Concept Unit

Lesson Plan Template

Unit Title: Creating Change: Harnessing Our Power as Artists and Activists
Unit Big Idea (Concept/Theme): Art as Activism
Unit Primary Skill focus: Expressive Writing
Week __3____ of 3; Plan #___7_____ of 9; [90 mins.]
Unit Learning Objectives (numbered) [from my Backwards Design Unit Document],
followed by Specific lesson objectives (lettered) being taught in this lesson:
SWBAT:
Cognitive (know/understand):
2. Students will understand that self-expression can lead to activism by empowering us to
provoke thought and promote change that is meaningful to us.
d. Students will know that their own distinctive voices and ways of expressing
themselves can add power to their activist messages.
Affective (feel/value) and/or Non-Cognitive:
3. Students will value both their own art and the art of others as powerful examples of selfexpression and activism.
c. Students will value the power of their own personal voices to provoke thought
and promote change through their writing.
Performance (do):
8. Students will create a piece of art as activism.
c. Students will identify and refine the elements of personal voice and expression
that they want to highlight in their artistic pieces and artists statements.
SOLs:
7.7 The student will write in a variety of forms with an emphasis on exposition, narration, and
persuasion.
j) Revise sentences for clarity of content including specific vocabulary and information.
CCSs:
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.7.3
Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique,
relevant descriptive details, and well-structured event sequences.

Methods of Assessment:
[How will you know if the intended learning occurred?] List all methods of assessment used in
this lesson or which are related to this lesson and come in a future lesson. After each assessment,
indicate in brackets the number(s) and letter(s) of the unit objective and the related lesson
objectives that the assessment is evaluating.
Diagnostic
Do Now:
Students will complete a
journal response to a
question that asks them to
look back to their artists
statements that they were
working on in the previous
class period and brainstorm
ways that they could make it
sound more like their own
voice. [8c]

Formative
Voice Recordings Before
and After:
Students will record
themselves reading their
artists statements in their own
voices before they revise, and
based on what they hear, they
will record them again after
they have made revisions for
sentence variation. [2d, 8c]

Summative

Revised Artist Statements:

Students will have revised
their artists statements to
include the aspects of voice
that they wanted to include in
to reflect their personalities
and the purpose of their art.
[2d, 8c]
Exit Card:
Students will complete an exit
card reflection at the end of
the lesson to assess their own
perception of how they have
improved their artists
statements. [3c, 8c]
Procedures/Instructional Strategies
[Note: Any words that represent what I would say directly to students appear in italics.]
Beginning Room Arrangement:
Students will begin the lesson in their base groups.
1. [5 mins.] Bridge/Hook/Opening to lesson:
I will greet students at the door as they enter the classroom, and they will look to the
lesson slides (Appendix A) to see where they should sit for the lesson, and also to see the

Do Now that they should be working on. I will call the class to attention using the give
me five strategy before I begin talking.
Hello everybody, I am very happy to see all of you here today. Yesterday, we worked on
creating artists statements for your artistic pieces that you have all been working so
diligently on these past couple of weeks. Today, we are going to revisit these artists
statements and revise them to make them even more personal to you. We have been
thinking a lot about your personal voice as a writer. So, you will think about what you
want your artists statements to sound like, we will revise them and even listen to them in
our own voices. We are also going to learn about how to vary the length of our sentences
to make our writing voices sound more natural. Does anybody have any questions about
this?
2. [10 mins.] Do Now and Planning
So, in your Do Now, you all identified areas of your personal voice that you might want
to highlight in your artists statement. Now that you have identified these areas, you will
need to think about things that you can specifically do in your writing that will make this
happen. For example, if I want to sound professional in my writing, what are some things
that I should look for? Looking for: using proper English, no slang, use big words. Great,
so those are some general things that I could do, but what could I do when I revise?
Looking for: use dictionary, go through and change things to make them sound more
formal.
Take a few minutes to jot down some things that you want to do in your artists statements
right under your Do Now in your journal, and then we will move into an activity that will
help you make these
3. [5 mins.] Split Room into Partners and Explain Activity
So, now that we all know what we want to do with our artists statements, we are going to
start with an exercise that will help us with this even more. First, we are all going to split
into partners. Partner listings will be on a slide in Appendix A for students to reference
and get with their partners. As students are moving into their pairs, pass each partnership
an iPod to use. Please push your desks into pairs and I am going to distribute iPods to
everybody in here. Once you get your iPod, please go to the voice memo app, which is
under the utilities menu.
Is everybody in partners and on the voice memo app? Good. Now I am going to show you
how we are going to use these tools to help us revise our artists statements.
4. [10 mins.] Recording 1: Baseline
What we are going to do is record each of us reading our artists statements out loud
using the voice memo app, and then we are going to listen back to the recording and
make decisions for revision based on what we hear in the recording. So, each partner
should take a turn with the iPod. You just push the record button here on the iPod and
talk into the front of it just like you would a cell phone. When you are done, you can hit
the stop button, and it will prompt you to name your file. You should name it first, with

your name, and then the number one. So, for example, mine would be named Miss
Blase, 1. You can look up at the PowerPoint Slides to remind yourself of this. So, can
somebody repeat back to me what you are supposed to do? Yes, read back your artists
statements and record them so you can listen to them. When you are finished with your
recordings, please go and make sure the recording you made worked and that you can
actually go back and listen to it.
Walk around as students are recording their artists statements as voice memos. Help
students with tech issues and listen for partner collaboration.
5. [8 mins.] Listen and Reflect
Okay, so now that you have your recordings, I bet you can guess what I want you to do
next. Take turns listening to the recordings as partners this is important because we are
going to give each other suggestions, and add on to your suggestions that you were
making for yourselves.
Give students some time to make some suggestions and listen to their recordings.
6. [10 mins.] Catch: Sentence Length Variation
We are going to do a quick mini-lesson on something that I think will help all of you to
have your artists statements sound more natural. We are going to work on varying our
sentence length. Lets look at some example sentences. (Put Appendix B up on the
ELMO and cover up all but the first example)
I am going to read this example for you guys and lets talk about it.
[I wrote this narrative piece about my younger brother, Timmy, who has been a really
influential person in my life because he sees the world in a different way than most
people and he is just one of those people who everybody remembers. One of my favorite
memories with him is from when he was just a small child, probably two years old, and
he used to be really obsessed with pretending to be a lifeguard, so my dad made him a
pretend lifeguard chair. He played with it all of the time, and he even had this little toy
whistle that he would blow every time I entered the room where he was playing, and he
would yell, No running by the pool.]
What do you notice about the length of these sentences? They are really long, thats right.
There are only three sentences up there and that is a pretty big chunk of text. What did it
sound like when all of my sentences were so long? Did it sound like a natural way of
speaking? Expected response: No, sounded breathless, like you would never stop talking,
etc. Thats right, it sounded like I was kind of a chatterbox. Lets read another example.
[I wrote this narrative piece about my younger brother, Timmy. He has been a really
influential person in my life. He sees the world in a different way than most people. He is
just one of those people who everybody remembers. One of my favorite memories with
him was from when he was just a small child. He was probably two years old. He used to
be really obsessed with pretending to be a lifeguard. My dad made him a pretend

lifeguard chair. He played with it all of the time. He even had this little toy whistle. He
would blow it every time I entered the room. No running by the pool, he would yell.]
What did you all notice about this one? Yeah, I said the exact same thing, but I said it in
a lot more sentences, and they were much shorter. How is this different than the one
before? Yeah, it sounded kind of choppy, didnt it? Does this sound like natural speech to
you? No, that doesnt either. So, the verdict seems like, no long sentences, no short
sentences Lets look at one more example that I will read out loud for you.
[I wrote this narrative piece about my younger brother, Timmy, who has been a really
influential person in my life. He sees the world differently than most people, and he is
definitely one of those people who leaves an impression when you meet him. One of my
favorite memories with him is from when he was a small child. He was probably two
years old and he was really obsessed with pretending to be a lifeguard. My dad mad him
this play lifeguard chair that he played with all of the time, and he even had a toy whistle
that he would blow every time I entered the room. No running by the pool, he would
yell.]
What did you notice about the sentence lengths in this passage? Yes, thats right, it was a
combination of different sentence lengths, and there are many other different ways that I
could have structured these sentences, as you have heard the same passage three times,
but all said and structured in a different way. Sometimes, intentionally varying the
sentence length or keeping it the same is good to do in our writing because it helps us
to change the way it sounds.
Its not necessarily bad to have all short or all long sentences sometimes authors and
other writers do that for a reason so their piece would sound a certain way. Can you
think of a reason you might want all short sentences?
So, now that we have seen how this can affect how our sentences sound, you all should
think about sentence length as you are revising your artists statements. There is no right
answer to this, but you should just play around.
7. [20 mins.] Revision for sentence length variation
Okay, so take some time to spend with your artists statements and revise them based on
the feedback you got from your recording, the suggestions you made for yourself at the
beginning of the lesson, and then what we just learned about the sentence variation. We
are going to move on to the second part of our activity for today after you have some time
to revise, so I am going to give you about 20 minutes to revise for right now. I will set a
timer to remind you.
Allow students time to make revision and set a timer for them so they know that they
only have a limited amount of time.
8. [15 mins.] Recording 2: Comparison
Call class back to attention using the give me five strategy.

Okay, now that you have had some time to make some revisions, you and your partner
are going to record your artists statements again and then listen to both of your
recordings one after the other so you can hear the difference and decide for yourself
whether or not you like the way the revisions sound or not.
Circulate around and provide assistance where needed.
9. [5 mins.] Exit Card: Reflection
Alright everybody, take a few moments here at the end of class to respond to the exit card
journal prompt projected on the board just to reflect upon the revisions and progress that
you have made with your artists statements today.
Call students back to attention so they have time to pack up before the bell rings.
10. [1 mins] Closure:
Thank you so much for your hard work in our lesson today! I am really confident that you
all are going to have your personal goals and voices shine through in your artists
statements now that you have listened to yourselves reading them.
Differentiated Instruction to accommodate one or more of my profiled students:
(This is where you identify specific aspects of this lesson which have been differentiated in order
to address the needs of one or more of your profiled studentsidentify them by name)
Joe: I will place Joe with Frank as his partner, as this is a person with whom Joe seems to be
most comfortable with for social interactions. However, I will also place this partnership near
another pair of students who would be willing to support Joe and Frank if they need help using
the iPods. In addition, I will go over and read Joes artists statement into the iPod for him.
Kelly: I will read Kellys artists statement into the iPod for her, or I will quietly ask another
student who is willing, such as Jackie, to do so for her so she can hear the way her words
together so she is not barred by her reading fluency for this assignment. In addition, I will allow
Kelly to work with one of her friends for this partnership, though I will closely monitor to ensure
that she stays on task.
Jackie: If Jackie is ahead on this assignment and wishes to work alone, I will allow her to do so.
If she finishes early, she will be allowed to continue her previous assignment extension and think
about how she can include her activist comparison into her artists statement.
Materials Needed (list):
Appendix A: Lesson Slides (link here)
Voice Recording software on laptops / voice memo programming on iPods
Appendix B: Sentence Variation Examples
Materials Appendix: (e.g., supplementary texts, Ppts, overheads, graphic organizers,
handouts, etc.)
Appendix A: Lesson Slides (Link here)