Direct Instruction Lesson Plan Template

Grade Level/Subject: 3rd Grade Reading

Central Focus: Schema

Essential Standard/Common Core Objective:

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.3.2
Date submitted:
Date taught:
Determine the main idea of a text; recount the key details and explain how
they support the main idea.
Daily Lesson Objective:
Using schema to make connections to the text and be able to engage in conversation to discuss the main idea of the text
and relate the key details by making connections to self-text and world.
21st Century Skills:
Academic Language Demand (Language Function and Vocabulary):
Critical Thinking: Understanding the
Schema: All of the individual knowledge that you have in your brain.
interconnections among systems.
Communication: Articulating thoughts and
ideas clearly and effectively through
speaking and writing.
Prior Knowledge: Students have been discussing connections and reading texts in readers workshops. They have an
understanding of what it means to make connections and inferences.

Activity

1. Focus and Review

2. Statement of Objective
for Student

3. Teacher Input

4. Guided Practice

Description of Activities and Setting

Remind the students about schema has it has been discussed in a previous
lesson. Engage students to help them understand what it means to connect
to a text. Tell them about a book you have read and tell them how you made
a connection with the story or with a character. Explain that today, you are
going to learn about different connections you can make.
Help students to understand that they can make connections with a text to
something in their lives (self), to another text (book, movie, magazine) or to
something in the world that they have experienced or heard about.
Have the students gather on the carpet for a readers workshop. Ask
questions such as, How does our schema help us as readers? Let students
give some examples. Tell students, The great thing about schema is that our
schema is always changing. After we read a story our brains are never the
same. Show the students the anchor chart on Schema. (Picture of the one I
made is attached.) Go through the different connections with the students
pointing out the pictures for good visualization. (Self, Text and World
Connections) Have students give some examples of these types of
connections.
Read a story out loud and ask students to concentrate on making
connections to the story. Provide post-it-notes so that students can jot down

Time

5 min

5 min

10 min

15 min

ideas. Ask students to make at least one connection while you read out loud.
Stop after a few minutes and ask them to give examples that they can think
of that would connect to text to self. Continue reading and stopping
periodically to get examples of text to text and text to world. Continue until
all students have had an opportunity to give at least one example.
Provide the students with the flip book on schema. Have them take it back
to their desk and continue reading the level appropriate novels that they
5. Independent Practice
20 min
have been reading all week. As students to read independently and work on
finding connections they can write on their flip books.
Collect their flipbooks and determine if they have made the correct connections. If they
have attempted to connect the text to each of the 3 types they have achieved
6. Assessment Methods of
understanding of connections. If they only completed 1 or did not make sense of the
all objectives/skills:
connections that they have written, they need to revisit the concept with the teacher
during independent practice to work on some individual reading conferences.
This concept will continue with their daily reading. Explain to the students
that throughout the next few weeks while reading independently, they will
7. Closure
5 min
be provided with post-it notes to continue jotting down their connections to
share with the class during readers workshop.
This lesson will be repeated throughout the unit with several different types of text.
8. Assessment Results of
Students will eventually be able to make connections to the texts they read in all subjects
all objectives/skills:
and will help them better articulate their thoughts and ideas. There will be on-going
assessment of this skill.
Targeted Students Modifications/Accommodations:
Student/Small Group Modifications/Accommodations: Small
Students may need one on one instruction to help
groups can read the same text and have readers workshops to
them make the connections. The teacher can work
discuss connections together.
with students during reading conferences to help them
make connections to their own lives from the book
level that they are currently reading.
Materials/Technology:
Post it notes, flip charts with clipboards, and anchor charts.

References:
Time4teachers.com
Teacherspayteachers.com
Reflection on lesson: This lesson worked well with this class because they have already been discussing connections.
They caught on very quickly to the new types of connections they can make when reading.