Marissa Darling

Heather Harris

CI 402

February 28, 2013

Lesson Plan #1

Gateway Activity

Objective: Students will be inspired to write descriptor words about the image that is projected on the smart board. Students will be able to produce a variety of words that deal with different senses and even suggest action in the photo.

Assessments: Teacher will rotate around the room to check that all members in the group are participating in brain storming words. Students will hang up posters full of words at the front of classroom that will show if they were able to produce a large variety of descriptive words.

In the gateway activity for this lesson, the teacher will project the image that is below onto the smart board. The teacher will then turn off all the lights in the classroom and play a sound clip of the ocean. The students will look at the image and listen to the ocean for thirty-seconds and then the teacher will give a quick dialogue. She will say, “Imagine you are on a ship and you have been lost for days, but one night as you are on deck you see an old abandoned castle on a shore in the distance. The moon makes the castle seem spooky and you are pretty sure you should avoid the island, but as you are deciding if you should wake the other passengers you hear a beautiful voice singing. Encouraged by the existence of other humans on the island you begin to direct the ship toward the shore.” The teacher will let the students think for about fifteen-seconds, and then they will break up into groups of about four. Each group will have a poster that is entitled descriptor words, the students will brain storm adjectives and verbs that might fit into the scene of this picture on the poster. After the students have brain stormed in their groups the students will come back together and share their words with the class, posting their poster at the front of the room after they have shared.

Activity for Students to Learn Task Specific Procedures

Objective: Students will know what an adjective is and be able to use adjectives in a sentence.

Assessment: Students will turn in a worksheet with sentences that they have constructed during the adjective activity.

In the task specific activity the teacher will set out five different pieces of candy at each student’s desk with a worksheet. The worksheet will give the students directions on where to put each sentence that the students will construct. At the top of the page there will be a few blank lines, the teacher will instruct the students to write in those blanks what they think an adjective is, after they have finished this the teacher will show them the correct definition and the students will be allowed to copy this definition on their sheet. After this is finished the students will begin to work through the activity the first blank will be for the number of pieces of candy, the students will write a sentence that says how many pieces of candy there are. Next they will start with the piece of candy that is labeled number 1, for each piece of candy the students will write a sentence about how it looks, how it smells, how it feels, how it sounds when you bite into it, and how it tastes. The first piece of candy the class will do a whole class, the teacher will instruct the students how to work through each piece of candy and ask different students to give example sentences for each of the five senses that are required. After the students have worked through

the first piece of candy the students will finish the last four pieces on their own. The teacher will circulate the class and make sure that they are not struggling or to see if any student has questions. If a student does not like a certain piece of candy and does not want to taste it, they will be allowed to ask a neighbor or their teacher for descriptive words and use those in their sentences. After they have finished the activity the students will turn in their worksheet with the completed sentences.

Generating Evaluative Criteria

Objective: Students will be able to negotiate the difference between a narrative that gives lots of descriptive detail and a narrative that does not give enough detail.

Assessment: As a class students will vote between two samples of writing on which gives more descriptive detail. The students will also rank three sets of writing based on which piece of writing gives the least to the most descriptive detail and turn their rankings into the teacher.

The teacher will collect ten short paragraphs, five that include great descriptive detail and five that include very little descriptive detail to put on a power point slide. The teacher will explain to the students that a well written fictional narrative provides lots of detail for its reader, and that in order to provide detail a writer has to use descriptive words throughout his or her’s prose. She will then provide an example of a paragraph with a lot of descriptive words and one without a lot of descriptive words and ask the students to vote on what paragraph provides the most detail, after they vote the students will point out examples of descriptive words in the paragraph and the teacher will circle them in the text on the smart board. After this first vote the students will vote on four more sets of paragraphs, on the first two paragraphs after the vote a student will come up to the smart board and circle all of the descriptors in the paragraph. On the last two paragraph sets students will come up and add descriptive words into the paragraph that was voted to not have enough descriptor words. Finally, the teacher will provide three short paragraphs at the end of class that the students are to rank from worst to best based on the amount of description they use, this ranking will be their exit ticket from class as well as proof that they have mastered how to evaluate the main criteria expected from them in this specific writing assignment.

Generating Ideas for Writing Together

Objective: Students will be able to brain storm ideas for their fictional narrative in partner groups, and begin writing their story.

Assessment: Partner groups will team write the first four paragraphs of their story and turn it in for assessment.

Using the gateway activity prompt groups of two students will team write the first four paragraph’s of their story. Students will be given a small talk about making sure to negotiate the story in ways that both students are interested in the route that the story takes. The students will split up into their partner’s and begin to write the first four paragraphs together, the students will use the image on the smart board and the descriptor posters that are hung on either side of the

image, along with the short narrative the teacher provided during the gateway activity to construct a fictional tale that gives a lot of description. In writing the first four paragraphs using team writing the student is able to hear a different perspective from a peer and negotiate their story based on details that are provided as a group. Each partner will have the same beginning first four paragraphs and will finish the remainder of the story on their own, which will allow the student to creatively write their story to their own liking as well.

Peer Response

Objective: Students will be able to give and receive evaluative feed back about their narratives and used the feed back to revise their fictional narrative.

Assessment: Students will fill out a peer review sheet for their partner’s narrative that they read. Students will also fill out a sheet telling why or why not they used certain suggestions from their partner and turn it in with their final revised paper.

After the students have finished their fictional narrative, students will be split into groups of three. Students will exchange narratives and read them in class, after each student reads a classmates narrative they will fill out a sheet with suggestions for the story. This sheet will be given to the student so that they can use this to revise their final story. Each student should receive two peer reviews by the end of the class that day. The students will then revise their papers and fill out a sheet that says what suggestions from their peer’s they did and did not use, and why they did or did not use those suggestions. For the final paper students will turn in their rough draft story, their final story, their peer review sheets, and their sheet that tells what suggestions they did or did not use. By turning in their peer review sheets and their suggestion sheet the teacher will be able to tell if the students were able to give helpful feed back and use feed back in a meaningful way.

Sharing the Students Work

The students will bind all of their stories in a book, based on the prompt the book will be filled with stories about adventures at sea that end on a deserted island, and entitle the book as a class. This book will be shared in the arts fair that the school has every year, and the class will have a chance to win the annual prize. The students will also mail copies of the book to various children hospitals, in hopes that these adventurous stories will be shared and read to sick children that are about the age of the middle school students that wrote them.