Wednesday, July 22, 2015

2nd Lesson Plan - Writing

Candidate:  
April Smith                                                                                                                                                                       

Lesson Title:  Big Money

Standard: 
Does your writing support your point of view with reasons and information? 
Personalized: 
Which step of the writing process are you working on:  P-DREP (pre-write, draft, revise, edit, or publish)?

Topic:  
Pretend you had $100, but you weren't allowed to keep it for yourself. You have to give it away to a charity or person. Who would you give the money to? What would you want the person to do with it?

Date Taught:  July 22, 2015

What went well:  
The student were presented with a copy of a Big Money coloring sheet, a pre-made writing web with 5 circles total, and a Big Money “lined” worksheet to write out their list of sentences.
The students followed along & read the writing prompt written on the board with Ms. Smith then independently to hear & see the prompt more than once.
I used direct instruction to talk about what the writing prompt is meant, allowed for Q/A time.
As a group or individually we filled in the middle circle with the main idea then filled in the outer 4 circles with details.
I used visual & verbal assist with spelling.
The students were monitored, and the lesson was adapted to assure lesson objectives were met.
We re-read the prompt again to focus on all vocabulary words (vocabulary words were circled for emphasis).
The vocabulary words were:  imagine, hundred, dollars, keep, give, away, person, charity, who, and what (discussion for comprehension).
The students wrote in their writing journal one complete sentence for each word listed.
The students went from talking about the individual vocabulary words into writing a complete sentence for those words.

What did not go as planned:
I did not plan to stop prior to publishing.  We focused on task analysis using each step of the Writing Process.  We went from thinking, talking, listing words, to using those words in a sentence but was not able to further develop the list of sentences into an organized paragraph. 


How to change for subsequent lessons:
In the future I would allow a couple days for this lesson, that way we could go from editing (where we stopped today) into organizing using more voice, content development, conventions and organization.  I'd prefer for the students to begin this "publishing" section on a desktop computer then the lesson would not seem so boring.  Students do not like to write and would prefer more engaging alternatives.  

4 comments:

  1. It was a good lesson! I liked your writing prompt and the students seemed to enjoy coming up to the board to fill out the circles. I know you would like the students to have computers to write but this is a good way to figure out ways for them to be engaged in a lesson without technology. Some schools don't have the technology available for every student.

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  2. April,

    I really like the idea of encouraging your students to think outside themselves and be charitable to others. I think the writing process is not one that is favored by students, but is certainly necessary skill for life endeavors. Making the writing process fun is a great way to make it more enjoyable and memorable for the students. I think you did just that with your lesson. I think this topic allows teachers to see what children are most passionate about and how important thinking outside ourselves is.
    You are always such a breathe of fresh air and make our time so enjoyable.
    My best,
    Jamie

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  3. April,
    I enjoyed this lesson too! I've noted that one of your strengths, as a teacher, is the effective ability to break complex assignments into smaller, more manageable pieces for our students--task analysis queen!! I liked the prompt and noted how excited our students were to share. I agree, publishing via computers is a better alternative, in this case, to mere paper and pencil. When you can, check out Voki and Voicethread--great UDL tools for sentence fluency and editing.

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  4. Thanks everyone for the feedback I appreciate your ideas and suggestions.

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