Danielle Arcand Project 4 EDSE 4501 Dan Gliszcinski 5/16/2013 Lesson Topic: Introduction to Literature circles: Robert Frost

English Length of lesson: 60 Minutes Stage 1 Desired Results Content Standard(s): 9.4.2.2 Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze in detail its development over the course of the text, including how it emerges and is shaped and refined by specific details; provide an objective summary of the text. 9.4.5.5 Analyze how an authors choices concerning how to structure a text, order events within it (e.g., parallel plots), and manipulate time (e.g., pacing, flashbacks) create such effects as mystery, tension, or surprise. 9.7.10.10 Write routinely over extended time frames (time for research, reflection, and revision) and shorter time frames (a single sitting or a day or two) for a range of tasks, purposes, and audiences. a. Independently select writing topics and formats for personal enjoyment, interest, and academic tasks. Understanding (s)/goals Students will understand: -Literature circles are tools that can help us to see many different perspectives and better understand a text. -Literature helps us to understand the world. -An author brings their cultural experiences to their writing; thus, readers bring their own history and cultural influences to their reading (and writing). Student objectives (outcomes): Students will be able to: -Students will develop strong discussion skills -Students will be able to competently discuss themes within a book. -Students will be able to participate in a group to identify and understand important aspects of their book, including: character development, themes, and symbols within the text. Stage 2 Assessment Evidence Essential Question(s): -Why is it important to discuss readings with other people? -How do different readers bring different perspectives to books? -Why is it important to look for themes within a text? -How are culture and literature related? -How does the authors culture affect their work and writing process? Grade level: 9th Grade

Performance Task(s): -Students will use the activity that we performed in class to apply their skills to their literature circles. -At the end of the unit, students will create a map with their World Adventure group to demonstrate their analysis and research of different themes and ideas in their novel.

Other Evidence: -The in-class lit circle will be a preassessment for their actual literature circles in their world adventure groups.

Stage 3 Learning Plan Learning Activities: Materials: -Enough copies of Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost for every student. - 3-2-1 Exit slips -Prepare the following role sheets for each person in group: 1. Problem Poser locates and poses key problems or dilemmas that arise in the text for which there are no easy answers. 2. Perspective Taker Tries on and represents the perspectives of a character whose actions are problematic or confusing. 3. Difference Locater Points out differences between groups of people represented in the text, paying attention to how they are constructed and maintained and noticing differences within difference. 4. Stereotype Tracker Locates and talks back to dominant discourses or stereotypes that the author evokes intentionally or unintentionally in the language and structure of the text. 5. Critical Lens Wearer Considers the assigned reading through the lens of a relevant critical literary theory.
From: EDSE 4215 via Thein, A. H., Guise, M., & Sloan, D. L. (2011). Problematizing literature circles as forums for discussion of multicultural and political texts. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 55(1), 1524.

First 15 minutes: -Class will meet in by the pond at Bagley Nature Center. -Pass out the poem Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening to all the students.

-Before the students start reading, give them two instructions: 1. Working on your own, read through the poem one time. When you are finished reading, you can either write a small paragraph journal entry from the point of view of one of the characters in the poem, draw a picture that depicts what you think the poem is about, or write a song about the meaning of the poem. 2. You will get 15 minutes to read the poem and complete the activity on your own. Next 35 minutes: -Once everyone is finished reading, give the following instructions: Now, I would like you to move into your World Adventure groups. Share your journal entry, drawing, or song with your group members and discuss your interpretations of the poem. -When the students are finished, give the following instructions: For the next ten minutes, each group will walk around the wooded area by the pond. Try to put yourself in the mindset of the narrator. How does it feel to be in the woods? Calming? What kind of mood does the snow set? -Circulate and spend a few minutes with each group walking around. Listen to their discussions and add comments of your own. After 10 minutes, bring the studnts back into the Bagley classroom and give the following instructions: I would like you to use your discussions from earlier in class and walking around outside to answer the following four questions in your World Adventure groups: 1) 2) 3) 4) Who or what is the narrator of them poem? Who or what is the poem about? What are problems that occur in the poem? When and where does the poem take place? On a piece of paper, have one person in your group write down the different answers that everyone in your group comes up with.

-When the students are finished, bring the attention to the front of the room. -Give the following instructions: Raise your hand if everyone in your group came up with the exact same answers. (No ones hands should be raised). Ask a few discussion questions to transition into sharing answers: Why didnt we all come up with the same answers? What kinds of factors influence the answers we give? Possible discussion prompts: How does our history effect how we read something? Or our gender? Or where we live? -Now switch from discussion about influences in reading to sharing the group ideas: Lets go around one group at a time and share one idea that your group came up with for the first question. If the group before you took the answer that you were going to use, then choose a different one that your group came up with.

-Write the ideas on the board as the students read them out loud. -Once you have gone through each group and received a different idea for the first question, ask if there are any other interesting ideas to the first question that the groups would like to share. -Repeat this for the next three questions that were assigned. Then, introduce the final class discussion topic for the day: Look at all the different answers that you came up with. If you had stopped your reading process after reading the poem once and answering the questions by yourself, would your ideas have been as developed? Why or why not? Why is it important that we discussed these questions together in groups? How do different readers bring perspective different perspectives to a text? Discussing themes and ideas with other people helps us to see more than one side to a story. What are some things that you enjoyed about working in a group like this? How did the group discussion enhance your reading of the poem? Note: If no one raises hand, ask a few specific students what they liked about it. This may lead to more discussion from other students. -Discuss final question for a few minutes as a class. Last ten minutes: -Pass out Literature Circles Role sheets -Introduce the literature circles: For the next week, your World Adventure reading groups will be discussing the book that has been assigned to your group in a similar way that we discussed the poem today: using literature circles. In a literature circle, every member of the group chooses one role that they would like to be in charge of. Then, when it comes time for the readings to be due, everyone in the lit circle will discuss what they discovered using their role. This will help to bring many perspectives to your reading and it will also help you to better understand your book. I would like everyone to choose a role from the sheet and come prepared for class on Thursday to discuss the assigned reading for your book using the role you have chosen. Everyone in your group should choose a different role. -Ask students if they have any final questions about the activity they did in class today or about their literature circles. -Hand out the 3-2-1 exit slips and instruct the class to set them on your desk as they walk out the door.

UBD Lesson Plan

Enduring understandings, essential questions, and student objectives.
According to Judy Willis, there are millions of stimuli that your brain could attend to but only thousands get in. Students do not have voluntary control over the information that the reticular activating system (RAS) takes in, and the information that it takes in is determined by perceived threat or curiosity. We need to cater towards the curiosity of our students if we want them to take in information and participate in meaningful learning during our lesson. According to Zull, we need to hook into our students existing schemas in order for them to uncover the learning. If a teacher uncovers what is being learned, the information remains obscured. Students need to be given the space to uncover learning themselves so that they own the information. Creating engaging and informative enduring understanding, essential questions, and student objectives that our students are curious about will encourage their learning and growth. Our RAS connects things we have learning to things we like, so we also need to make our understanding, objectives, and questions relevant to our students interests. If you want your students to be engaged what you are teaching, you need to make sure that they can make connections between the lesson and their world.

Stage 1

Performance tasks and other evidence.

Stage 2 of the UBD lesson plan measures authentic performance and assessment. After information passes through the RAS (stage 1) it then enters the amygdala. According to Willis, the amygdala then directs the information to one of two places. The information can be sent to either the lower reactive brain or the reflective thinking brain (prefrontal cortex). In the reactive lower brain, the information is responded to with an immediate fight or flight response. According to Zull, the amygdala can block critical thinking during stress (like prolonged boredom and frustration), which would promote a flight response from the student and an inability to process and take in what is being taught. In order for information to pass through the amygdala to the PFC, a students brain cannot be under a state of high stress. To successfully transmit information to the PFC, our UBD lesson plans need to include instruction and authentic performance tasks that incorporate personal relevance, achievable challenges, and evidence of incremental progress. They need to be relevant for students so that they can apply the information that they learn into the real world.

Stage 2

Stage 3
James Zulls learning cycle. According to James Zull, learning originates on concrete experience; but thats just the beginning. Learning also requires reflective observation, developed thinking and research, and active application. In order to promote the best meaningful learning in my classroom, I have structured this lesson plan to follow Zulls learning cycle. I believe that the best way to teach our students is in a way that is biologically advantageous to them. According to Zull, that way would be following the learning cycle because it arises naturally from the structure of our brain. Learning Cycle Stage 1 Stage one is about creating concrete experiences through the sensory cortex. Since the sensory cortex receives the first input from the outside world through our senses, I wanted to make this lesson as sense-luscious as possible by having it take place outside. I didnt want the lesson to take place outside simply for the sake of being outside, there needed to be a connection to the learning. According to Zull, this stage in the cycle needs to be linked with a concrete experience in the form of direct physical information form the world. The poem that I used to introduce literature circles in my lesson plan takes place in a snowy wooded area, so my students will draw in immediate connection to the poem and receive immediate sensory input; they will put themselves into the mindset of the narrator by feeling, hearing, touching, and smelling the nature of the wooded area. Medina suggests that an emotionally charged event (ECS) persists much longer in our memories, and is recalled with greater accuracy, than neutral memories. It is important to have excitement in your lesson; something that will stimulate your students senses and ignite their emotions. In this particular lesson, holding the class outdoors deviates from the normal classroom experience to excite learning amongst the students. According to Mazur, there will only be 13% retention if a student is not interested in a topic. It is important to build a sense-luscious introduction into a lesson plan so that you can hook your students right away, and raise their retention rate so that they not only learn in the moment, but it keep the information with them so that they can recall on what they learned in the future. Learning Cycle Stage 2 Stage two in the learning cycle is focused on promoting reflective observation in the temporal integrative cortex. According to Zull, the back integrative cortex integrates sensory information to create images and meaning. These functions match well with what happens during reflection, such as; remembering relevant information, developing insights and associations, and mentally rerunning and analyzing experiences. In my lesson plan, I have the students think about and create questions regarding the poem after physically exploring the woods. In doing this, they are mentally analyzing their

experiences to develop associations between what they are reading and what they have just experienced. Immordino-Yang and Faeth suggest that positive emotions help us to relax and learn, bridging the temporal region of the brain. Positive relevant emotion guides cognitive learning. Stage two of the learning cycle takes places in the temporal integrative cortex, so this is when it is important to foster positive emotions in the lesson. When the students are working together during my lesson to mentally analyze what they are reading, they are discussing their previous experiences with each other to create positive relationships. Learning Cycle Stage 3 Stage three in the learning cycle is about creating new abstract concepts in the frontal integrative cortex to promote thinking and research. According to Zull, the frontal integrative cortex is responsible for short-term memory, problem solving, assembling plans for action, making judgments and evaluations, and directing the action of the rest of the brain. In order to apply these functions, students should manipulate meaning and languages to create new arrangements, compare and choose options, directly recall past experiences, and create symbolic representations. At this point in the lesson plan, I have students consider the meaning of the poem by directly recalling their past experience in the woods and then creating a symbolic representation of their interpretation of the poem through the creation of a drawing, journal entry, or song. Giving the students a choice between drawing, journaling, or song writing for this activity will foster excitement and positivity about the activity. According to Anchor, if you can raise someones level of positivity in the present, then their brain experiences what is called a happiness advantage. A brain at positive excitement performs significantly better than it does at negative or neutral excitement. Anchor says that when the brain is in a positive state of excitement, dopamine floods into the system and makes you happier while turning on the learning centers in the brain. Essentially, excitement in the classroom promotes better learning for students. The students then do a think-pair-share with their group members to recall and consider the poem. According to Mazur, using elaborative rehearsal and thinking/ talking about events immediately after they occur enhances long-term memory for that event. Having the students participate in this type of discussion and reflection after the outdoors activity will help them to easily recall this lesson in the future.

Learning Cycle Stage 4 The final stage in the learning cycle is used to promote active testing in the motor area of the brain. At this stage in my lesson plan, the students will have just finished exploring the woods around Bagley and making connections to the poem they read. According to Zull, your brain produces BDNF when your body gets exercise. At this point, my students brains will have produced BDNF from moving around outside, and, according to Medina this BDNF will allow their neurons to work together more willingly because they are healthier, while also encouraging neurogenesis. Zull says that BDNF

awakes motor spaces, so this is the perfect opportunity to end my class with a group discussion about what we learned and how we learned it using the essential questions from stage one. According to Zull, the motor cortex, where this stage of the learning cycle takes place, carries out the plans and ideas originating form the integrative cortex (stage 3), including the production of language through speech. Zull goes on to explain that these functions can be incorporated through intellectual activities such as writing, deriving relationships, doing experiments, and talking in a debate or conversation. I close my lesson plan using my essential questions to encourage a debate-style discussion of the activities. This discussion converts the students ideas into actual learning and is a necessity for action in the completion of the learning cycle. In Jonah Lehrers book Proust Was A Neuroscientist, he says, there are many different ways of describing reality, each of which is capable of generating truth. I believe that one of the most important aspects of having this discussion at the end of the lesson is so that every student can voice what they got from the lesson, hear what other people have to say, and then understand that there is not one right answer. Students will take different meanings from one concept, and it is important that they share those perspectives with each other in order to broaden their understandings.