Persuasive Text
CRITTER CROSSINGS
Persuasive (nonfiction), 666 words
Critter Crossings is a persuasive nonfiction book in which the author describes the dangers that animals face when trying to cross roads to find food or water, to migrate, or to find a mate. The book includes information on solutions that have been adopted in different parts of North America. A persuasive point is made: although these animal crossings are expensive, the number of lives saved-both of humans and other animals-makes the crossings worth the cost. Will you agree or disagree? Photographs and a chart support the text.
Persuasive (nonfiction), 666 words
Critter Crossings is a persuasive nonfiction book in which the author describes the dangers that animals face when trying to cross roads to find food or water, to migrate, or to find a mate. The book includes information on solutions that have been adopted in different parts of North America. A persuasive point is made: although these animal crossings are expensive, the number of lives saved-both of humans and other animals-makes the crossings worth the cost. Will you agree or disagree? Photographs and a chart support the text.
Preteach the Vocabulary
Story Words
collisions, endangered, extinction, habitats, mate, migrate, roam, species, vehicles
Story Words
collisions, endangered, extinction, habitats, mate, migrate, roam, species, vehicles
Before Reading
Targeted Reading Strategy
• Visualize
Objectives
Targeted Reading Strategy
• Visualize
Objectives
- Use the reading strategy of visualizing to understand text
- Problem and solution
- Identify open vowel y
- Recognize adjectives and the nouns they describe
- Arrange words in alphabetical order
Build Background
• Write the phrase animal crossing on the board. Have students share what they know about the subject. Encourage them to explain what they know about what animal crossings are used for and where they might be found. Ask students if they have ever seen an animal crossing or read about one in a book.
- Introduce the Reading Strategy: Visualize
- Explain to students that good readers often visualize, or create pictures in their mind, while
reading. Visualizing is on the basis of what a person already knows about a topic. Explain that one way to visualize is to draw a picture. Read aloud to the end of page 4. - Model how to visualize as you preview the book.
Think-aloud: Whenever I read a book, I always pause after a few pages to create a picture in
my mind of the information I’ve read. This helps me organize the important information and understand the ideas in the book. For example, on page 4, the author asks readers to imagine they are a turtle stuck on one side of a six-lane freeway. I imagined being very low to the ground and feeling scared, standing on the hot pavement, and watching humongous metal monsters race by. I imagined the hot wind hitting my face as the loud vehicles rushed by. When I imagined this, I thought about how scared a turtle must feel when facing this common problem. - Introduce and explain the visualize worksheet. Have students draw what they visualized from page 4 on their worksheet. Invite students to share their drawings.
- As students read, encourage them to use other reading strategies in addition to the targeted strategy presented in this section.
- Explain to students that good readers often visualize, or create pictures in their mind, while
During Reading
Student Reading
Guide the reading: Have students read from page 5 to the end of page 8. Ask them to put an asterisk or a star next to information where they visualized. Encourage students who finish before everyone else to go back and reread.
- Model visualizing.
Think-aloud: When I read about the only black bear using an underpass during the first year of the Banff crossings, I pictured the immense mammal walking slowly and timidly across the metal walkway. I visualized other bears sniffing around, investigating the foreign structure and turning away, unwilling to explore further. Have students share the pictures of what they visualized while reading. - Invite students to share problems they have identified so far (page 4—the turtle moves much too slowly to make it across the busy six-lane freeway; page 6—the site of hundreds of collisions between animals and vehicles each year; page 7—cost millions of dollars, what if the animals didn’t use them; page 8—that first year, only one black bear and one mountain lion used the crossings).
- Introduce and explain the problem-and-solution worksheet. Point out that the problem with the turtle was worked out aloud and written on the board. Ask students to write the problem from page 6 on their worksheet. In pairs, have students write possible solutions aloud. Have student pairs share their solutions aloud. Lead a discussion about the positive and negative consequences of each possible solution. Record students’ ideas on the board under the sections for Problem, Possible Solutions, and Consequences. Have students complete the Consequences column on their worksheet. Ask them to circle the possible solution they think would be best for the animals.
- Point out the last row on their worksheets, Evaluation. explain that evaluating is thinking carefully about the options and deciding if the one chosen was best. encourage students to fill in the final row, writing their feelings about whether they think it was a good decision for Parks Canada to build animal underpasses and overpasses, and why or why not.
- Check for understanding: Have students read to the end of page 10. Have them visualize the information in the text as they read. Ask them to draw what they visualized on their visualize worksheet. Invite students to share what they visualized.
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