Understanding Various Genres

How to Teach Reading Lesson Plans: Reads and understands various types of literary selections (genres – e. g. fiction, nonfiction, biographies, poetry).

1) Utilizes prior knowledge
Ask students to read the following headings from board. (1) What I Know (2) What I Want to Know (3) What I Learned Have students answer questions 1 and 2; then read a selection and answer question 3.

2) Identifies the author’s purpose (e.g., inform, entertain, persuade, describe)
Relate the author’s purpose for each story read throughout the year through class discussion.
Explain to students that an author’s purpose can be to inform, describe, entertain, or persuade.
Explain that a good reader examines facts and opinions.
Allow students to read a short story and relate what the author’s purpose was for that story.

3) Understands the meaning of passage from a selection
Provide the students with specialized vocabulary in a newspaper article. Have students define words by using the words in sentences.
Have the students use a process of comprehension.
Make Predictions:
Read story title and tell what story will be about.
Read beginning paragraph of story and add to title prediction.
Read the Story:
Oral/silent reading of the story
Retell the Story:
Oral/written retelling of the story
Answer Questions related to the Story Elements:
Character
Setting
Plot
Theme
Mood/tone
Conflict
Solution
Summarize the Story:
Tell what the story is about using a few sentences.

4) Knows the differences among the genres of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and plays
Play “guess the genre” by asking a different student daily to bring a short piece to share with the class. After the students shares, have the students determine the genre. Have the students write a summary of the piece.

5) Connects literature to real-life situations
Share a passage. Have the student put themselves in the situation of the characters. Utilize questioning techniques to determine how the student would react to the same events in the story.
Videotape or tape record students retelling the story with themselves as the main characters.

6) Interprets figurative language/literary devices (e.g., similes, metaphors, personification, idioms)
Have the student listen to a story depicting personification. Through class discussion, determine how animals, etc., were personified.
Have the students listen to poems and stories to choose similes and metaphors.
Have the students write and illustrate similes or metaphors.
Have the students look for key words such as than, like (similes).

 

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