Comprehension Connections - Determining Importance

This year our lit coach had another great book for us to read - Comprehension Connections by Tanny McGregor.  This book is fantastic and ties in with a lot of the Common Core Reading Standards.  My favorite part about this book is it provides kids with concrete examples to multiple reading concepts - schema, determining importance, visualizing, etc. 

My favorite lesson so far from the book was the purse lesson on determining importance. In this lesson, you have the kids help you solve a problem and I used her example from the book.  I was going on a walk/hike and didn't want to take my purse with me.  So, the kids get to see what you have in your purse (which they love!) and then help you decide which items are important for you to take with you.  There was a lot of good thinking going on and a lot of interesting answers.  One student thought I didn't need to take my keys because I could just leave them on top of my car. When I explained to him that someone might steal my keys and my car, he said I could put a box over my keys to hide them :-).  Oh, I love how kids think! 

Below you'll find the anchor chart I used to chart our thinking and decisions. I found an example of the anchor chart on Pinterest and the book also has some examples.  Great book and great lesson!