In this critical reading lesson, students will synthesize a text—”Make the World a Better Place!” in English or “¡Haz del mundo un lugar mejor!” in Spanish—through Think-Alouds and structured dialogue to create a one-page report. This lesson uses the WICOR® (Writing, Inquiry, Collaboration, Organization, Reading) methodology, as well as strategies from AVID’s curriculum library, and is designed for a variety of learning environments.
AVID and National Geographic are partnering for the 2021–2022 school year to develop critical reading lessons. This partnership will allow AVID to provide highly engaging and rigorous content through disciplinary literacy—an emphasis on the shared ways of reading, writing, speaking, and thinking within a particular content area or academic field.
Learning Objective
- Synthesize responses to a text by participating in a quickwrite.
- Produce a one-page summary that conveys how to make the world a better place.
What You’ll Need
- National Geographic interactive content:
- AVID Elementary Weekly lesson
- Additional resources can be found on the AVID Elementary Weekly website by subscription only.
Activate
Establish a purpose for reading, build background knowledge, and set students up for success.
Plan for reading by thinking through or having students respond to the following questions and identify how the chosen text fits within the broader context of your instructional unit, so students are making connections to their prior knowledge.
- Do other texts need to be read to build background knowledge?
- How does the text fit into the overall instructional unit or overall learning experience?
This text meets the following features of an ideal text:
- Develops key content or academic thinking skills
- Length is appropriate for the purpose
- Balanced perspective or multiple viewpoints
Allow students an opportunity to set up their notes and record the Essential Question before engaging in the learning. Students will be interpreting and analyzing nonlinguistic representations in this lesson.
Engage
Build vocabulary and engage in purposeful rereads. Vocabulary development can happen at any point in the reading process.
Students will build vocabulary using word walls, looking at both academic and content-area words. They will process information in a first and second read of the text and engage in a purposeful reread using a Think-Aloud and structured dialogue strategy.
Extend
Reading tasks should be directly connected to what students will do with the text after they have read and understand it.
Students will use the text to develop the Synthesize academic thinking skill. They will extend beyond the text through the creation of a one-page report.
*Explore the sample lesson and contact AVID Care by phone at (833) 284-3227 or by email at [email protected] for more information about AVID Weekly® and AVID Elementary Weekly.