This lesson is guaranteed to grab your students’ attention as you introduce them to types and elements of non-fiction, author’s purpose, and importance of considering audience and purpose when writing non-fiction. This lesson provides opportunity and practice at active listening and note-taking, collaborative learning, close reading, determining importance of details, and using context clues to determine word meaning. Students will work together to examine a variety of non-fiction reports and documents, sift through the texts for important details, create their own investigative report form, and culminate with a writing activity designed to prove their individual ability to close read and synthesize details. The lesson provides ample organizers, questions sets, and guidance to direct students in their exploration of a fascinating snakebite incident.
Your students will be intrigued and really WANT to read the story and investigate. The lesson set focuses on the story of Karl Schmidt, a scientist who was accidently bitten by a snake thought NOT to be lethal to humans. He did not seek medical attention but chose, instead, to scientifically document the results of the bite. He died the next day. Although his death is the end result of the incident, the documents and photos are not gory or graphic in nature. The video clip is a foundational part of this lesson. Please view it at: Diary of a Snakebite Death - https://youtu.be/jEyjF2bNQOA before you purchase this lesson to be sure that it is appropriate for your classroom.
Your students will develop their ELA skills as they become scientists in the exploration of this incident. You will be ringing cross-curricular bells and integrating science topics in your English lesson! This lesson set is designed to extend across @ 2 hours with a follow up writing assignment that may be done in the class or as homework.
This set includes an external link to my website where I have stored the video created by Science Friday; it is currently available in the public domain. I have downloaded and stored the video in case your school prohibits access to Youtube. It also contains a cloze for guided note-taking during the video, a paired historical newspaper article with guiding questions, a scientific investigation report, a guiding PPT with additional discussion questions, and a differentiated writing extension assignment. All documents are fully editable. An answer key for all documents is included.
Please use the PPT as a guide through the lesson set. I divided my 7th graders into pairs for collaborative learning and made copies accordingly. Depending on your class, some work may be more effectively addressed individually or as a whole class.