Text Type: Nonfiction/Informational
Page Count: 24
Word Count: 2,002 

Book Summary
What do you and a bodybuilder have in common? Over 600 muscles! Yours may not be as big or as strong, but they’re there. This nonfiction book explains the three types of muscles, and the functions of each including the cardiac muscle. A detailed illustration explains how an electric charge causes the heart to contract. Photographs enhance the text. 

About the Lesson 

Targeted Reading Strategy

• Ask and answer questions

Objectives

• Use the reading strategy of asking and answering questions to understand and remember informational text
• Identify main ideas and details
• Recognize adverbs and the verbs they describe
• Understand and use content vocabulary

Materials

• Book -- Get Moving! All About Muscles (copy for each student)
• Chalkboard or dry erase board
• KWL, content vocabulary worksheets

Indicates an opportunity for student to mark in the book. (All activities may be completed with paper and pencil if you choose not to have students consume the books.)

Vocabulary

• Content words: Achilles tendon, deltoid, fascicles, gastrocnemius, gluteus maximus, hamstring, involuntary muscles, masseter, myofibril, quadriceps, sartorius, stapedius, temporalis, trapezius

Build Background

• Have students tell what they know about muscles. Ask them to identify places in the body in which they can make a muscle move, and places that they cannot.
• Create a KWL chart on the board and give students the KWL chart worksheet. Have them fill in the first column with what they know about muscles.

Preview the Book

Introduce the Book

• Give students a copy of the book and have them preview the front and back covers and read the title. Have students offer ideas as to what kind of book this is and discuss what it might be about.
• Have students turn to the table of contents. After reviewing the chapter titles, model using the table of contents as a way to think of questions.

Introduce the Strategy: Ask and answer questions

• Think-aloud: The first chapter in the book is titled “A Moving Machine.” I wonder if that is some kind of machine that makes a person’s muscles larger or stronger. I’ll write that question on the KWL chart: Is a moving machine a machine that will make a person’s muscles larger or stronger?
• Have students look at the other chapter titles. Have them write any questions they have about muscles based on the covers and table of contents in the middle column of the worksheet.
• Have students preview the rest of the book, looking at photos and “A Muscle Minute” boxes. Explain that each provides additional information about muscles.
• Encourage them to try the activity on page 15 when they have finished reading.
• As students read, they should use other reading strategies in addition to the targeted strategy presented in this section. For tips on additional reading strategies, click here.

Introduce the Vocabulary

• Remind students of the strategies they can use to sound out words they don't know. For example, they can use what they know about letter and sound correspondence to figure out the word. They can look for words within words and prefixes and suffixes. They can use the context to work out meanings of unfamiliar words.
• Model how to apply word-attack strategies. Have students turn to page 10 and find the word quadriceps. Model how students can use the explanation context clue together with the illustration to figure out the meaning of the unfamiliar word.
• For additional tips on teaching word-attack strategies, click here.

Set the Purpose

• Have students read the book to find the answers to their questions about muscles.

Student Reading

Guide the reading: Have students read to the end of page 11. Tell them to decide what each section, or chapter, is about and underline important information as they read. Tell students to go back and reread if they finish before everyone else.

• When they have finished reading, ask students to tell what the chapter titled “Muscle Monster” is about.
• Model answering a question on the KWL chart.
• Think-aloud: I’ll circle the first question on my KWL chart and write the answer because I found out what I wanted to know. I found out that I am the moving machine, not a piece of exercise equipment. My prediction about the muscle machine was wrong, but that’s okay because I found the right answer by reading.
• Have students review the questions written on their KWL charts and write in the answers.
• Ask students if they thought of other questions while reading. Have them add these to their KWL.
• Tell students to read the remainder of the book, looking for information that will answer the questions on their KWL charts.

Tell students to make a small question mark in their books beside any word they do not understand or cannot pronounce. These can be addressed in the discussion that follows.

Reflect on the Reading Strategies

• Ask students what words they marked in their books. Use this opportunity to model how they can read these words using decoding strategies and context clues.
• Reinforce that asking questions before and during reading, and looking for the answers while reading, keeps them interested in the topic, encourages them to keep reading to find the answers to their questions, and helps them understand and remember what they have read.

Teach the Comprehension Skill: Main idea and details

• Discussion: Review or explain that many books are about one thing. Ask students to tell the topic of the book (muscles). Remind students that not all books have the topic in the title, so it is necessary to look for clues in the table of contents or to read the book.
• Introduce and model the skill: Explain that each chapter contains a main idea and details about different muscles in the body. Have students turn to page 12 (“Mirror, Mirror”). Review or explain that the main idea is what the chapter is about. Ask students to review the chapter and tell what they think it is about (facial muscles). Write facial muscles on the board. Explain that the supporting details tell more about facial muscles. Have students name supporting details from the text on pages 12-13 (the muscles of your eye are the most active muscles, two muscles on your face are needed to raise and lower your jaw, the facial muscles help you smile and frown). Write student responses on the board. Explain how finding the main idea and the supporting details in a chapter helps readers understand and remember information.
• Check for understanding: Have students turn to page 14 and tell the main idea of the chapter (smooth muscles). Write smooth muscles on the board. Have students provide examples of details that tell more about the smooth muscles (move inside your body to help food travel through your system, move all on their own, generally smaller and thinner than skeletal muscles, important for breathing). Write student responses on the board.
• Independent practice: Have students complete the KWL worksheet. Discuss their responses.

Grammar and Mechanics: Adverbs

• Write the following sentence on the board: Strong muscles make your body work more efficiently. Underline the word efficiently.
• Review or explain that an adverb is a word that describes a verb, an adjective, or another adverb. Tell students that writers use adverbs to give the reader more information, and that an adverb usually tells how something is done. Ask students to tell what the adverb efficiently describes in the sentence (the verb move).
• Circle the --ly ending in the adverb efficiently. Explain that many, but not all, adverbs end in -ly. Tell students that efficient is the base word that the -ly ending has been added to in order to create a word that tells how, or in what manner, something is done.
• Tell students that in order to make some adjectives into adverbs, it is necessary to add more than -ly. Write the words sleepy and angry on the board. Explain that in order to make the adjective sleepy into an adverb, the -y must be changed to an -i before adding -ly. Tell students that the adverb then becomes sleepily. Use the word in a sentence. Have students tell what to do to the adjective angry to make it into an adverb, and have them use the word in a sentence.
• Reinforce by directing students to the last paragraph on page 6. Ask them to find the sentence that has an adverb and to tell the adverb, what verb it describes, and how the adverb was formed (literally, picked, added -ly).

Have students go through a chapter of the book, underlining the adverbs that end in -ly and circling the verbs they describe.

Word Work: Content vocabulary

• Tell students that most of the words in the book are used to tell about muscles and their functions. Provide opportunities for students to talk about difficult words such as gluteus maximus, quadriceps, and trapezius. Provide opportunities for students to say the new vocabulary words and use the words in sentences as they point to the muscles on their bodies.
• Give students the content vocabulary worksheet. Have them use their book as a reference as they label the diagrams.

Independent Reading

• Allow students to read their books independently or with a partner. Encourage repeated timed readings of a specific section or the entire book (in the case of short books). Additionally, partners can take turns reading parts of the book.

Home Connection

• Give students their books to take home to read with parents, caregivers, siblings, or friends.

Writing Connection

• Have students write jingles that encourage building strong muscles. For example, Walk, skip, or run…your muscles will have more fun! Have students share with the group.

Science Connection

• Have students research a specific muscle. Have them find out whether it is voluntary or involuntary and what types of exercises a person can do to strengthen it. If possible, invite an exercise physiologist to speak with the group about the benefits of exercise, not only for the muscles, but for the entire body.

Monitor students to determine if they can:

• use the reading strategy of asking and answering questions to understand informational text about muscles
• identify the main idea and supporting details in chapters
• identify adverbs that end in -ly and the verbs they describe; understand how to change some -y ending words to adverbs
• understand and use content vocabulary

Comprehension Checks

• Retelling Rubric