LESSON PLAN Lesson #__4____

Format and Cooperating Teacher Feedback Form

Name:

Lauren Checker

Date:

10/19/15

Goal(s):

Grade Level: 3/4

Planning:

Objective(s)::

Content Area:English/Language Arts ( Writing)

CCSS.3.WS.3B Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or

events using effective technique, descriptive details, and clear event sequences.
- Use dialogue and descriptions of actions, thoughts, and feelings to develop
experiences and events or show the response of characters to situations
CCSS.4.WS.3B
- Use dialogue and description to develop experiences and events or show the
responses of characters to situations.
*** Goals by the end of 3/4th grade

This is a 3rd/4th grade mix classroom. These students are very chatty and eager to
share ideas with one another. Based on prior lessons I notice they work well
individually. Taking this into consideration I will create a lesson plan where the
children are developing a descriptive writing piece in which they describe a
mood/emotion. I believe this narrative piece will be appealing to the students
because they will get to write about themselves. I am hoping this will motivate
them to be involved in their writing and give lots of details. Im sure all of the
students have reflected upon emotions in younger grades, but this will push them
to be more descriptive and thoughtful. It will also allow students to tune into how
powerful emotions can be. I believe this lesson will also help students who
sometimes have a hard time expressing their feelings. I am planning to have a
portion of the lesson be expressive by having the students draw a portrait of how
they are feeling. The students are used to creating artwork after their writings so
this will fit in nicely to their routines. Some students are fast finishers or just write
the bare minimum. I will try to push them to make their passages more
descriptive, and also to create captions to their pictures. Other students might
focus just on the artwork. This is why I will first give the students loose leaf and
ask them to raise their hand when they are ready to create the portrait. Students
will most likely be very chatty during their work time. I will have my CT to help
me keep the children at a more quiet level. I do not mind if they are quietly
talking, but unproductive talking will be problematic. I am preparing to create an
attention getter with the students to help them understand when I should be
talking and when they should be talking. Some misconceptions about the topic of
descriptive writing when Im teaching may be that its brief. I will try to get the
students to understand that we need lots of details to make a writing piece strong.
I will have a bag of emotions and prompts ready for students who are struggling
thinking of ideas. I feel that the students will benefit from making decisions of
choosing an emotion to write and draw about. It will be interesting to see their
responses.

Students will create their own descriptive writing pieces to express their feelings.

Students will design their own portrait to summarize their descriptive writing
piece around their feeling.

Vocabulary: Descriptive, mood/emotion/feelings

Language Function: create, express, design, summarize.
Students will be creating their own descriptive passage to express their feelings. They
will then summarize their descriptions by designing their own portrait.
Informal: During the lesson I will be informally assessing students by observing their
participation during and after the read aloud. Together we are going to create a
descriptive writing sample, so I will also be able to notice student participation. Im
predicting that the same couple students will raise their hands, but I will have plenty of
time to confer with hopefully all students during the work time. The students have been
working on narrative work all semester, so they are fairly familiar with this type of
writing. Ive seen the students descriptive writing before, so Im going to be expecting
details. I will look for descriptive words, and their use of the five senses.
Formal: The portraits will probably not be finished the same day, but they would be a
great reflection piece. I could assess how the students art reflected their writing sample.
This would be a great piece to show at a conference that connects art and student writing.

Assessment:

Materials Needed:

SMART Board, Today I Feel Silly book, loose leaf paper, plain printer paper,
pencils, coloring materials :

Procedures:
(Include time allotments)
Introduction/ Engagement 10 minutes

I will ask the students what a good attention getter is at the beginning of my lesson.

This will hopefully help students understand who should be talking when.
I will then tell students we are going to read a book around emotions. Whats an

emotion? Whats a synonym for the word emotion?

*** Feeling, mood.
I will then start reading the book making commentary throughout about different

emotions.
Do a think aloud on the first page. Wow, this character definitely is feeling silly. She
is doing all kinds of things that are making her feel silly like eating pancakes for

dinner and putting gloves on her feet.

Stop on the excited page. Have any of you ever felt excited? What did you do
when you were excited? What did you see, smell, hear, taste, or feel when you were
feeling that way!?

*** Do not take much time to do this, to maintain the story line of the book in mind.
Finish the book. Ask the students How do you feel today? Why? How do our
moods affect us? How do are mood affect us at school?, at home?
*** Call on a couple students for responses.

Demonstration,/participation, ( 7-10minutes)

Boys and girls, today we are going to write about a time we felt a certain way and
what we did. We are going to even use the descriptive senses that we have in the past

to help us stretch our stories.

Just like the girl in the story, we are going to think of a time when we felt a certain

way.
Lets say that we forgot a permission slip on the day of a field trip and we couldnt go.

How would we feel?

- Call on student for response
Ask the students to help you create a descriptive story about that feeling.
*** Example that will be on PowerPoint if students are struggling: I was so upset
because I forgot my permission slip. I woke up late the morning of the field trip and
because I was in a rush I left the permission slip on my dresser. Once my mom
dropped me off I had to stay at the school in a different classroom while I watched all
of my friends load the bus to go to the zoo. I was so upset that I had tears running
down my face. I could taste the salty tears as I wiped my eyes. I felt even more upset
when I found out that we were eating baked potatoes for lunch, they smelled like old
food. I was so upset that I didnt even eat it. When I saw my friends coming back from
the field trip I felt sad as they talked about the different animals they saw. I was very
upset this day. I will never forget my permission slip again.
- While creating an example or reading this passage do think alouds that will
promote students to have their own ideas. We need to tell the reader about what we
felt, who was there, what we did, did we use any of our five senses? (Reference

PowerPoint if needed.)
Tell students that they need to be stretching their stories and make it feel like the
reader can feel the emotion you are expressing.
Model a bad example
*** I felt sad when I fell off the monkey bars.
Now boys and girls I will give you a loose leaf piece of paper and you are going to
think of an emotion you have had before and what you did when you felt that way. If
you are having trouble thinking of an experience you had you can make one up!
*** I have a bag of emotions for students to select from if they are really struggling ( I

will not share this with everyone until I see students struggling.)
Boys and girls, once you are done writing your descriptive story raise your hand
because we are going to be creating a portrait of our experience that explains our

emotion.
Hold up a piece of paper. If I was feeling upset, like I did in our example I would
draw a picture of myself in this situation. I would make sure to fill up the whole page

just like we did when we created our goals in the beginning of the year.
Encourage the students to get creative and include things from their story in their

portraits.
If Im drawing myself upset from missing the field trip I could draw thoughts of
animals in the background because I was sad I wasnt at the zoo.

Practice: 25 Minutes
Strategies for students requiring additional assistance: I am creating a bag of different emotions for the
students to pick from with topic starters for the students who cannot formulate an idea. This might be a
problem for some students so hopefully this will help. I am also providing students with an art experience. It
seems that many students can really communicate through the arts so I believe this will be beneficial. I will
also leave a PowerPoint on the SMART board that asks essential questions to get the writers going 1.
What emotion are you going to write about? 2. Tell about why you felt this way, who was there? What did
you do? 3. Did you experience any of the five senses?
Closure: 2 minutes

I will ask a student to share their work. We will talk about how they thought of an
emotion and how they described that time and what they did. We will discuss if they
used any of their five senses.

Lesson Self- Assessment 4

Name: Lauren Checker

Lesson topic: Descriptive Writing
Date:10/21/15
School/grade level/ number of students: Manitoba Elementary/3rd&4th grade/27 students

Name of Cooperating Teacher: Maya Richards

Planning and preparation:

I feel that I planned my lesson well for my classroom. Based on my prior experiences I was able to develop a
lesson that would fit well within this environment. I planned to read the story Today I Feel Silly then have
children write about their own emotions and draw a self-portrait. My planning was purposeful for these students
even though in my own classroom I would do things a bit differently. This shows my ability to diagnosis
problems and solve them effectively. During the reading of the book I paused three separate times to do thinkalouds and to ask essential questions. As I had assumed, pausing during the reading got students off track and
chatty, but I was able to get them engaged again by being animated during the read aloud. After the read aloud I
did as planned and asked students about how they were feeling. We discussed how we could descriptively write
about our emotions/feelings by describing why we feel that way. I read the children an example of a good
descriptive writing piece and together we talked about the strong parts and what could also be added. I orally
gave a bad example of a descriptive writing piece as well. The students were then able to write descriptively
about how they felt. As promised, they were also able to draw a portrait of themselves. During the lesson I
asked the children to raise their hands when they thought they wrote all they could to start their portrait. I
purposely choice self-portraits because I knew that some of the diverse learners would really benefit from this.
Ive seen some of the lower students doodles on notebooks and they are excellent. So I thought, What better
way to reach them than through the arts? During my lesson I wish I wouldve had more time because I
wouldve pushed the children even more when conferring with them about their descriptive writing pieces.
Because I only has about 40 minutes, I let some students began their portraits early. This actually proved to be
beneficial in my eyes because some of the students that lack motivation and have a lower ability level really
became engaged. I met diverse learners needs by conferring. I started my conferences with the students who I
thought might struggle in the beginning. We discussed emotions and they quickly thought of a time they felt a
certain way, or just focused on their current emotion. I had planned a bag of topic starters with emotions for
struggling students and I only had to pull it out for one student. I was very pleased with the childrens creativity.

Classroom environment:

I encouraged participation by being excited about the book. The story was definitely below some of the
students reading level, so I had to be enthusiastic so they wouldnt lose interest. I pointed out certain things in
pictures to get the students engaged. When I paused to ask questions during the read aloud about the book
students were very willing and raised their hands despite the chattiness. I tried to get the students to listen to
others responses by saying lets be respectful when ___ is talking. The students work well as individuals
because thats what they are used to, but I did encourage them to share their stories at their tables while
working. I asked two different students to read their descriptive writing pieces to the class. This promoted other
students to go back and add more to their stories so that they could read theirs next. I had to redirect students to
be a little quieter, but they persevered throughout. I believe based on what I know about the students they did
well working as individuals with the option of talking to others at their table. Over time I would love for the
students to be more engaged within one anothers work.

Instruction:

I believe my instructional strategies fit in nicely to the students routines. I stuck with their typical writing
session by doing a minilesson then allowing them to practice the concept. The students did well when
participating during my read aloud. They got more unfocused when I started working with the SMART board,
but overall they seemed to grasp the concept and fulfill my objectives. The students did well when working at
their desks on their descriptive writing piece. The students were forced to stretch out their descriptions in order
to accompany the writing with a portrait. It would be interesting to have the students do the portraits first then
have them do descriptive writing pieces after. Another idea would be to have them get with partners and draw
each other only by using descriptive phrases. This would be a great speaking and listening strategy. If I could
do this lesson again I would definitely try and ask for a time extension. This is easily a two day lesson, but
given time restraints I pushed it into one to see what the students could come up with. Even though time was

crunched I was pleased that I enforced the portraits today. The atmosphere in the room changed with the
students were busily working on these. This was rewarding to experience and to see how the arts can be
integrated even in a simple writing lesson. I would also model more about how to use different descriptive
words in writing. This would be helpful for students who have trouble formulating descriptive writing pieces.

Assessment:

I learned a lot about assessment from this lesson beyond participation. It was very valuable to conference
with students during their individual work time. The levels of writers in the class vary drastically because of the
3rd-4th split. Its interesting how some 4th graders are writing lower than some 3rd graders and vise-versa. When
conferring with students I was able to see their use of using details to drive their stories and descriptions. I was
able to give different feedback to each child based on their level. For the higher level students I advised them to
try and think of more descriptive words and ideas. For the lower level students I wanted them to give me more
ideas in general focusing around their emotion. It was also beneficial to see how the students connected their
pieces of work to their portraits. I believe that the portraits could be used as a more formal assessment to reach
all levels of students. The criteria could be based off of what they wrote about and if it connected appropriately
to their portraits. It would be a great discussion piece because students would need to know that descriptions
need to be put into words in order for us to understand whats going on in the picture. Overall through the
portraits I was able to get a better sense of student understanding for descriptive writing. All students met my
objective.

Professional responsibilities:

My cooperating teacher suggested more modeling after the book. I had this planned, but I felt the children
were really losing focus and starting to get antsier. I couldve done more modeling with descriptive terms that

would help the students in their writing. For future lessons I will consider ways to do more modeling while
maintaining student focus. Perhaps this could be done more individually or small group for those who need
more explanation.

Reflection:

I learned that art integration isnt as difficult as people make it seem. The arts can serve as an outlet for
many children. Especially in this lesson focusing on emotions/feelings students were really able to connect.
While this is an easier concept for children, its something to think about in my own profession. How can I
serve unmotivated children (especially in the older grades when they lose the love for school) to be engaged.
From this lesson I can see how assessments can range in different forms. If I was the classroom teacher I would
do a whole unit on descriptive writing. I would try to integrate different strategies and projects to meet the needs
of all students and keep them motivated.