Lessons & Units :: The Frog Scientist 5th Grade Unit

Read-Aloud Lesson: The Frog Scientist, Chapter 1

Lesson Plan

The Frog Scientist | 950L

The Frog Scientist
Learning Goal
Describe the steps of the experiment that scientist Tyrone Hayes is conducting to determine the effect of the pesticide atrazine on frogs.
Duration
Part 1: Approximately 40-45 minutes
 
Part 2: Approximately 15-20 minutes
 
Part 3: Approximately 15-20 minutes
Necessary Materials
Provided:
  1. Detailed lesson plan
  2. Graphic organizer for guided practice
  3. Independent student worksheet

Not Provided:
The Frog Scientist
 
  1. This lesson is a close reading of the entire text. So it’s important to engage students often, to enhance their learning. Here are two tips:

    •   When you ask the more complex questions from the lesson, ask students to “turn-and-talk” or “buddy-talk” before answering.

    •   Once you are deep into the lesson, instead of asking students every question provided, ask them to share with you what questions they should be asking themselves at that point in the text. This is also a great opportunity to use "turn-and-talk."
       
  2. Suggested teacher language is included in the lesson.

  3. We recommend you read the book once to your students, either the day or morning before teaching the lesson.

  4. This research-based, read-aloud lesson may seem long. Why do students need the lesson to be this way?
 

Part 1: Teacher Modeling & Questioning

 

Write the following student-friendly learning goal on the board, then read the learning goal out loud with the class: 

We will describe the steps of the experiment used to determine the effect of the pesticide atrazine on frogs.

 
Prepare Students for the Lesson
 
  • Show students where Wyoming is on a map.
  • Show students where Tyrone’s lab is on a map (Berkeley, California).
  • Define pesticide. A pesticide is a chemical used to kill weeds or insects.
 
Transition your Students into the Text
 

Teacher says: What do you see on the cover of this book? (Call on students to describe the photographs on the cover.) You can see a big picture of a frog and two smaller pictures of a man, one where he is holding a net and standing by some water, and the other where he is looking through a microscope. The title of this book is The Frog Scientist, and the man in the picture is scientist Tyrone Hayes, who studies frogs.

As you can see in the pictures, Tyrone spends some time studying frogs in the wild and some time studying frogs in his lab. We are going to learn today about an experiment that he did to try to understand why the number of frogs in the world might be going down. The book has seven chapters, and today we are going to read chapter 1.

 
Show students the photographs in the book as you read.
 
Read page 1 out loud and continue until the end of the fifth paragraph on page 2. The fifth paragraph ends with “Their goal: fifty juvenile frogs.”
1.
Teacher asks: The author just gave us important information about the setting and people in this chapter. Where are Dr. Tyrone Hayes and his team?
 
Students answer: Dr. Tyrone Hayes and his team are in Wyoming.
2.
Teacher asks: Who is with Tyrone?
 
Students answer: Tyrone is there with his son, Tyler, and with two other people, Jasmin and Young.
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3.
Teacher says: I see Tyrone and his team were sleeping and camping outside in the grass near a place called Dugway Pond, and then they get up to go to the pond.
4.
Teacher says: I would like to know what they are doing in Wyoming at Dugway Pond.
5.
Teacher asks: What does Young do?
 
Students answer: Young takes a water sample.
6.
Teacher asks: What do Tyrone, Jasmine, and Tyler do?
 
Students answer: They “hunt” and capture frogs.
7.
Teacher asks: How many frogs are Tyrone, Jasmine, and Tyler trying to capture?
 
Students answer: They are trying to capture 50 frogs.
8.
Teacher asks: What kind of frogs?
 
Students answer: Juvenile frogs.
9.
Teacher says: “Juvenile” means young. So they are only catching young frogs, not older frogs.
10.
Teacher asks: What does the author tell us about why Tyrone and his team are at Dugway Pond?
 

Students answer:

  • Tyrone and his team are there to catch 50 juvenile leopard frogs.
  • The text also states that Young takes a sample of water in a glass bottle.
11.
Teacher says: So they are there to study the frogs and the water in Dugway Pond.
 
Read the rest of page 2 out loud. Continue and stop at the end of the first full paragraph on page 3. The first full paragraph ends with “…that can harm wildlife.”
12.
Teacher says: The part we just read ends with this sentence, “You wouldn’t know it, but even in a place like this there can be pesticides that can harm wildlife.”
13.
Teacher asks: What does the author mean by that statement?
 
Students answer: The author means that even in a place that seems so clean and natural and far away from people and pollution, there can be “pesticides” that can harm the plants and animals that live there.
 
Read the next two paragraphs on page 3 out loud, then stop. The second paragraph ends with ”…affect growing frogs.”
14.
Teacher asks: Who can tell us what pesticides are?
 
Students answer: Pesticides are chemicals that kill weeds or insects.
15.
Teacher asks: Who uses pesticides?
 
Students answer: Farmers use pesticides on their crops.
16.
Teacher asks: What are two ways that pesticides can be carried from place to place?
 

Students answer:

  1. Pesticides can be carried from place to place by the rain.
  2. Pesticides can be carried from place to place by the wind.
17.
Teacher asks: What is Tyrone trying to find out about pesticides?
 
Students answer: Tyrone is trying to find out how pesticides affect frogs.
 
Read the rest of page 3 out loud. Continue and stop after the second paragraph on page 4. The second paragraph ends with “…calls Tyler.”
18.
Teacher says: This part of the text tells us about the team finishing up with collecting frogs.
19.
Teacher asks: How many frogs did they collect in total?
 
Students answer: The team collected 50 frogs.
20.
Teacher asks: Did they collect just any kind of frog they could find?
 

Students answer:

  1. No, they collected only juvenile frogs, which means young frogs.
  2. No, they collected only leopard frogs.
21.
Teacher asks: At this point, can you predict why Tyrone and his team are collecting these young leopard frogs?
 
Students answer: They are collecting them to find out about pesticides and frogs. The book says that Tyrone wants to know how pesticides in the environment affect growing frogs.
 
Read the next two paragraphs on page 4 out loud, then stop. The second paragraph ends with “…answer some big questions.”
22.
Teacher says: We learned in this section that Tyrone came to Dugway Pond earlier in the spring.
23.
Teacher asks: When he visited the pond at that time, what was the first thing he did?
 
Students answer: Tyrone tested the water.
24.
Teacher asks: What did testing the water tell him?
 
Students answer: It told him that there was no atrazine in the pond.
25.
Teacher asks: What else did Tyrone do at that time?
 
Students answer: He collected some frog eggs to raise in his lab.
26.
Teacher asks: What did Tyrone do after he collected the frog eggs?
 
Students answer: He put a drop of atrazine into the pond water.
27.
Teacher asks: Why did Tyrone put a drop of atrazine into the pond water?
 

Students answer:

  • He did it as part of his experiment.
  • He wanted to know if it would affect the frogs there.
 
Read the rest of page 4 out loud. Continue and stop after the first full paragraph on page 6. (The paragraph ends with ”…millions of others.)“
28.
Teacher asks: When did Tyrone make his first trip to Dugway Pond?
 
Students answer: He made his first trip in the spring.
29.
Teacher asks: What did Tyrone do then?
 
Students answer: He collected frog eggs and put a drop of atrazine in the water.
30.
Teacher asks: Was there atrazine in the water when he collected those eggs?
 
Students answer: No, there was not.
31.
Teacher asks: What was Tyrone going to do with these eggs?
 
Students answer: He was going to raise them in his lab.
32.
Teacher asks: What is Tyrone doing on the trip he is making to Dugway Pond now?
 
Students answer: He is catching young frogs.
33.
Teacher asks: Was there atrazine in the water when these frogs were born?
 
Students answer: Yes, there was.
34.
Teacher says: This order of events is very important, so let’s summarize it.
35.
Teacher asks: What did Tyrone do when he visited Dugway Pond the first time?
 
Students answer: He collected frog eggs and put a drop of atrazine in the water.
36.
Teacher asks: What did Tyrone and his team do on the second visit to Dugway Pond?
 
Students answer: He and his team caught young frogs.
37.
Teacher asks: How many groups of frogs does Tyrone have now?
 
Students answer: He has two groups of frogs.
38.
Teacher asks: Which group of frogs grew up in water without atrazine?
 
Students answer: The group of frogs that Tyrone took as eggs from Dugway Pond on his first visit grew up in water without atrazine.
39.
Teacher asks: Which group of frogs grew up in water with atrazine?
 
Students answer: The group of frogs that came from Dugway Pond on Tyrone’s second visit grew up in water with atrazine.
40.
Teacher asks: Can you predict what Tyrone is going to do with the two sets of frogs?
 

Students answer:

  • He’s going to compare them.
  • He’s going to look for differences between the frogs that grew up in water without atrazine and the frogs that grew up in water with atrazine.
 
Read the next two paragraphs on page 6, then stop. (The paragraph ends with “…completely exposed.)”
41.
Teacher says: We learned that Tyrone has done experiments with male leopard frogs before. He found out that male frogs raised in water with atrazine were deformed and grew eggs, like female frogs, instead of sperm, like normal male frogs.
42.
Teacher asks: What does Tyrone want to compare in this experiment?
 
Students answer: He wants to compare the frogs raised in his laboratory that were not exposed to atrazine with the frogs that he just caught that were exposed to atrazine.
 
Read the remainder of page 6 out loud, then stop. The page ends with ”…our water?”
43.
Teacher asks: Why is Tyrone’s experiment important for us and not just for frogs?
 
Students answer: It is important because if atrazine affects frogs, it could affect humans too. Humans and frogs live in the same environment. Frogs may tell us something important about that environment.
 
Finish the read-aloud by showing students the pictures on pages 6 and 7 and explaining them. On page 6, Young is making labels for the water that she collected from Dugway Pond. On page 7, the large picture shows Tyrone with some of the juvenile leopard frogs that the team caught. The smaller pictures show Tyler and Jasmin counting and sorting the frogs.
 

Part 2: Guided Practice & Discussion

 
For this oral lesson, it is suggested to have the completed graphic organizer on the board with the answers concealed. After students provide a correct answer, reveal the corresponding answer on the graphic organizer.
1.
Teacher asks: What was the first step in Tyrone’s experiment?
 
Students answer: The first step in Tyrone’s experiment was to test the water in Dugway Pond for atrazine.
2.
Teacher asks: What was the second step in Tyrone’s experiment?
 
Students answer: The second step was to remove frog eggs from Dugway Pond so that Tyrone could take them back to his laboratory to raise them.
3.
Teacher asks: What was the third step in Tyrone’s experiment?
 
Students answer: The third step was to place a drop of atrazine in Dugway Pond.
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4.
Teacher asks: What was the fourth step?
 
Students answer: The fourth step was to return to Dugway Pond and catch 50 young frogs that were born after atrazine was added to the water.
5.
Teacher asks: What was the fifth step?
 
Students answer: The fifth step was to kill the 50 young frogs and take them back to the lab.
6.
Teacher asks: What is the sixth step?
 
Students answer: The sixth step is to compare the frogs that grew up in water without atrazine to the frogs that grew up in water with atrazine.
 
After the answers for the graphic organizer have been completed and discussed with the class, ask and discuss the following two extension questions:
 
I. Teacher asks: What parts of Tyrone’s experiment were harmful to frogs and the environment?
 
Students answer: Tyrone took two harmful actions. He put atrazine in Dugway Pond, which had been clean before. He also killed the 50 frogs that he collected from the pond.
 
II. Teacher asks: How might he justify, or defend, these actions?
 
Students answer: He might justify these actions by saying that in order to save millions more frogs from dying, he needed to prove that atrazine is causing the deformities in male frogs. Adding a small amount of atrazine to Dugway Pond and killing the 50 frogs may actually help millions more frogs, as well as other species of animals and amphibians. The book also states that the atrazine Tyrone added will break down after a few months.
 

Part 3: Student Independent Practice

 
Both the student question set and teacher answer sheet are provided in the 'Text & Materials' section.

Texts & Materials

Standards Alignment

(To see all of the ReadWorks lessons aligned to your standards, click here.)

User Comments

Interesting articles or passages and reading material to supplemental reading to support theme. Articles and passages captures student's attention and reinforces skills the student's need.

Submitted by gwk002_1915639 on 6/21/16

Do I need to purchase the book?

Submitted by riley.weiss_2013814 on 3/24/16
Thanks for posting. Yes, you would need to purchase the book. On the book information page on ReadWorks.org, we have a link to the book on Amazon for your convenience. You can get to the information page by clicking the following link: http://www.readworks.org/books/frog-scientist
Submitted by ReadWorks on 3/29/16

AMAZING!

Submitted by yamiro83_1366183 on 1/28/16

superb....!!! I love Readworks.....!!!!!

Submitted by spr9641507_1134717 on 4/17/15