ED 345 Calvin College Lesson Planning Form for Differentiating Instruction

Teacher: Beth Kusserow

Date: Oct. 6, 2015

Subject/ Topic/ Theme: English/Reading/Fables

I. Objectives
What is the main focus of this lesson? Nouns in series - where to place commas.
How does this lesson tie in to a unit plan? This continues to build on the nouns work we have done - nouns, proper nouns, plural
nouns, and now lists of nouns.
What are your objectives for this lesson? (As many as needed.) Indicate connections to applicable national or state standards. If
an objective applies to only certain students write the name(s) of the student(s) to whom it applies.
1) Students will physically demonstrate the placement of commas in a series of nouns.
2) Students will create sentences containing a list of nouns, with commas in the appropriate places.
II. Before you start
Prerequisite knowledge and skills.

Students know what nouns and sentences are.

Assessment
(formative and summative)

I will observe the students as they place commas in their human sentences.
Collect their written sentences to check for correct placement.

Identify those students (individuals

or groups) in your class who will
need special attention and
describe the level of support you
plan on giving them. Refer back to
the survey you did of your class.
Materials-what materials (books,
handouts, etc) do you need for this
lesson and do you have them?
Do you need to set up your
classroom in any special way for
this lesson? If so, describe it.
III. The Plan
Time
Parts
8:00 8:05

Motivation
(Opening/
Introduction/
Engagement)

[Charlie], [Marissa], [Jada], and [Kimberly] are at the F reading level from Reading A-Z.
[Charlie]s fine motor skills are weak.
None of the others in the class indicated that English was hard for them at school on their
surveys.
white boards and markers
paper and pencils

The morning carpet space should be adequate.

The description of (script for) the lesson, wherein you describe teacher activities and student
activities
Tell the students that I have a funny list of things that I need to get the next time I go to Giant.
Get bread rice, juice cookies, chicken tea, and fruit. What on earth are juice cookies? Or what about
bread rice? Can any of the students help me figure out what Im ACTUALLY supposed to get?
If they can figure it out, I will show them how important it is where you pause in a sentence with a list,
and thats why we use commas. I will ask one of the students to help me put the commas where they
should go. First we find all the nouns in the list: bread rice juice cookies chicken tea fruit. Then we put a
comma after each one. We can do this on the white board.

8:05 8:20

I will ask the students if they want to make a human sentence with a list. They have to say yes! :)
So I will take out the whiteboards and create one of the following sentences:
I dont like spiders, ants, flies, or bees. (8)
My friends are [Jada], [Charlie], [Arthur], and [Lily]. (8)
Some colors are red, purple, and black. (7)
I eat rice, chicken, and vegetables. (6)
I have a dog, cat, fish, bird, and turtle. (9)
Do you like music, movies, or books best? (8)
Development

I will give a whiteboard to each student who is a word in the sentence, and they write their respective
word on it. Then I have them stand in a row with space in between each word (we need spaces between
our words when writing!). Then I ask who wants to be a comma. I select two to four volunteers,
depending on the sentence, and ask them to find where the commas should go in the sentence. When
they find the place, they should sit down and pretend to be a comma! I will have the rest of the class
decide if they are in the right place. If not, they get to be the writer and move them to the right place.
We will continue this with the other sentences until everyone has had at least one chance to be a
comma. Maybe I will take pictures of each sentence.

8:20 8:30

After all the sentences have been used, I will ask the kids to go back to their desks. I will have the paper
passers hand out half sheets of paper, or pieces from the macaroni left overs, and ask them to create a
sentence with their own lists. They can be as long as they want, as long as they have at least three, with
and or or at the end. They should do so with their 6 oclock buddy.

Ideas if they get stuck: Who will come to your birthday party? What drinks do you like? What are your
favorite classes at school? Who is in your family? What languages are you learning?
- 8:35 Closure
If we have time, they can share some of their sentences with the class or with the other members of
their table group.
Your reflection on the lesson including ideas for improvement for next time:
The white board part of my lesson was crazier than I expected, but the students seemed to get the concept relatively well.
At the beginning, they were quite amused that I had chicken tea on my list. [Arthur] was able to recognize that the items should
have been separate, and the class caught on to the idea quickly.
They were quickly able to put commas into the list I wrote on the board.
With the human sentences, my words were not very good at standing nicely in line. The commas did okay, but not as I had
envisioned it. It may have been good to tape a line on the floor with where the words should stand. As my teacher suggested, the
students not in the sentence as words or commas could have been sitting as an audience in front of the others. This may have
made it easier to keep the words in line and have the commas more clearly placed. That would have required more classroom
setup, but may have been worth it.
My teacher also said that I need to touch on all the topics of the week each day - fables, cause and effect, commas, and maybe the
phonics pattern. Today I only looked at commas. Yesterday we looked at cause & effect, briefly touched on fables during TDL, and
had the phonics pattern during spelling. Wednesday and Thursday will be centers, so should automatically touch on everything
except commas. I can review commas with a page in their grammar book.
The last activity was to write a list of their own. I had to only remind a couple students to add commas to their lists, but then they
found the placement themselves - I didnt tell them where to put them. They all did a good job with that. They must have touched
on this before, because they all got it so well.