Scientific Important Book Passages

This writing across the curriculum lesson was created by Northern Nevada Writing Project Consultant Corbett Harrison, who believes it would work with students in grades 3-12.

Lesson Information:

Lesson Objective: Margaret Wise Brown's The Important Book contains a dozen "Important Book Passages," which are Brown's original structure for looking at items that are important to her. She first says what's most important about an item, then she shares three or four other interesting details, and then she again stresses what's most important. This simple type of passage can be assigned to students so they can show what they have learned about scientific topics.

Writing skills (traits) to stress while teaching this lesson:

• Idea Development (choosing important details, including the most important detail)
• Organization (linking an introduction to a conclusion, and making a thorough paragraph)
• Conventions (using correct spelling, especially of vocabulary words)

Materials List:

• A copy of Margaret Wise Brown's The Important Book
  (Click here to view the book at Amazon.com)
• Student examples of scientific important passages
• Overhead to demonstrate turning ordinary details into extraordinary details

Teacher Instructions:

• Share several pages of Margaret Wise Brown's The Important Book. Talk to your students about 1) the obvious structure of the passages and 2) the fact that Brown didn't just put any facts down; she chose memorable facts to include in her passages.
• Put the turning ordinary details into extraordinary details page on the overhead. Have students work in pairs or as a whole group to--based on the example--turn the ordinary column's content into extraordinary content.
• Inform students that they will be writing about a scientific topic (this can be teacher-asigned or student free-choice), and their reporting will be done in the form of an important book passage.
• Stress to students, as they create paragraphs, to carefully choose the MOST important detail as their introductory line and their final line. Stress to students that the details between the introduction and the conclusion need to be extraordinary.
• If there's time, have students read each other's rough drafts, checking for spelling and meaning, making suggestions for clearer meaning. These paragaphs tend to improve between rough draft and second draft.
• Assign this format of writing once a week with your science curriculum; with regular use, your students will get better at it, their use of details will improve, and they'll begin to grasp the concept of paragraph better.