What are literature focus units?


Literature focus units are designed to help students move through the five stages of the reading process. Students are able to do this as they read and respond to stories, learn reading and writing strategies and skills, and engage in labguage arts activities. There are eight steps in developing a literature focus unit.



The first step to be aware of is selecting the featured book. Once this book has been selected teacher's gather related readings. These can be books by the same author, books with the same topic or other realted readings. The second step is to identify the instructional focus. In this step teachers will identify the the instuctional focus for the unit and then matching the book's strengths with language arts standards.



The third step for teachers is to specify language arts stategies and skills to teach. Teachers will also decide which activities they should include in their unit. The fourth step is to plan reading process activities. The fith step is to coordinate patterns with activities. Teachers must decide how to incorporate everything from whole-class activities to individual activities in their lesson.



Step six in this process is to locate technology resources. This can be very benificial to help students to move through this focus unit. The last two steps in this process are to plan for assessment and to create a time schedual. While planning for assessment teacher's plan two types. They are assessment of student's learning and monitoring of student's work.



When all of these steps are followed and implimented the teacher will have created a successful

literature focus unit that their students will enjoy.