Teaching Comprehension – Using Choice Cubes – Literacy Lesson Plan – Microhardxce

Teachers note: You can use just about anything for choice cubes. If using dice with numbers/letters on it, give students a sheet or an overhead screen showing the question corresponding with the choices on the cube. I use a cube with slots so I can make questions and insert them as cards. Anyway should work fine, but I do recommend using slot cubes for younger grades (K-2).

To help teach comprehension, it can be useful to promote “active reading”. Active reading in a nutshell is helping the students establish clear goals from the reading from the onset. Rather than reading something and be asked a question, the student has a goal to keep in mind while reading the first time, and can feel free to re-read when they want to review their answer for the question. The benefits of this is they know what they are looking for, almost like a missing piece of a puzzle, and locks that information into place when they find it in their reading. If the student waits until they are done reading before they are given a question, they have absorbed a lot of information, and not all of that will be the most relevant. This lesson is helpful in teaching or reinforcing students to learn the difference between information that is important in a story, and that which is not. For example, a student may read a book about playing a sport, and may remember may little details such as what the weather was like, what the ball looked like, if the people in the audience was cheering or waving, etc, but may tend to focus too much on little details and not enough on big picture stuff such as the main characters name, why the liked to play soccer, and other important events that may have occurred during the game.

Motivation /Introduction (7 mins approx): If this is the first time the students have used choice cubes, quickly explain how they will be used in this lesson. Show them that they have choices on them and they can either pick one they want, or leave it to chance and roll the die, and whichever side turns on up on the top, use that choice. To demonstrate this, give the die a roll and show the students the choice. Tell them that the teacher will keep that comprehension question in mind as they read a small exert from a book. (It is recommended that if you are working with struggling learners, that you use a book from their reading level (ie: E)). This is because important information is easier to find. Although if the teacher believes the students would be more engaged with a specific read aloud book, then use it. (Optional, but recommended: When the teacher finds an important piece of information such as the answer to the question they had, they should underline it or mark it so they can find it later. However, remind the students if they are using a real book, then it is not recommended to mark in them)

Body/Activity: (2 minute set up, 12 minutes for the activity): Each table or group of 4 students should each get one cube with different comprehension questions on each side. Tell them to take turns rolling it one time each, then share it with the next student in their group. Each student will receive a piece of paper /post it note. When they pick their question, they will write their question down, with enough space on the bottom to write their answer. Next, they can pick a book from the browsing bin or perhaps a library book if they have NOT read it yet. Tell them to pick a short book or perhaps one chapter from a book. If no such book is available, give them premade short stories.(This is recommended if they are getting near assessments and need practice reading such stories to find the answers to multiple choice questions.) After about 12 minutes, have the students bring up their post it note and paste it on the chart paper. If there is time left, encourage the student to roll the die again to get a different question. The teacher will go around and praise students who remembered to underline important information.

Ending/ Wrap Up: Have the students come back to the carpet, and if they have not yet, to post their questions/answers on the chart paper. The teacher will ask the students to read them off to the class. As the students do this, the teacher can ask the students “by looking at the questions and answers, what sort of important seemed to be important, or the most important from the story?” The students may give you various answers from the post it notes, such as why a character did something, or how the main character solved a problem, or in some cases more basic knowledge from the story such as what was the setting, character names, etc. Finally, ask the students if they can give an example of something not important at all from the story.