Back to the lesson plan builder
Lesson length30 min45 min60 min
Questions🔀 New questions

Print the plan for yourself; the student sheet prints on its own page after it.

English lesson plan · 3rd grade (Year 4 in England) · 30 minutes

Finding and retrieving information

Reading Comprehension

CCSS RI.3.1CCSS RL.3.1England: Y3/4 Reading (retrieval)England: KS2 SATs Reading

Objective and success criteria

Students will: Finding and retrieving information.

  • I can answer questions on today's skill on my own, without help.
  • I can explain each step and say why it works.
  • I can check my answer and spot a mistake.

Before and after

Needs first: Key details

Leads to: Fact and opinion; Citing textual evidence; Which sentence from the text best supports the answer?

Materials: A short text or extract (one copy each), Highlighters, Question cards, Mini whiteboards, A short model text on the board, Printed student sheet (below).

Warm-up · 4 min

  • Quick retrieval from earlier learning (Key details). Students answer on mini whiteboards.
  • Show answers together and note who needs support in the main task.
  1. Ducks have webbed feet. The skin between their toes helps them paddle. What helps ducks paddle? (their beaks / their feathers / their tails / the skin between their toes) → the skin between their toesPrompt: Find the part of the text that talks about this.
  2. Owls sleep in the day. At night they wake up and hunt for mice. When do owls hunt? (in the day / in the morning / after lunch / at night) → at nightPrompt: Find the part of the text that talks about this.
  3. A camel can walk for days in the hot desert. It stores fat in its hump. What does a camel store in its hump? (sand / fat / food bags / water) → fatPrompt: Find the part of the text that talks about this.

Hook · 3 min

  • Read the first lines of a short text aloud and ask what students predict will happen and why.
  • Share the objective: Finding and retrieving information. Read the success criteria together.

I do: model it · 7 min

  • Work through the example out loud, saying why you do each step, not just what you do.
  • Example: Hedgehogs are covered in about 5,000 spines. When they are scared, they curl into a tight ball so that only the spines show. What do hedgehogs do when they are scared?
  • Step 1: The answer is stated directly in the text.
  • Step 2: So the answer is: curl into a ball
  • Answer: curl into a ball
  • Pause after each step and ask a student to say what comes next.

We do: guided practice · 6 min

  • Do these together. Students try each step on whiteboards before you reveal it.
  • Use the hints as prompts rather than giving the answer.
  1. To make a paper boat, fold a sheet of paper in half. Fold the corners down to make a triangle. Then fold up the bottom edges and open out the middle. What shape do you make after folding the corners? (a square / a triangle / a circle / a star) → a trianglePrompt: Find the part of the text that talks about this.
  2. The blue whale is the largest animal that has ever lived. It can grow longer than two buses and eats tiny shrimp-like animals called krill. What do blue whales eat? (krill / fish / sharks / seaweed) → krillPrompt: Find the part of the text that talks about this.

You do: independent practice · 7 min

  • Students work on the student sheet. Circulate and check the first two answers of every student early.
  • Students who finish: write a question of their own for a partner, with the answer.

The 6 questions are on the student sheet below, with answers in the key.

Exit ticket · 3 min

  • Two questions on their own. Sort answers into got it / nearly / not yet to plan the next lesson.

Watch out for

  • Answering from memory or opinion instead of evidence in the text.
  • Copying a long quote without explaining what it shows.

Support and stretch

Support

  • Review first: Key details.
  • Use concrete materials: a short text or extract (one copy each).
  • Give the first step of each question, or a partly worked example to finish.
  • Pair with a confident partner for the guided practice.

Stretch

  • Move on to: Fact and opinion; Citing textual evidence; Which sentence from the text best supports the answer?.
  • Explain a common mistake in writing and how to fix it.
  • Write a word problem that uses today's skill, then solve a partner's.

Homework and more practice

Free online practice with hints and printable worksheets for this skill: eurekami.com/english/grade-3.

Free lesson plan from eurekami.com/lesson-plan-builder

eurekami

Finding and retrieving information

Name

Date

Score/ 6

The Drone at the Marsh (a play)

CAST: NIA, a young volunteer · AMIR, her older cousin · MRS HOLT, the nature reserve warden SCENE: A wooden bird hide at the edge of a marsh. Early morning. (NIA peers through binoculars. AMIR carries a small drone and a controller.) AMIR: (cheerfully) Watch this, Nia. I'll fly it over the reeds and film the whole marsh. NIA: (lowering the binoculars) Wait! The terns are nesting out there. AMIR: It's only a little drone. They won't even notice. (MRS HOLT enters, holding a clipboard.) MRS HOLT: Morning, both. Is that a drone? AMIR: (proudly) It has a 4K camera. MRS HOLT: (gently) Birds may think a drone is a hawk. If the parents fly off their nests, the eggs can get cold. NIA: So filming them could hurt them. (AMIR looks at the drone, then at the marsh. A pause.) AMIR: (quietly) I didn't know that. Could I film the car park instead, and show people where the hide is? MRS HOLT: (smiling) That would be very helpful.

  1. Question 1

    Read "The Drone at the Marsh (a play)". According to Mrs Holt, why can drones be a problem for nesting birds?

    • A. Drones eat insects that birds need.
    • B. Drones are too loud for the warden.
    • C. Birds like to chase drones.
    • D. Birds may think a drone is a hawk and leave their eggs.

  1. Question 2

    Hedgehogs are covered in about 5,000 spines. When they are scared, they curl into a tight ball so that only the spines show. What do hedgehogs do when they are scared?

    • A. make a loud noise
    • B. run up a tree
    • C. curl into a ball
    • D. dig a hole

A Helicopter on Mars

In February 2021, NASA's Perseverance rover landed on Mars. Tucked underneath it was a passenger: a tiny helicopter called Ingenuity. It weighed only about 1.8 kilograms, a little less than a big bag of flour. Flying on Mars is much harder than flying on Earth. The air on Mars is extremely thin, about one hundredth as thick as the air we breathe. Helicopter blades push against the air to lift off, so with so little air, Ingenuity's blades had to spin very fast: about 2,400 times a minute. On 19 April 2021, Ingenuity rose about three metres into the Martian sky, hovered for about forty seconds and landed again. It was the first powered, controlled flight on another planet. Engineers on Earth cheered, even though the radio signals took several minutes to reach them. Ingenuity was only meant to make five test flights. Instead, it made 72. It scouted ahead for the rover, taking photos of rocks and slopes so that drivers on Earth could choose safe routes. In January 2024, one of Ingenuity's blades was damaged during a landing, and the mission ended. The little helicopter still sits on Mars today, and engineers are already using what they learned to design bigger flying machines for future missions.

  1. Question 3

    Read "A Helicopter on Mars". Why did Ingenuity's blades have to spin so fast?

    • A. Because the air on Mars is very thin.
    • B. Because the helicopter was heavy.
    • C. Because the rover was chasing it.
    • D. Because Mars is very hot.

My Grandmother's Hands

My grandmother's hands are brown and wrinkled, like a map of rivers that have been flowing for eighty years. When I was small, I used to trace the lines with my finger and ask her where each one went. "This one," she would say, pointing to a deep crease across her palm, "goes back to the farm where I grew up, where I picked cotton until my fingers bled." Then she would point to a thin white scar on her thumb. "And this one leads to the night I learned to cook for eight brothers and sisters." Her hands have kneaded thousands of loaves of bread. They have stitched every quilt in our house and plaited my hair before every first day of school. They once caught my baby brother when he slipped from the top of the slide, faster than anyone thought an old woman could move. These days her hands shake a little when she holds her teacup. Sometimes she drops a stitch and has to start a row again. But when she takes my hands in hers, they are still the strongest hands I know.

  1. Question 4

    Read "My Grandmother's Hands". How did Grandmother get the scar on her thumb?

    • A. stitching a quilt
    • B. catching the baby
    • C. learning to cook for her brothers and sisters
    • D. picking cotton

The Margin

Zainab had read the library book three times before she noticed the handwriting. It was in the margin of page 112, so faint she had taken it for a smudge. In tiny, slanted letters, someone had written: "Don't trust the narrator." Underneath, in different ink and a rounder hand, someone else had replied: "Why not?" And beneath that, in the first writer's slant: "Read chapter 9 again." She read chapter 9 again. Then she read it a fourth time, and a fifth, and on the sixth she saw it – a single sentence where the narrator claimed to have been at home when, three chapters earlier, he had described himself on a train. A lie, hidden in plain sight. The whole story tilted, like a picture knocked crooked on a wall. Zainab sat back. She checked the date stamps on the card inside the front cover. The book had been borrowed forty-seven times since 1994. Somewhere among those forty-seven readers were two people who had held a conversation across years without ever meeting. She found a pencil. For a long time she hesitated over the page, feeling as if she were about to speak in a room full of strangers. Then, carefully, beneath the other two, she wrote: "Found it. Thank you." When she returned the book, the librarian frowned at the pencil marks. Zainab apologised. But as she walked home, she wondered who would be next to find them.

  1. Question 5

    Read "The Margin". What did the first note in the margin say?

    • A. "Why not?"
    • B. "Read chapter 3 again."
    • C. "Don't trust the narrator."
    • D. "Found it. Thank you."

The Moon's Night Walk (a poem)

The moon puts on her silver coat and tiptoes up the sky. She hums a tune to sleepy owls and winks at clouds nearby. She paints the rooftops pearly white, she lights the cat's way home, she peeps into the children's rooms to check they're not alone. She counts the stars like sleeping sheep, she sings the sea to rest, she hangs a lantern on the hill for travellers in the west. And when the sun yawns in the east and stretches out his rays, the moon slips off her silver coat and hides away for days. But look up on a quiet night when all the town's asleep: she's tiptoeing across the sky with promises to keep.

  1. Question 6

    Read "The Moon's Night Walk (a poem)". What does the moon do for the cat?

    • A. paints it white
    • B. wakes it up
    • C. lights its way home
    • D. sings it to sleep

Free from eurekami.com

for the adult only

Answer key: Finding and retrieving information

  1. 1. D. Birds may think a drone is a hawk and leave their eggs.

  2. 2. C. curl into a ball

  3. 3. A. Because the air on Mars is very thin.

  4. 4. C. learning to cook for her brothers and sisters

  5. 5. C. "Don't trust the narrator."

  6. 6. C. lights its way home