“Food Chains & Food Webs” Informational Life Science: Summarizing

Lesson Plan Description

Teaching 5th graders to infer from text can be challenging!  In this engaging 1 hour lesson your 4th graders will have the opportunity to practice this higher order depth of knowledge skill with partners using informational Life Science text, “A Polar Bear’s Body,” by Jennifer Kaul.

• Participate in a series of engaging close reading lessons with many opportunities to develop vocabulary through oral language practice
• Ask and answer text dependent questions in order to…
  • Identify key details and determining the meaning of unknown vocabulary using context clues
  • Infer to create headings in order to write a summary

This 1-hour lesson addresses Fifth Grade Life Science NGSS (Next Generation Science Standards):

• LS2.A: Interdependent Relationships in Ecosystems The food of almost any kind of animal can be traced back to plants. Organisms are related in food webs in which some animals eat plants for food and other animals eat the animals that eat plants. Some organisms, such as fungi and bacteria, break down dead organisms (both plants or plants parts and animals) and therefore operate as decomposers. Decomposition eventually restores (recycles) some materials back to the soil. Organisms can survive only in environments in which their particular needs are met. A healthy ecosystem is one in which multiple species of different types are each able to meet their needs in a relatively stable web of life. Newly introduced species can damage the balance of an ecosystem. (5-LS2-1)

**Purchasing both this 1 hour and the ELA Bundle: “Food Chains & Food Webs” Informational Life Science Bundle,” will result in duplicate content.