Academic Standards

 

Reading Objective:

Children will discover how one student made changes in her school.

 

Social and Life Skills:

activism, voting

 

Page 4 Skill:

read a bar graph

 

Vocabulary:

menu, opinion, voted, soggy

 

CCSS:

RI.2.1 key details; RI.2.2 identify the main topic; RI.2.4 determine meanings of words; RI.2.10 read informational texts; RF.2.3 identify words; RF.2.4 read on-level texts; W.2.1 writing; SL.2.1 collaborative conversations; SL.2.3 ask and answer questions

 

Watch the video

Build background knowledge about things long ago and today by watching “Kids Can Change the World.” When you’re done watching, ask the following question: What is one way kids can make changes in the world?

Preview new vocabulary words

Project the online vocabulary slideshow and introduce this issue’s featured words.

Set a purpose for reading

  • Have students do a picture walk through the issue, then read and discuss the cover. Ask students what they would want for lunch. Can they predict how Elsa helped change her school?
  • Then before turning to page 2, say, “As we read the article, think about the ways Elsa and her class made changes at their school.”

Use the Read and Think skill sheet to check comprehension as you read the issue as a class. At each stopping point on the sheet, pause to discuss the questions. Students can fill out the sheet as you go along.

Play the online game: What’s for Lunch? Word Search

(skill: vocabulary)

Read a paired text: Lunch From Home by Joshua David Stein

This book celebrates the cultural diversity of bringing a lunch from home to school. In a cafeteria full of sandwiches, four students overcome the initial stares and scrunched noses of classmates to embrace their heritage!

Read an issue from the archive: Melody’s Playground (March 2022).

Meet Melody Day, a student who worked to make her school playground more accessible, in “Melody’s Playground” (March 2022).