Features of print

In this lesson, the teacher introduces the concept of gathering information from chapter headings, bold type and other organizational features of print (such as tables of contents) in non-fiction texts in print and online.

A lesson plan for grades 1–2 English Language Arts and Information Skills

By Gail Goodling, Susan Lovett, and Sue Versenyi

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Related topics

• Learn more about bears, information literacy, language arts, print awareness, reading, research skills, text interaction, and thinking skills.

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Learning outcomes

Students will:

• become acquainted with using features of print as a tool to search and retrieve information.
• use print features in a trade book or online to find and record relevant information for their bear study.

Teacher planning

Time required for lesson

1 hour

Materials/resources

• Black Bears by Marcia S. Freeman (six copies)
• Growl! A Book About Bears by Melvin Berger. (six copies)
• Attribute Chart for Black Bears and Blank Chart
• How To Look In Books chart
• Chart paper

Technology resources

• Overhead projector
• Bear Attribute charts on transparency
• 4-6 computers with internet access

Pre-activities

Students will have been discussing various aspects of Black Bears for the past 3 days, including where Black Bears live and what they eat.

Activities

Lesson 1

1. “Today we are going to learn how to use parts of a book to help us find information about bears. Knowing where to look for the information in a book will help you quickly find what you are looking for. It will also help you understand what you are reading.”
   • Put the bear attribute chart up on an overhead to show what information children are looking for. Discuss categories on chart (review from yesterday).
2. Introduce focus for today’s lesson (whole group). “We are going to hunt for information to help us fill in our charts. Today we’ll use this book to look for information for our bear charts (hold up Black Bears books). When you look in a book for information, you can use several clues to help you find what you need in that book.”
3. Teacher has created a chart called How to Look in a Book to help students remember the steps of looking in a book to find information. “To help you, I made a chart called How to look in a Book. We will fill in the chart over the next few days so that you can use it when you are looking for information in books. This is a chart you can look at to help you remember where to find information in a book. The title of the book is one clue. (Teacher adds, #1 - title to the chart and a picture of a title page.) The title of this book is Black Bears. The title will help us figure out what we will find in this book.”
4. Teacher has a big book version of Black Bear and asks, “What would you expect to see inside a book called Black Bears? (Bears) Here’s another clue. There is a picture on the cover. What type of bear is pictured on the cover? (Black Bear) What type of bear might we see inside? (Black Bears)” Teacher leads class through a picture walk of the book. “Were you right? Did the title help us? (Yes) Did the picture on the cover help us? (Add #2 - Picture on Cover to chart w/ a picture.) Did the other pictures in the book help us? (Yes)”
5. “Now, pretend I’m trying to find a book about cars. I’m going to use our How to Look in a Book chart to help me decide if this book is about cars. Hmmm? Here’s the title Black Bears. Would I expect to see cars in here? (No) What else can I look at (guide kids to refer to chart)? (Picture on cover.) The picture on the cover is about Black Bears; would I find information about cars in here? (No!) Why not? (The title and pictures say it’s about black bears.) See how you used the chart to help you figure out what was in the book?”
6. Break into small groups. (Other students at this time are working on other parts of their bear journals). In groups of 4-6 students at a time, hand each child a copy of Black Bears.
   • “There are other clues in this book that tell you what you might find in this book. (Ask if any student knows what a table of contents is.) A Table of Contents tells you what topics or ideas you will find in this book, and where to find them. Let’s all turn to page 3 to see the Table of Contents. (Read headings and point out page numbers) We will add #3 - Table of Contents to the chart.” (Add a picture of a table of contents with page numbers.)
   • “What might be in the section called What Black Bears Do? on page 9? (Have students predict). Let’s go to page 9 and see if you are right. Remember, we are looking for information for our charts. As we read, think about what information you are looking for (what a bear looks like, what it eats, where it lives, other fun facts).”
   • “Another way you can look up information in a section is to look at the pictures (Add #4 - Pictures to chart w/ a picture). (Guide discussion about what bears are doing in the pictures.) Did the pictures help you find what you were looking for?” Have students pair up and read the book and look at pictures from page 9-21. (It’s only 7 sentences).
   • “Did you find any information that you could use to fill in your charts?” (Do this as a group, taking student responses. Guide students in either writing words or drawing pictures to fill in the charts.)
   • Wrap up by asking, “Did we have to read the whole book? (No!) What clues did we use to go to the information we needed?” (Review on chart - The Table of Contents, pictures).

Lesson 2

1. Put the bear attribute chart up on an overhead to show what information children are looking for. Discuss categories on bear chart (review from yesterday).
2. Introduce focus for today’s lesson. “We are going to hunt for more information to help us fill in our charts on the bear you have chosen to study. When you look in a book for information, you can use several clues to help you find what you need in that book. The title of the book is one clue. What are some other clues?” (Review the How to Look in Books chart and review all four steps from Day 1)
3. Introduce book Growl! A Book About Bears by Melvin Berger. “We will continue to use our chart How to Look in Books to find the information in this book.” Explain that we will be breaking into small groups and we will use a chapter book, Growl! A Book About Bears, to continue our hunt.
4. Take one group at a time (groups of 4-5 students). (Other groups can be doing self-selected reading or journal writing in bear journals). Each student is given a copy of Growl!
• “This is a book called Growl! Let’s use clue #1 from our chart (refer to How to Look in Books chart) Can you read the whole title and tell what this book is about? (Students read Growl! A Book About Bears
• “This book is organized a little differently from yesterday, so there are different clues to look at. This book has sections called chapters. Let’s go to the first chapter to see what it is about. Everyone turn to the page that says Chapter one. The chapter title is What Do Bears Eat? (Have students predict what is in the chapter based on the chapter title). So another clue we can use is a chapter title. (Add to chart #5: Chapter title w/ a picture).”
• “Now, look in chapter one. Turn the pages. Do you notice some of the words are dark and brown? That is called bold print. Find some bold print and put your finger on it. That’s another clue. Add to chart (#6: bold print).” (Discuss bold print words Polar Bear, Grizzly Bear, etc. Guide students to find the word for the type of bear they are studying. Point out that the fact that the pictures of the types of bears also match the bear in the bold print.)
• “I will now read the chapter to you. As I read, be looking for the bold print (and pictures) for the type of bear that you are studying. Listen for what the bear eats.” Guide the children to write (using invented spelling or copying conventional spelling) what the bears eat. Share findings with a partner. “This time we used the bold print and the chapter heading to help us find the information we were looking for. Tomorrow we will look for tables of contents, headings and bold print on the Internet to continue our hunt.”

Lesson 3

1. “We are continuing our hunt for bear information. We can use the clues we have been learning about from our How to Look in a Book chart (titles, headings, bold print) to quickly find information on the Internet. We will go in small groups to the computer lab.” (Bring the “How to Look in Books chart.) Take 4-6 children to lab. In the computer lab, have the National Geographic Creature Feature bookmarked.
• “We have been looking in books for our bear information, but we can also use what we know about books to find information on the Internet. Here is a website. (Have students retrieve bookmarked site.) Let’s see if we can use our chart to help us here. Can we use #1 from the chart? Look at the title and the words under the title. I’ll read it. ‘Get to know some of the most interesting and unusual members of the wild world–from cheetahs to crocodiles and whales to warthogs. Dive in for photos, video, audio, postcards, fun facts, and more!’ Do you think you might find information about bears?” (Maybe).
• “Look down the list of animals. This is our Table of Contents (refer to chart). Can you use a Table of Contents to find information? (yes ? refer to chart.) Do you think you will find information about the bear you have chosen to study? How do you know? (Picture and words listed). Do you need to look at the section on Vampire bats? (No!) To use this table of contents, we click on the picture we want to see. Click on the Polar Bear.”
2. Take students through section on Polar Bears. Review headings there. Explain that they are like the chapter headings on the chart. Look at Fun Facts section and read it to them.
3. Now have students use the table of contents to select the bear they are researching (they have to scroll down for the panda). Help them read and record information as before, using invented spelling or conventional spelling. Everyone should get at least one fun fact.
4. Students then share what they found and how they got to it.

Assessment

Children should attempt to fill in each square under Black Bears with accurate or invented spelling or a picture. They should also be able to identify a title, a table of contents, headings, and bold print.

Supplemental information

Comments

The idea for this lesson came from the Text Preview strategy found in “Reading and Learning Strategies for Middle and High School Students,” Lenski, Wham, Johns, 1999, pp. 67-69.