READ 30280

Teaching Literacy
Signature Assignment: Comprehension Lesson Plan for Guided Reading

Lesson Plan Outline Format

Briana Nadrich
Brandi Chastain, womens soccer star, pledges brain for concussion study.
(2016, October 3). Retrieved April 27, 2016, from
https;//newsela.com/articles/Chastain-brain/id/1594/
Study says age 11 and younger may be too soon to play tackle football. (2015,
February 3). Retrieved April 27, 2016, from
https://newsela.com/articles/youngnfl-injuries/id/7199/
Text Complexity
Qualitative level:
The layout is a somewhat complex task (2)
The purpose and meaning is a complex task (3)
The structure and discourse is a somewhat complex task (2)
The language features is a simple task (1)
The knowledge demands informational is a complex task (3)
Quantitative level:
Lexile level between 640 and 850
Reader Characteristics
The students are enthusiastic and look forward to reading, but struggle in
certain context areas. When reading fiction they need help with making
predictions and inferences, but with non-fiction they have difficulty
determining what the most important main ideas are.
Focus of Instruction:
One comprehension skill that I am going to be focusing on is teaching students
how to figure out which main ideas are most essential. I specifically plan to
teach the students how to decide which main ideas throughout the text are
most important. Sam and some of his fellow classmates dont struggle with
finding the main ideas in a writing, but rather how to order each main idea
according to significance. The children will learn how to determine which
main ideas from the text are most influential and vital to understanding the
text

READ 30280
Teaching Literacy
Signature Assignment: Comprehension Lesson Plan for Guided Reading
Objective(s):
Students will be able to identify all main
ideas of a writing excerpt and put the two
main ideas into order of importance through
a bubble graph

ELA CCSS Standards:

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.5.2

List of materials
The text: Are some kids to young to play football?
The text: Brandi Chastain, womens soccer star, pledges brain for
concussion study
Highlighter
Bubble chart
Lesson Procedures
Before: To start off, I will hand out an article to each student which is titled
Brandi Chastain, womens soccer star, pledges brain for concussion study. I
will have each student read along with me as I read aloud. As I am reading the
text I will highlight key points to help me find the main ideas in case I forget. I
will then begin to fill out a bubble graph putting all of the main ideas in each
bubble. Finally, I will put a number in each bubble which will represent the
order of importance of the main ideas. This will give the students an idea of
what they will be doing by themselves.
During: The students including Sam will be placed in a small group. Once
they are in their group I will hand each of them a highlighter and a copy of the
text they will be reading which is Are some kids to young to play football?.
Before they start to read I will encourage them to highlight main points in the
reading. Once they are finished reading I will hand out a bubble graph, they
will fill in each bubble with a main idea from the text. The students will work
in groups of two and they will fill out the bubble graph together. After they fill
the graph out, they will number the two main ideas into order of importance.
After: How will you extend what they learned and engage them in higher
level thinking about the text? How will you encourage independent
application of the skill and strategy? Sam and his fellow classmates will now
be doing what they previously learned on their own. They will first go find
their independent reading book. After reading their book they will write down
the main ideas of the reading in the bubble graph and once they are done they
will number each main idea in order of importance. I will then asses if they
have an understanding of the task.
Method of Assessment I will be able to assess the students ability to meet the

READ 30280
Teaching Literacy
Signature Assignment: Comprehension Lesson Plan for Guided Reading

objective in two ways. The first way is me observing their work as they are
completing it and the second way is collecting their worksheet at the end to
see if they were able to order the main ideas in order of importance. The two
worksheets I will be collecting is their group work and their independent
work. This will show me if they have an understanding on how to determine
the most important main ideas
Criteria for Success I will be looking to see if the students were able to write
down all of the main ideas in the text, but most importantly if they were
capable of numbering each idea in order of importance.

READ 30280
Teaching Literacy
Signature Assignment: Comprehension Lesson Plan for Guided Reading

READ 30280
Teaching Literacy
Signature Assignment: Comprehension Lesson Plan for Guided Reading

Reading text
Brandi Chastain is a famous soccer player who helped the United States win the 1999
Women's World Cup title. Her penalty kick scored the winning goal. Now, she has pledged
her brain to science for concussion studies. Concussions are head injuries that damage the
brain. They can be caused by strikes to the head, like when a soccer player heads the ball.
On Thursday, 47-year-old Chastain announced that she will give her brain to the Concussion
Legacy Foundation. Upon her death, her brain will go to the Brain Bank.
Studying Head Injuries
"It is really about: How I can help impact soccer beyond scoring a goal in 1999 in the World
Cup final. Can I do something more to leave soccer in a better place than it was when I began
this wonderful journey with this game?" she said.
Scientists are studying the human brain and spinal cord after death. They hope to learn
about chronic traumatic encephalopathy, which is also called CTE. The condition is caused by
hitting the head. It is common in boxers. CTE makes the brain stop working normally over
time, and it changes the way a person behaves, thinks, and moves.
Last month scientists announced that they had found signs of CTE in the brain of Ken Stabler,
who used to be a quarterback in the NFL. Of the 307 brains in the bank, just seven are from
women. None of the women's brains has been found to have CTE.
"You Just Shook It Off"
Dr. Ann McKee works at the brain bank program. She said that so little is known about how
male and female brains react differently to damage. Chastain's pledge, said McKee, "marks an
important step" to help scientists understand better.
Chastain is not sure she has had concussions, but suspects she has had at least a couple. In her
playing days, there wasn't the knowledge about concussions that there is today.
"You just shook it off back then," she said.
Chastain played for the U.S. national team from 1988 to 2004. She was on the team that won
the Women's World Cup in 1991 and 1999.
Not Just A Football Problem

READ 30280
Teaching Literacy
Signature Assignment: Comprehension Lesson Plan for Guided Reading

Today, Chastain is a youth coach and mom living near San Francisco, California. She has
partnered with the Concussion Legacy Foundation's Safer Soccer Initiative. They are asking
youth coaches to get rid of headers in practice and games for those under 14. Young kids are
more likely to get concussions. Their brains are not fully developed and their necks are not
strong yet.
"It's been a journey about education for me," Chastain said. "I've been involved in sports for a
long time, only up until recently, have people been talking about concussions, and then
concussions specifically related to soccer. It's been mostly a football problem... But it's not."
Concussions In Girls' Soccer
A study published in the American Journal of Sports Medicine in 2012 showed that football
had the highest number of concussions among high school athletes. Girls' soccer was second.
The Concussion Legacy Foundation helped find the first case of CTE in a soccer player. It
was in Patrick Grange, a soccer player known for his headers. He was 29 when he died in
2012.
Chastain hopes other female athletes will pledge their brains to science too. Some of her
teammates from the U.S. women's soccer team have pledged their brains already.
When Chastain told her 9-year-old son about giving her brain to science, she said: "Well, I
won't need it anymore, so I might as well put it to good use."

READ 30280
Teaching Literacy
Signature Assignment: Comprehension Lesson Plan for Guided Reading
Reading Texts
Getting bounced around in a game of football can harm the brain of a very young player. For
that reason, some scientists think kids should wait until they turn 12 before they start playing
tackle football.
A new study came out on Wednesday. It was a study of how playing football as a child affects
your brain as a grown-up.
Scientists began by gathering 42 football players. They were between the ages of 41 and 65.
They fell into two groups. Half of them started playing football before they were 12. The
other half started when they were 12 or older. They all had played in the National Football
League (NFL).
The players in the two groups were alike in almost every way. The only big difference
between them was the age when they started playing football.
Memory Tests
The players were then given a series of tests. To measure memory, scientists read the players a
list of words. The players had to repeat the words back immediately, and then again 15
minutes later. Players were also tested on their problem-solving skills and verbal skills.
The players who had started playing football later in life did better on all three tests. The
players who started playing football before the age of 12 did worse. The findings suggest that
playing football harmed these players' brains.
Bob Stern was the main scientist behind the study. He said that the age of 12 was chosen as
the dividing line because it is an important time for the brain.
He explained that the brain changes a lot in the years leading up to a child's 12th birthday. He
and his fellow researchers wanted to see if playing football was particularly harmful during
those years.
Many young kids play football. According to two other researchers, Christopher Filley and
Charles Bernick, 7 out of 10 football players in the U.S. are younger than 14. Players between
9 and 12 bang their heads an average of 240 times in a single football season.
Study's Small Group
Filley and Bernick praised the new study. But they said it had some problems. Studies like
this one try to figure out what is going on by studying a "sample." There are too many people

READ 30280
Teaching Literacy
Signature Assignment: Comprehension Lesson Plan for Guided Reading

who played football as kids to test all of them. Instead, researchers test a few of them and look
for patterns. They hope that these patterns are the same for everyone. It is possible, though,
that the sample group will turn out to be different from most other people.
This study only tested 42 people. Maybe those 42 people were unusual in some way. Filley
and Bernick suggested that a larger sample group would have provided more evidence.
Also, all of the people in the study were professional football players. They had all played in
the NFL, where the best football players in the country play against each other. As a result, the
players in the study may be different than the average person who plays football as a kid.
What is true of professional players may not be true of everyone.
Stern agreed with Filley and Bernick. He admitted that the study was not perfect.
But, he said, if common sense tells parents that its not a great idea to put a kid at risk of
getting a head injury during an important time that the brain is developing, his study supports
that. Common sense may be right," he added.