Procedural text is frequently difficult for students to comprehend; they usually identifying and following sequential steps. In order to reinforce their understanding, this week we included other activities that would give them hands on experience.
This week's menu supported the curriculum's story, The Navajo Code Talkers, with comprehension discussion questions and a Summary Salad. In this tiered lesson, students had to distinguish important vs. interesting details and place them in sequence. Some students received a graphic organizer with pre-filled blanks, while others had to write a summary using the important details.
At the same time, students had to make a connection with their own lives and retell on a Flipgrid an event when they or someone they knew missed a step on a procedure and what were the consequences. This was an optional item, the alternative was answering questions in an Edpuzzle. A few students chose Edpuzzle, but majority were excited about sharing their experiences. Again, this was a great chance for my bilingual students to practice their english oral proficiency.
The last box on the menu involved solving a puzzle. Students were given pieces of a procedural text, they had to organize it in sequence, add a title and illustrations. The extension piece was to film a video tutorial. Knowing how my students obsess with YouTube I was eager to see their products. Sadly, we didn't have enough time for this last step.
As our final activity, students had to watch a tutorial on How to Make a Mini Piñata, extract the instructions and materials, and write them as a procedural text. Other groups would follow their instructions in order to create a mini piñata.
I think that these supplemental activities contributed to make memorable learning experiences giving procedural text context and purpose. However, we still struggle recognizing sequential structure in written text and making inferences about the importance of each step. We have to spiral these skills and expose our students to more written procedures.
And yes! We broke the piñata.
