Who was Neil Armstrong Literature Unit and a Nonfiction Summarizing Freebie!

So, I have been working on this unit for several weeks.  It was a work in progress.  I basically created it as we went, based on the needs of my students.

Permission to Pin!

Since the common core rolled out this year, the state of Georgia created lesson plans based on "extended texts" (a.k.a chapter books).  The plans were a skeleton of skills paired with the text.  Our administration asked that we use the text along with the balanced literacy approach.  So, a unit was born because I had to make sure it met the needs of my students.

The kids love these books.  I call them the "bobble head" books.  :O)  We do teach the solar system and the phases of the moon (click the links for our units we created for those, including some freebies).  We do not, however, explicitly teach Neil Armstrong, but I guess that was the integration piece.  Plus, it's a biography, which we do teach, and the kids loved Neil.

Our book is titled Who is Neil Armstrong because it was written before he died.  I see that they have changed the title.

Soooo, this is basically a unit based on this book.  We used it as a whole class book (sounds like an anthology to me, but we tried to make the best of it).  It would be a great book to use in small guided reading groups or as a read-aloud for the whole class.  It's a quick read.  For each chapter, there are comprehension questions and a skill sheet.  By no means could you do all of the activities for each chapter, but they are there for you to pick and choose from, depending on the needs of the students.  Here is a picture of the table of contents for the unit:

Also, for each chapter, there are journal prompts intended for reader's response. There are several copies of each prompt on the page.  I copied enough for my students and then cut them into strips.  Then they pasted them at the top of their page in their composition notebook and responded underneath.  Here is an example:

I hope you'll check out this unit!  We used it in 4th grade, but honestly, the book is on a 3rd grade reading level and could possibly be completed together in a 2nd grade class, if your students are reading on a higher level.  Or, if you use it as a read-aloud and you do the skill sheets together, that could work, too.

The first 3 people who comment, and are followers of our blog, will get this unit free!  Just leave a comment and your email address and we will send it to you!!

Now, I can't share a pay for product without giving you a freebie.  So, here are 2 of the pages you'll find in the unit below.  

These are the Nonfiction Summarizing Graphic Organizers we used.  For each chapter, we were working on summarizing. I did NOT make them summarize each chapter because that would have killed the book, but we did do it with 3 of them since that skill is hard.  Since nonfiction has different elements, we had to think differently on how to summarize.

We did the top organizer first. Then we transferred that to the bottom one, writing in complete sentences.  From there, we created a paragraph for the chapter.  I hope you find them helpful!  Feel free to pin these on Pinterest if you like them!!  

*Amanda*