Subject: Language Arts

Grade: Grade 2

Topic: A Happy Time

Content: Writing

Rationale: Communication is an essential part of growing up and this is

difficult for many children. In order to teach our students
about communication, we must first help our students to
identify feelings. Feelings are expressed in words, facial
expressions and our entire body. This lesson is intended to
help students understand that feelings are a part of our daily
lives and that it's ok to feel sad or happy or lonely, etc.
Through the use of literature, children will see pictures of
facial expressions that communicate what we feel. Students
will hear about "good days" and "bad days". They will share
their own feelings and ultimately write about a specific
feeling. This is important to our students since they do not
have the skills to cope with many feelings at this age.
Hopefully, they will become more comfortable as the lesson
proceeds and use words to express those feelings.

Learning Students will listen to stories about feelings.

Outcomes /
Goals: Students will identify their own feelings at specific times in
their lives.

Students will express their feelings in words and through

writing.

Curriculum NL-ENG.K-12.3 EVALUATION STRATEGIES

Standards: Students apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend,
interpret, evaluate, and appreciate texts. They draw on their
prior experience, their interactions with other readers and
writers, their knowledge of word meaning and of other texts,
their word identification strategies, and their understanding
of textual features (e.g., sound-letter correspondence,
sentence structure, context, graphics).

NL-ENG.K-12.4 COMMUNICATION SKILLS

Students adjust their use of spoken, written, and visual
language (e.g., conventions, style, vocabulary) to
 communicate effectively with a variety of audiences and for
different purposes.

NL-ENG.K-12.5 COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES

Students employ a wide range of strategies as they write
and use different writing process elements appropriately to
communicate with different audiences for a variety of
purposes.

NL-ENG.K-12.6 APPLYING KNOWLEDGE

Students apply knowledge of language structure, language
conventions (e.g., spelling and punctuation), media
techniques, figurative language, and genre to create,
critique, and discuss print and nonprint texts

Performance • understand the literary elements of setting, character, plot,

Indicators: theme, and point of view and compare those features to
other works and to their own lives

• use inference and deduction to understand the text

Materials/ -Feelings, by Aliki

Resources: -My Many Colored Days, by Dr. Seuss.
-Graphic Organized to plan a story about "A Happy Time".
-Writing Paper
-Chart Paper for brainstorming
-Overhead projector and transparency of graphic organizer.

Procedures: Students will gather on a rug area to begin this lesson. This
closeness will allow students to feel "safe" as they express
their feelings. Teacher will have the two literature books
displayed and a chart available for brainstorming.

Anticipatory Set: The teacher will begin by telling a story about a time in
his/her life, when there were strong feelings involved. Then
the students will be asked to "think", giving them time to
recall a strong feeling that they had. After a few seconds,
give them time to turn to their partner and tell them about
this feeling. After regaining their attention, ask the pairs to
"share" each others' feelings.

Demonstration / Teacher will have pictures of children with various

Explanation: expressions on their faces and ask for identification of these
feelings. The teacher will then read Aliki's book, Feelings.
By this time the students will more easily know feelings that
are being expressed in the book. The students will be asked
 "A Happy Time" in their lives and focus on this feeling. The
teacher will use an overhead projector to demonstrate how
to use the graphic organizer.

Paragraph writing would have been taught in a previous

lesson and a quick review will be necessary. An outline for
paragraph writing should be posted in the classroom and
used as a rubric for this activity.

Activity: Now students will be given their own graphic organizer with
the title "A Happy Time" in the center. Questions to be
asked are: Where were you? Who was with you? What
happened? What else happened? This will outline what the
students will write about. Now they can begin to write about
their experience in paragraph form. They should be able to
write at least two paragraphs.

Closure: This lesson may have to extend to another day to complete.

Teacher will gather children together at the end of the
lesson to review what they learned today. Students may
want to share what they have written. In closing the lesson,
the teacher will read My Many Colored Days by Dr. Seuss.
This should reinforce that our feelings are OK, but we need
to express those feelings in words to an adult, at times.
They must know that feelings are meant to be
communicated properly.

Accommodations Teacher will have to be very attentive to students who have

for Special difficulty with writing. Some students may be asked to
Needs: illustrate their feelings and an aide or a volunteer can assist
them. Students who need to be challenged can use the
computer to type story and use graphics. They can print the
story later.

Evaluation / The students will be evaluated on their attention and

Rubric: participation while stories are being read and students are
sharing.

Their writing will be evaluated by the chart containing the

essentials to good paragraph writing.

Teacher Teacher has to be aware of the timing of this lesson. In

Reflection: second grade the students’ attention should be fine with this
lesson, but the paragraph may have to be finished
independently. If necessary, continue this the next day. Was
enough prior knowledge and experience presented through
 the two books that were used? Were they a good choice?
Did the students relate to them? Did the teacher help
students to transition into the writing with ease?

Author Credit: Emily Werner