Samantha Lane READ 436 10/20/17

Mentor Text Writing Lesson Plan PART ONE: THE LESSON The intent of this part of the lesson is to prepare you for what you will need to do and think about before teaching your lesson. A. TITLE OF LESSON (Writing Focus): Word Choice B. RELATED VIRGINIA STANDARDS OF LEARNING 5.7 The student will write for a variety of purposes: to describe, to inform, to entertain, to explain, and to persuade. f) Use precise and descriptive vocabulary to create tone and voice h) Revise for clarity of content using specific vocabulary and information.

C. LEARNING OBJECTIVES

UNDERSTAND – Students will understand how word choice and sentence structure can influence the mood and tone of your writing piece and how they can make your writing better.

KNOW – The students will know how the author used word choice in the mentor text to make their writing more interesting. The students will know what word choice are and how they can use them in their writing.

DO – Students will revise a piece of their own writing to include more creative and appropriate word choice and expand their vocabulary.

D. ASSESSING LEARNING For this lesson, I think the most helpful assessment would be to collect and review the writing samples my students create during the lesson to see to what level every student grasped the material. Ideally, I would see their writing samples before the lesson and after to see what changes they made to it. This would help me see if they were able to implement word choice correctly in their writing, and where they can still improve on building up this skill. To evaluate this piece of writing, I will use a writing rubric specifically for word choice, cited here - https://www.slideshare.net/Ivy_League_Academy/trait-writing-rubric. PART TWO: LESSON PLAN PROCEDURE

A. CONTEXT OF LESSON My lesson will specifically focus on improving word choice in writing to make it more enjoyable and engaging for the reader. My CT told me that fifth graders are not formally assessed on writing, so while they do have standards they have to achieve, they are less structured in how the pacing goes for teaching writing skills. I have observed through writing pieces my CT showed me that there is a wide variety of writing levels in my class, just like with any other subject. I know that word choice to have a refresher lesson with a mentor text to show them what that can look like in actual writing pieces. Ideally, I would like the end result of this lesson to show that they gained something from the mentor text and that they were able to take their writing and elevate it to make it more engaging and fit the tone of their piece better. My lesson will begin with a Flocabulary video about word choice to get the students engaged in the lesson. My class loves Flocabulary and have watched a lot of their videos, so this will help us get started. Then I will read the mentor text, which is John, Paul, George, and Ben by Lane Smith, and highlight specific examples of good word choice. My class has read this book before and my CT says they enjoy it, so it will work well for a mentor text lesson. After reading the mentor text, we will discuss as a class examples of good word choice they noticed in the book and go back to specific passages to see how word choice made the book more engaging for them. Afterwards, the students will be using the mini-lesson to work on the word choice and sentence structure of an existing piece of writing. My students work on their writing pieces on Google classroom, so they will be using Chromebooks during this part of the lesson to work on their writing. B. MATERIALS NEEDED - Computer with internet access and smart board (to play Flocabulary video) - book: John, Paul, George, and Ben by Lane Smith - chrome books (writing samples will be on Google classroom) C. PROCEDURE

Before

CONNECT Students learn why today’s instruction is important to them as writers and how the lesson relates to their prior work (if applicable). The teaching point is stated.

The day before the lesson, I read the mentor text to my class in small groups to give them a refresher on the book and get them thinking about word choice in the book. To start off my lesson the next day, I asked them if they remembered the book we read together the day before and had them briefly summarize it. Then, I introduced the writing strategy we would be working on that day, word choice, and reviewed what they thought examples of good word choice were. Then, we started the Flocabulary video. https://www.flocabulary.com/unit/word-choice/ The video includes several examples of what good and bad word choice look like, so students will be able to see the impact it can have on their writing.

After the video I’ll ask, “What were some examples of good word choice you saw in that video?”. After talking about a few, I’ll use what they said to make the point that in writing, we can see how word choice can change the tone of our writing and make it more interesting or powerful for the reader. After watching the video, I told the class, “Now that you’ve seen examples of good word choice we’re going to reread John, Paul, George, and Ben by Lane Smith, which we read yesterday in small groups. As we read the book today, look for examples of good word choice that you can use in your writing disaster pieces. After we’re done we’re going to share some examples that we heard out loud for everyone else.” This would transition me into actually reading the book.

During

TEACH The teacher shows the students how writers accomplish the teaching point in the mentor text

This is the point where I’ll read the mentor text to the class. I plan on reading the whole book to them since it’s not a long book and I want to give them a chance to see many different examples of good word choice in the book. The writing of this book has a lot of old time sayings that help it sound more like a book written during the time of the founding fathers. As I go through the book, I am going to check for understanding of these phrases so they don’t confuse obscure phrases with good word choice. Although they add to the voice of the text, they don’t necessarily demonstrate good word choice. After reading the book I’ll ask, “What were some examples of good word choice and sentence structure saw in the book?”. I’ll have some pages marked as well so that I can show them what I found for myself when I was looking through the book. I have one or two specific pages with a few examples of word choice. If I find the students are struggling with how to identify them after reading, I can come to these pages and ask students look for examples just on this one page. I am also going to tell them to look for good adjectives and verbs in particular (such as “bold” and “cried” instead of said), so that if they can’t pick out good word choice as easily, they can have specific parts of speech to

look for. After we go over the examples in the book, I’ll tell the class, “Now that we’ve seen examples of word choice being used in our book, you all will get a chance to use this in your own writing,” to transition them to their writing portion of the lesson.

ACTIVE ENGAGEMENT After we teach something, students are given a chance to practice what has just been taught with new writing or revising a prior piece. (May assess during this time)

This is when I will give students a chance to revise their own pieces of writing. I plan on having them edit a piece of writing they are already working on, however if my CT decides she wants them to start from scratch we can do that too. I will walk around the class and see where they are in the writing process and how they are thinking through incorporating what they just learned into their writing. I know that there will be students with question on how to make this work in their writing, so I will work to brain storm with them how they can do that based on what they have so far. This time will be largely independent on their part, and I will focus my attention on individual help where they need it.

After LINK The teacher reiterates what has just been taught and gives students an opportunity to share (May assess during this time)

After giving them a chance to write, I will then ask a few students to share out what they have so far. It doesn’t need to be finished or perfect yet, but I want them to read out loud what they have so that they can catch anything they want to change or edit. To finish the lesson, we will review how word choice can impact a student’s writing. We can talk about how they saw their writing change based on that aspect, and how they can use this in the future to make all their writing pieces more enjoyable to read.

D. DIFFERENTIATION There are three identified ELL students in my class, all of whom are fairly fluent in English. Two of them will only need minimal assistance with this lesson based on what I know about their English proficiency, but one of them may need more assistance with editing his word choice as his English proficiency is not as fluent. I also have 8 IEP students and 1 eligible for IEP in my class, so this is definitely something I will need to differentiate for. A good portion of these students are ones that struggle with reading, so writing is something that can be potentially hard for them. I will have several aids and my CT in the room with me during this lesson, so we can all be walking around and assisting students, including ELL and IEP students, as needed. It might be helpful to brainstorm individually with these students where they think their strong

word choices are, and where they think they could improve. If they don’t know, they may need more direct instruction on how to improve their writing.

E. WHAT COULD GO WRONG WITH THIS LESSON AND WHAT WILL YOU DO ABOUT IT?

I am worried about classroom management, as this is something that most practicum teachers worry about. We never know if the students will respond to us trying to get our attention and if it will be hard to get them on task. For this, my teacher often uses “Class, class!” to which they respond “Yes, yes!” to get them back on track. This usually works pretty well, especially if I remind them that I’m a teacher in their class and they need to respect me just as much as any other teacher. Sometimes you need to do this a few times to get them to quiet down. If this doesn’t work, most of the time telling them that they will get a teacher point makes them pay attention as well. If that doesn’t work, usually the CT will step in and get them under control as well. I can confer on this with her ahead of time. Since I will have taught a lot of lessons before this one, I am hoping this will not be as big of an issue for social studies. I think more specific to this lesson, one thing that could go wrong is that students have trouble understanding the concepts of word choice in writing despite the examples that I give. Sometimes writing concepts can be hard for students to grasp, so I will come prepared with samples from my own writing just in case they need examples on how I would revise my own writing as well.

PART THREE: REFLECTION As soon as possible after teaching your lesson, think about the experience. Use the questions/prompts below to guide the writing of your 6- paragraph reflection (1 paragraph for each letter). Be thorough in your reflection and use specific examples to support your insights.

A. How did your actual teaching of the lesson differ from your plans? Describe the

changes and explain why you made them.

The biggest change that I made to my lesson before teaching it was that I took out focus on sentence structure from the lesson. I did this for a few reasons. The biggest reason was that since my class does not get as much direct writing instruction, I thought that focusing in on two skills in one lesson might be too much all at once and might be confusing for them. I wanted them to be able to focus on one skill at a time, and really concentrate their attention on that specific part of the revision process. I also didn’t feel like the text I selected was a particularly strong example for sentence structure variation, and I didn’t want them to refer to a text for advice that didn’t exhibit the skill as strongly as it could. Finally, I didn’t feel as confident talking with them about word choice as I did sentence structure. Of course, I should be able to study writing skills and find better ways to teach them. However, since this was my first lesson, I thought it would be a better idea to focus on something I was more familiar with so I could do it

justice when I was teaching it. Other changes I made were mainly based on what I saw to the students and how I transitioned from task to task. Additionally, I was going to get a rubric from my CT for grading, however I decided to find a rubric that was more focused on word choice to grade the writing samples I got from students.

B. Describe at least one way you could incorporate developmentally appropriate practice in a better or more thorough way if you were to teach this lesson again.

I think one way I could incorporate DAP better in this lesson in the future would to have some kind of editing practice before actually implementing it into their writing. This could be an individual or whole group assignment, such as putting a piece of writing on the smartboard and having them edit it as a group or doing this at their desk individually. I think a lot of times writing skills can be a bit vague for students and they might not necessarily know how to apply it to their writing even when they learn about it. If they had a piece of writing that someone else did to edit and look for good examples of word choice in that, I feel that that could actualize some of the skills they are learning in a real-life example. I had assignments like this when I was in school, and they helped me a lot, so if I could do this lesson again I would definitely want to try that.

C. Based on the assessment you created, what can you conclude about your impact on student learning? What did they learn? What evidence can you offer that your conclusions are valid? Based on the assessment data you collected, what would you do/teach next if you were the classroom teacher? The two parts of my assessment for this lesson were the discussion portion of the lesson and the writing rubric. From what I observed in the discussion portion, I think that my students could benefit from more practice with word choice and revising for word choice. When we were going over good examples of word choice in the mentor text, for example, many students gave the word “lad” as an example. While this word adds to the voice of the mentor text because it helps to place us in an older time period than the one we are in now, I wouldn’t count this really as good word choice because it is not helping create a picture in the reader’s mind of the scene they are trying to create. I had to more directly bring their attention to certain words to explain to them how they were examples of good word choice, such as saying “cried” instead of said because it tells you with what expression the person was saying something. However, in terms of what they did learn, I would say that they were able to take away that word choice is something they should be looking for in writing. The day after I taught this lesson, one of the students in my class was listening to a read aloud from my CT and after she finished reading a page, he shouted out, “That word is a good example of word choice!”. So, I believe that my kids got a baseline understanding of word choice in writing, they just need more practice with it. I would back this up with the rubric I posted at the bottom of this document. When reading over some writing pieces in my class, I marked most of them the same way I marked that one – they were on the right track and were making good changes,

but could still improve some of the word choices they used in their writing. I think since this was a pretty introductory lesson for them on word choice, as their teacher I would have more follow up lessons on this writing skill and have them get more practice editing other pieces of writing before their own. In a 5th grade class I volunteered in in high school, the teacher would give students example pieces of writing to edit for certain writing skills before they worked on their own. This might be a good activity to follow my lesson up with before the students revisit their own pieces.

D. As a result of planning and teaching this lesson, what have you learned or had reinforced about children as learners? Through this lesson, I have definitely had reinforced that children learn a lot by example and through different methods than I would have necessarily learned through at their age. As a learner, I’m actually not a huge fan of things like Flocabulary because I can never really take in all the information that I want to from the songs as they move too quickly for me. However, students are very engaged in this type of learning and often are able to remember a lot more from them than I am. I think I make the mistake often of only teaching in ways that I personally learn from. Children learn in all sorts of different ways, some I probably haven’t even discovered yet. I have found this especially true in math, where they have all different types of techniques for solving problems that I was never taught in school. I think through this practicum in general, I have had reinforced that sometimes, children as learners end up becoming children as teachers as well.

E. As a result of planning and teaching this lesson, what have you learned or had

reinforced about teaching?

I have definitely had reinforced that in teaching, you have to be explicit with a lot of things and have to have clear directions for your kids to follow in order for the lesson to flow right. I think when I’ve been teaching my lessons this semester, I’ve been so focused on making sure I remember information and steps and directions for myself, I don’t always articulate them as well to my students. This lesson went pretty well in that respect, mainly because there weren’t as many steps to follow on the students’ part, but since this was the first lesson I taught this semester I really rehearsed this a lot beforehand to make sure I remembered everything I needed to tell them. However, one thing I have been slowly learning through this lesson and other practicums is that teaching is a very spontaneous and on-the-fly profession a lot of the time. You can’t always predict what students will say and what misconceptions or ideas they’ll have. As a teacher, I know I will need to learn through practice how to go with the flow of teaching more and not be so hard on myself when a lesson doesn’t go exactly according to how I want it to.

F. As a result of planning and teaching this lesson, what have you learned or had

reinforced about yourself?

I have definitely learned about myself that I have a lot to learn when it comes to teaching, and I have a lot to work on in terms of myself as an educator. This has been a very overwhelming semester for me, and I haven’t always been at my best in any aspect of my life. However, I knew that if there was any day of the week I had to be on the ball, it was Thursdays, and my motivation to do better and teach better in my lessons helped me take a lot away from the experience, and this lesson was no different. Through this lesson, I definitely learned that I am someone that needs to prepare at least an idea of what I’m going to say in a lesson ahead of time so I can have my thoughts collected before teaching. Not to say that I didn’t keep with that during this lesson, but I think in general I have to go into a lesson prepared in order to really make it the most successful it can be. Like all pre-service teachers, I am still learning, and I will continue to learn throughout my entire teaching career!

rubric for student work directly above