Researchlearningstrategylessonplans lowerprimary

Research 8-week Learning Strategies for Lower Primary
Designed and Delivered April-May 2010 by Nettie Boivin

Below, in the chart, is a division of the listening, reading and cognitive/vocabulary which I have
divided based on cognitive, social, and emotional development of lower and upper primary. I realize
there are more but this is only an 8 week study. ***Please note the children are taught twice a week
(45 minute classes). The lesson plans are labelled lesson ONE A: for example, which refers to the
number of the week (One, two, three) and whether it is the first class (A) or second (B) of the week.
****Another note: the lesson plans have been created in advance therefore vocabulary may change
upon closer examination.

STRATEGY/SKILL LOWER PRIMARY UPPER PRIMARY
Listening Use for both Use for both
Top-down strategies- Raise awareness More able to access text
background knowledge of
the topic, the situation or
context, the type of text
listening for the main Yes Yes and label
idea
Predicting Yes Yes and label
drawing inferences No Yes
Bottom-up strategies are Raise awareness Easy to do
text based; the listener
relies on the language in
the message, that is, the
combination of sounds,
words, and grammar that
creates meaning
listening for specific Yes Yes
details
recognizing cognates Raise awareness Yes
recognizing word-order Raise awareness Yes
patterns
Reading Chose one strategy per Choose one strategy per lesson
lesson
a) Develop a plan Group collaboration Formal plan
before reading.
Look at pictures and Yes Yes
make guess about the
story
Look at the chapter No Yes
headings and analyze the
story
b) Monitor their Not really Yes
understanding of text;
make connections Raise awareness Yes
make predictions Yes Yes
make inferences No Yes
use context clues Raise awareness Yes

c) Evaluate their thinking Teacher lead Yes
after reading
Reflect on strategies Ask if questions helped Ask if the strategies which will be
used- understanding explicitly taught helped
Cognitive/Memory Yes Yes
Rehearsal- Repetition, Yes Yes
copying, listing and
underlining.
Comprehension No Yes
monitoring- Self-
questioning to check for
understanding and goal
setting.
Elaboration- Forming Raise awareness Yes
mental images, relating
new information to
known word. Word
association not to a
concept
Affective- Maintaining No Yes
attention, time
management and reducing
anxiety.
Positive self-talk- student Yes Yes
uses positive affirming
talk
semantic mapping No Yes
strategy; It is a visual
way to group words
through association to a
concept

Strategy Lesson Plan Week One
Designed and Delivered April-May 2010 by Nettie Boivin

Lower Primary Lesson One A-
Class: There are six grade 2 students and two grade 3 students. Many are new and they are a
mixed level class. Some have come directly from Japan while others have been living abroad
for several years. I am using target language and structures that they are familiar with. I am
only introducing some new vocabulary and grammar. I will be recycling vocabulary as the
weeks progress. This is to emphasis the strategies. The upper primary will have more new
vocabulary.

Strategy Outcomes: Predicting, rehearsal

Topic: Describing an animal.

Language structures:

Vocabulary- alligator, snake, elephant, birds, monkey, seal, mouse, hippo, giraffe, lion, bear
(SEE APPENDIX 1)

What is this? It’s a____________. What colour is the_______. It is _______________and
______________. What do you see? I see a___, and a_______.

Start with a vocabulary exercise. ***(Do to the slowness at this age in their writing skills
strategies such as semantic mapping would be done on a white/black board together with the
students.)

First Strategy – Rehearsal (oral and reading vocabulary):

Show seven new animal cards. Introduce the animals by checking first which animal names
they know already. Get them to repeat the names. Then play a version of musical chairs with
the cards. This game is to get them to repeat the new words and be exposed to the oral as well
as the written language over and over. The game acts as a spoken form of rehearsal but
includes a reading component as well. Teachers must explicitly nudge them to “repeat the
words!!”. The cards will have both a picture and a word on it. Show the card to the students.
Then they repeat the word over and over saying;

Ss (all) “What’s this? It’s a________, it’s a ___________.”

Teacher shouts: “STOP”

The Ss sit down. They pick up the cards on the chair.

T asks “What’s on the card?”

The students look at the cards the teacher placed on their chair.

S: “it’s a____”.

Next the game continues but the teacher takes a chair away and changes the cards. The
student without the chair comes to the side and sits with the teacher.

They (S1) shout “what’s this ? It’s a________.” along with the other students.

The student who is out gets to shout “STOP”.

Then this student acts as the teacher and asks:

T:“What’s on the card?”

Ss: “It’s a ____.”

Then game continues in the same fashion.

Second Strategy – Predicting (listening):

Use Eric Carles’ “Brown Bear, Brown Bear”

Show the students the book cover and get them to predict by asking:

T “What is this?”

S “It’s a bear”

T: “Good. It's a bear” “What colour is the bear?”

S: “The bear is brown”

T: “The bear is brown”

T: “So what will happen in the story? Will there be candy?”

S: “NO”

T: “Cars”

S: “No”

T: “WHAT??”

S: “There will be animals!” and (pointing to the brown and try to elicit colour)

T: “Will all the animals be brown?”

S: “No colour”

T: “Many different colours”

Have the students repeat many different colours.

Then T reads the story. After the story ask a few comprehension questions. After the lesson have the
students trace the names of the animals.

Appendix 1 -Strategy Lesson Plans for Lower Primary

Lesson One A & B – Week One

Created by Nettie Boivin University of York Educational Studies May, 2010

This is a Seal.

This is a mouse.

These are birds.

This is a hippo.

This is an elephant.

This is an alligator.

This is a giraffe.

This is a lion.

This is a monkey. This is a snake.

Strategy Lesson Plan Week One-

Lower Primary Lesson One B -
Strategy Outcomes: Reviewing the strategies predicting, rehearsal.

Topic: Review of describing an animal. alligator, snake, elephant, birds, monkey, seal,
mouse, hippo, giraffe, lion, bear (SEE APPENDIX 1)

Language Structures: Vocabulary- What is this? It’s a____________. What colour is
the_______. It is _______________and ______________. What do you see? I see a___, and
a_______.

Rehearsal Strategy Review:

Activity One:

The teacher starts with a review of the vocabulary using a rehearsal technique; getting the students to
draw the outline of the animal and word. Using the animal outlines from the above mentioned
activity I will give a copy to each student. They will trace over the lines and will they are doing that
repeat the animal name. Then when finished tracing the first animal they will pass it to their
neighbour saying:

S1: “Here is my elephant (or whatever animal they are tracing).”

S2:“Thanks, nice elephant.” (Then the student will trace the word ELEPHANT.

S2: (passes their traced animal and repeats) “ Here is my _______”.

S3:“Thanks, nice _______________.” (they will trace the word and finish their drawing.)

Predicting Strategies (Listening) Review:

Activity Two:

The teacher will use picture cards of crazy animal scenes (possibly from Dr. Suess’s Horton hears a
who and other stories). The students will guess what is and what will happen. I will cover most of the
picture and ask the students:

T: “What animal is this?”

S1: “It is an ape”.

T: “Good job” “What is the ape doing?”

S1: “It is ....”

T: “Is it running?”

S2: “No”

T: “Is it pushing” (the scene is when the apes capture Horton and are pulling him towards the
beezlenut oil).

S1: “No (Japanese word***note if the students use their L1 I will translate and get them to say in
English)”

T; “In English pulling” (teacher signals for the class to repeat) ALL “Pulling”

After a few moments if the students seem confident the teacher will hand over the cards to the
strongest student to act as the teacher asking.

S/T: “What is this?” (it continues)

I will not use the same story only the same vocabulary to test the students’ progress using the
strategy.

Appendix 2-

ANIMALS

panda
elephant
monkey
giraffe
ostrich
Lion

TEACHER reads hints. Students draw the animal they think. After all are finished
match answers from the box above.

HINTS:

1) climb trees/ long tail.

2) long neck long legs/ can't fly BUT can run fast.

3) long tail/eats other animals.

4) black and white/Eats bamboo

5) long neck/eats leaves from tall trees.

6) two big ears /eats leaves.

Strategy Lesson Plan Week Two-

Lower Primary Lesson Two A:
Strategy Outcome: Raise awareness for Bottom-up phonological discrete syllable recognition in
listening and recognizing cognates.

Topic: Using rhyming patterns, Dr. Suess’s Hop on Pop to identify word structure

Language Structure: OP, ALL, ED, AT (etc) also T; “Say this OP” “If I put this letter how do you
say it.”

First Strategy - Bottom-up strategies (word phonological families)

Review activity one:

Review prediction strategy by showing the cover of the book Hop on Pop to students and asking
what do they see? What do they think the book will be about? Read the book to the students. Write on
the board every time a word family appears. Practice listening for word families by getting them to
rehearse the words.

Activity two:

Get a balloon and hit the balloon with a fan. As they hit they must repeat the word families

Example: teacher says OP –hop, stop, top, pop. They repeat the word families.

Second Strategy – recognizing cognates:

In the second half of the lesson give a worksheet with pictures of the different words from the word
families. Get students to match words to pictures and categorize into OP/ED/ALL/AT word families.

Appendix 1

Lower Primary Lesson Two B:
Strategy Outcome: Reviewing raise awareness for Bottom-up phonological discrete syllable
recognition in listening and recognizing cognates.

Topic: Using rhyming patterns, Dr. Suess’s Hop on Pop to identify word structure

Language Structure: OP, ALL, ED, AT (etc) also T; “Say this OP” “If I put this letter how do you
say it.”

First Strategy - Bottom-up strategies (word phonological families) Review:

Teacher makes cards of the word families using pictures and words. Review the sounds cover part of
the picture to see if they can guess word. Rehearse the words in a chant.

Activity one:

Divide the students into three teams. At one end of the room scatter the cards on the floor in three sets
of piles. Line the students up into their teams. Give the first student in each team a pair of chop sticks.
Call out the word family for example OP. The students hop on one foot with chopsticks in hand while
repeating OP, OP, OP. They then must identify and pick up an OP word card. Return it to their
classmate and say the full word. They then exchange the chopsticks and the relay continues with a
different word family.

Second Strategy – recognizing cognates Review:

Activity One:

The students as a whole class (but if numbers dictate this could be done in smaller groups )play the
game called concentration. The students must match up all the word families and pictures. First one
student turns over one card in the word family pile. Then they turn over one card. If it matches their
word family they can keep it. The next student does the same. The object is to classify all cards into a
word family group.

Activity Two:

Using a tracing worksheet they write out the words then match to a picture.

Strategy Lesson Plan Week Three-

Lower Primary Lesson Three A:
Strategy Outcome: Elaboration- raise awareness of the childs’ ability to make mental pictures and
word association.

Topic: Using vocabulary from the previous lesson review some of the words such as TALL, SMALL,
BED, RED, CAT, HAT, HOP, POP.

Language Structure: “This is RED. What is Red?” “This is TALL. What is TALL?”

First Strategy - Elaboration- raise awareness

Warm-up activity:

Review the words with round of what’s this ask and answer. First student to say the card gets the
card. Then all students repeat. The teacher keeps using the word “Lets practice repeating”.

Activity One

Have the students draw a picture of what the card says. Model this first by showing cat and asking
what the word is. They say CAT. I draw a kitty. Next repeat the process using the rest of the cards.

Second Strategy Word Association:

Activity One

This activity is similar to the one above but with a more expanded idea of the words. The teacher gets
them to think of a bigger image of CAT such as KITTY CHAN, CAT FOOD, CAT SCRATCHING.
Then they add these to the picture.*** This activity will need some scaffolding by the teacher in the
form of charades.

Lower Primary Lesson Three B:
First Strategy - Elaboration- raise awareness Review:

Activity One:

Show vocabulary cards and get them to practice elaboration. In teams one team shows a card. The
other team call out words that are connected example; classroom, pencil, eraser, pen do this with a
time limit. The one .with the most examples gets the card. ****This will need to be modelled first.

Second Strategy Word Association Review:

Play the game Pictionary. Where a student draws a picture from a card and the other students guess
what is on the card.

JS Pilot Strategy Lesson Three B - Picture Matching Worksheet
Nettie Boivin University of York Department of Educational Studies 05/10

Crying I want to open a door.

Driving I can go places.

Sleeping I am going.

Cutting I am tired.

Brushing My hair is messy.

Pushing I am sad.

Walking I use scissors.

Lesson Two A Picture Matching Worksheet

VERBS DEFINITIONS

Crying The mouse is ...the phone cord.

Driving The fish is sad. He is .....

Sleeping The bad fish is ....the little fish.

Walking The sheep are..... at night.

Brushing The girl is ...the pets’ hair.

Pushing The fish is ....the car.

Cutting The lion is.....

Strategy Lesson Plan Week Four-

Lower Primary Lesson Four A:
Strategy Outcome: Brainstorming orally for a story and raising awareness of organizing a story as
a group

Topic: Using a fairy tale such as Cinderella to create their own version of the story

Language Structure: “Once upon a time” “There was a... who lived...” vocabulary- step-sisters,
mother, father

SEE Appendix 1

First Strategy – Brainstorming:

Activity Review-

Review guessing showing the cover of the book. Use the title to review breaking up the word into
bottom up phonological components. Then read the story. Ask them do you know Cinderella? Did
you see a DVD? Did you see the movie The Frog and The Princess?

Activity One-

Brainstorming- model making a story similar to Cinderella and after that one the board start to make
a story by brainstorming ideas. Is Cinderella pretty or funny? Is she a frog? The step-mother is “what
kind of animal?” What happens? Character names? Have the picture of the traditional characters
Cinderella, Step-mom, Step-sisters, Prince and fairy godmother. Place animal pictures over their
faces. Ask the students to make new names. Get each student one by one to come up and write a name
underneath the character.

Second Strategy- Organizing

Fill out a chart of plot- First part, second part, middle part, last part- the end this will be done as a
group in a brainstorm. Using the characters the class created have the students to create main for
each character scenes. They draw individually or using pictures from a magazine make a scene from
a collage of pictures.*** If more time is needed this will be their homework.

Lower Primary Lesson Four B:
Strategy Outcome: Brainstorming orally for a story and organizing a story as a group

Topic: Using the fairy tale Cinderella to create their version of the story

Language Structure: “Once upon a time” “There was a... who lived...” vocabulary- step-sisters,
mother, fairy godmother, castle, dance ball, village, servant

First Strategy – Brainstorming Review:

Activity One-

Play a game called Duck, Duck, Goose to review the vocabulary and adjectives from the previous
lesson- pretty, ugly, nice, mean, mother, father ,step- sister. The game is play where the students sit in

a circle. One student is “it”. That student walks around and repeats a word while touching the sitting
students head (one by one); for example they might repeat “step-mother, step-mother, step-mother”.
Then when touching the head of the student they wish to race then say a different word such as “step-
sister”. (The teacher will tell the student first which two words to use. After one or two go’s then the
teacher changes the pair of words.)When the student says the “other word”, the students whose head
they touch must stand up and chase after the “it” student. They run around the circle of students and
the “it” student tries to sit in the empty spot BEFORE the other student touches them. If they get
touched they must repeat the process. If they don’t get touched the other student then becomes the
“it”student.

Activity two:

Show the pictures the students have draw or made a collage with (some students are not good at or
don’t like to draw so they can use pictures from magazines to make their scenes). Have the students
brainstorm which picture should go first.

Second Strategy- Organizing Review:

Activity One:

Using pictures from magazines have the students organize the story. Then as a group retell the story
with the students showing their pictures and telling what is happening.

.

APPENDIX 1

Strategy Lesson Plan Week Four-Lower Primary
Designed and delivered by Nettie Boivin May 2010

Fairy Godmother

STEP-MOTHER

Strategy Lesson Plan Week Five-

Lower Primary Lesson Five A:
Strategy Outcome: Word order and listening for details

Topic: Using the fairy tale they created.

Language Structure: pretty, ugly, nice, mean, mother, father, sister, princess, king, prince

Activity Review-

The teacher will use two sets of identical, medium size, storycards to review organizing a story. The
teachers divides the class in two teams the teams must be the fastest to put the pictures in the write
order. There will be brief captions to go under the pictures - pretty, ugly, nice, mean, mother, father,
sister, princess, king, prince.

First Strategy – Word order:

Activity One:

Give the students scrambled words from the week four vocabulary list: pretty, ugly, nice, mean,
mother, father, sister, princess, king, prince. Review phonological word list ther/
ing/ice/ean/prin/ly/tty . On the board the above word families will be listed twice in two columns. In
2 groups the students will have a series of magnetic letters S/K/F/A/O/E/U/K/I/N/M/C/T/G/R. The
first group to make the word the teacher calls out gets 2 points if the other team makes the word they
get 1 point. If any team can make an extra word EX; ice –Nice/Lice/Rice – they will get a bonus point.

Second Strategy- Listening for details:

Activity One:

The teacher reads the story Cinderella . While reading, the teacher stops and asks questions such as
“Is Cinderella old?” “Is Cinderella happy?” “ Where is the step-sisters going?” “ Does Cinderella
dance with the prince?” This is to teach the students to listen carefully. The teacher won’t ask the
questions at the end but just after the action occurs. This is to teach the students to focus on each
detail instead of just listening for general information.

Lower Primary Lesson Five B:
Strategy Outcome: Word order and listening for details

Topic: Using a class created story to find details and word order

Language Structure: vocabulary list: pretty, ugly, nice, mean, mother, father, sister, princess, king,
prince

First Strategy – Word Order Review:

Activity One:

Create an activity worksheet with a column of vocabulary word pictures and fill in the blank words
Ex: picture of a princess and the word is __________cess. The student fills in the word family first.
Then they match the word the picture.

Activity two

Underline the first letter of each word. Ask them as a group to put in ABC order. Teacher models by
saying; “is there an A” and run her finger across each underlined words. “Is there a B” and then
continues. Once they reach F the teacher writes the number 1 underneath it. Finally the teacher lets
the students finish up the ABC.

Second Strategy- Listening for details:

The teacher puts up pictures on the board in mixed order. Each pair has a similar set of smaller
cards. The teacher reads the story and stops at various details. The pairs put their pictures in order.
At the end they retell the story together.

Strategy Lesson Plan Week Six-

Lower Primary Lesson Six A:
Strategy Outcome: Reading for main idea and listening for main ideas

Topic: Using Dr. Suess’s story Green Eggs and Ham.

Language Structure: green, eggs, ham, would, could, would not, could not, house, mouse, box, fox,
train, rain, boat, goat

Activity Review-

Taking a few picture cards such as; green eggs, mouse on a house, fox in a box, goat on a boat, train
in the rain review listening for details. Say the first card ex. Green eggs and ask the students are the
students are the eggs black? “What colour are they?”

First Strategy – reading for main ideas-preview:

Activity One-

With the class read the story of Dr. Suess’s Green Eggs and Ham . It is very formulaic so as you
are reading stop and get the students to repeat along. Ask questions about the details on each page.

Activity two

Ask the students to draw their favourite scene from the box and label it for example train in the rain.

Second Strategy- Listening for main ideas-preview:

Activity Two:

Put the students into three groups. Place three sets of picture cards from the story on the table face
up. Next instruct the students to put their hands on their head. Call out one of the details and have the
first student to touch the card wins. Call out nonsense details like CHOCOLATE to see if they are
listening and not just reacting. If two students get the cards they must rock, paper, sissors in English
to see who gets it. The winner of each card must read out the details on the card ex. “A mouse on the
house.”

Lower Primary Lesson Six B:
Strategy Outcome: Reading for main idea and listening for main ideas

Topic: Dr. Suess’s Green Eggs and Ham

Language Structure: green, eggs, ham, would, could, would not, could not, house, mouse, box, fox,
train, rain, boat, goat

Asking “What is the story about?” “Who is this?” “Is he the main character?”

Vocabulary specific to this lesson- eat/ won’t eat/ like/don’t like/ try/look

First Strategy – Reading for Main ideas:

Activity One:

Teacher reads the story to the students and gets them to follow along. On the board the teacher
writes. Does he like green eggs and ham? Ss answer. Next the teacher writes “Did he like green eggs
at the beginning?’ and shows the picture of the first page? Ss answer. Keeps asking the students until
they understand the correct answer. Next the teacher asks

T: “WHY didn’t he like them”?

Then asks

T:“Did he try to eat them here”?

(shows the front of the book). Then points to the middle and asks

T:“Did he try to eat them here?” “Why didn’t he like them. He didn’t TRY them”

Then says “I look at SUSHI YUCK (and make a face) then” I try”

(teacher pantomimes eating)

T: “I like it!!! (sound surprised!!)

T: “So he did like green eggs and ham because he didn’t _______”(hope students fill in the word
try).

Activity two

Second Strategy- Listening for main idea:

The teacher puts up pictures on the board in mixed order. Each pair has a similar set of smaller
cards. The teacher reads the story and stops and asks the students

T: “What did the character learn” (pointing to the part where he likes eggs).

The pairs put their pictures ask them to find the important parts of the story. At the end they retell the
story together

Strategy Lesson Plan Week Seven-

Lower Primary Lesson Seven A:
Strategy Outcome: Positive self talk and reading clues

Topic: Using “One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish” by Dr. Suess

Language Structure: Numbers animals and rhyming families

Activity Review-

Pointing to the book and ask “What do you think the story is about?” Ask “Is it about princesses”?

Ss”No”

T: “No princess ? Why “

Ss”Fish are on the book”

T” Okay lets read and find out”

First Strategy – Reading for Clues:

Activity One-

Read the first page to the students. Then tell them they will play a game. We will read together and
then the teacher will stop and point to a word. The students try to guess the word from the picture and
story. The teacher will give hints like where are they? What are they doing?

Second Strategy- Positive Self Talk:

The students will be taught to say I can read it. The teacher models using a passage from the book
and pretends to have problems reading. The teacher asks for help. Ask can I read? Can you read?
Yes you can, the teacher shows how the sound out the word or guess what the word means. Next the
teacher picks one student to read a page. She tells all the other students to say you can do it. You can
do it. While the student reads the other kids cheer him/her one. After she finishes all the students get
stickers for trying. Then the teacher asks for volunteers to read the next page.

Lower Primary Lesson Seven B:
Strategy Outcome: Positive self talk and reading clues

Topic: Using “One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish” by Dr. Suess

Language Structure: fish, numbers, description

First Strategy – Reading for context clues:

Activity One

The teacher puts the students in pairs. Then the teacher gives each pair a photocopy of a page from
the book but it will be a page they haven’t read. In pairs they guess what is happening . On the board
the teacher writes a few of the words from the photocopy. She gives each pair a set of pictures of the
definitions and asks them to match the pictures to the words. The first team wins stickers and all the
other teams do to.

Second Strategy- Positive self talk:

The teacher reads the story once and the students follow along. Next each student is asked to read a
little of the story. While they are reading the teacher encourages the students to positively reinforce
them. Teacher tells them “Great job” “Good trying ” “Nice reading” to encourage them.

Strategy Lesson Plan Week Eight-

Lower Primary Lesson Eight A:
Strategy Outcome: Review of the reading strategies

Topic: Various sources used in the prior seven weeks

Language Structure: What is this? Who is this? Where is this? A _____sounds like?

Reading Strategies- guessing from pictures, making a plan, reading for main idea, reading for
detail

Review activity one:

The teacher shows a picture book and asks the students what they should do? What will help
me? The title? The picture?(the teacher points to the pictures and title). Then the teacher
shows pictures of famous stories (such as Japanese fairy tales or fairy tales that were
movies). In teams guess what the story will be about.

Review activity two

Put several words from the past 8 weeks of vocabulary. Place pictures on the board. In pairs
have the students race to match the pictures and the words.

Review activity three

The teacher then starts to read and stops at a new word. Asks the students this is pig and this
is mud what if the pig rolls in the mud what happens? Oh right they are dirty. After that the
teacher asks details as they are reading. Also the teacher gives the students paper and ask
them to draw what the story was about.

Lower Primary Lesson Eight B:
Strategy Outcome: Review of the listening strategies

Topic: Using various sources/text from the last seven weeks

Language Structure: guessing, context,

First Strategy – listening for context clues, phonological :

Review activity one

Play a version of phonics BINGO concentrating on long and short vowels. The bingo card
will be divided into A E I O U. The pictures will be those that are long or short of each
vowel. The teacher reads out long e or short e. They must identify which picture contains the
vowel called.

Review activity two

Put the students in pairs. The teacher says a simple sentence from one of the past stories the class has
read. The teacher says it in chucks. Each pair has a few sets of jumbled cards. Each pair must put the
words in the correct order. While they are doing this the teacher repeats the sentences.

Researchlearningstrategylessonplans lowerprimary

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