supporting information.

LA.2.1.7.3 – summarize information in text, including but not limited to main idea, supporting details, and connections between texts.

LA.2.1.7.4 – identify cause-and-effect relationships in text.

LA.2.1.7.5 – identify the text structure an author uses (e.g., comparison/contrast, cause/effect, and sequence of events) and explain how it impacts meaning in text.

LA.2.1.7.8 – use strategies to repair comprehension of grade-appropriate text when self-monitoring indicates confusion, including but not limited to rereading, checking context clues, predicting, summarizing, questioning, and clarifying by checking other sources.

LA.2.2.1.2 – identify and describe the elements of story structure, including setting, plot, character, problem, and resolution in a variety of fiction.

Objectives:

After this lesson:

Students will be able to identify the main idea in the story.

Students will be able to summarize the text and make text connections to their own lives.

Students will be able to identify cause and effect relationship in the text.

Students will use reading comprehension strategies to monitor their own understanding of the text.

Students will use higher order cognitive skills to create their own story on topics of friendship, sharing, and/or happiness in their journals.

Materials:

The Rainbow Fish, by Marcus Pfister

Poster size Rainbow fish

journals

pencils

markers

paper scales

Procedures:

1. Teacher will start the lesson by discussing the role of sharing in friendship. Teacher will ask students how sharing makes them feel. How do they go about sharing things that they really like? Does it hurt their feelings when someone does not want to share with them? How do they feel when a friend shares with them?
2. Teacher will proceed to introduce the story and then read the story. During the story, teacher will pause on a couple of spots and check on students’ comprehension and thought and prediction on the story. (It is important not to make too many comprehension pauses/stops in order to prevent loss of interest in the story.
3. At the end, ask students to summarize the story. What was the story about? Students will identify the cause and effects relationship in the story. How did the Rainbow Fish behavior change the way other fish treat her? Discuss the importance of sharing and what really made the Rainbow Fish happy? Was it the shimmering scales or friends?
4. Take a step further and encourage students to think about their own friendships and instances when someone’s selfishness made them feel bad or vice versa. Then give out a pice of paper in the shape of a scale to each student. Tell them to think of one word that comes to mind when they think of sharing and friendship. Have them write the word on the scale. Let them decorate their individual scales, and once they are done, glue the scales on the big poster fish.

Assessment:

Students will either retell the story in written form in their journals or create a new story on on the topic of sharing and friendship.