ED 345 Calvin College Lesson Planning Form for Differentiating Instruction

Teacher: Beth Kusserow

Date: Oct. 7, 2015

Subject/ Topic/ Theme: English/Reading/Fables

I. Objectives
What is the main focus of this lesson? Students practice the skills and knowledge they have learned over the week - quotation
marks, series of nouns, cause and effect
How does this lesson tie in to a unit plan? In centers, the students practice fantasy writing, work with lists of nouns, quotations,
and cause and effect, which are all review from the past two weeks.
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 write and illustrate a fantasy story that includes dialogue and quotation marks.
2) Students will practice writing series of nouns and editing writing in their grammar books.
3) Students will identify cause and effect in their fable books, as well as doing additional work applicable to the book (vocab,
quotations, etc.).
II. Before you start
Prerequisite knowledge and skills.
Assessment
(formative and summative)
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

8:05 8:50

Motivation
(Opening/
Introduction/
Engagement)
Development

They have almost all read the books before, have worked with quotation marks, series of
nouns, and cause and effect.
Later I can check their grammar books and writing journals. During the centers I can walk
around and check to make sure that they are all on track.
[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.
Writing journals, plain paper, pencils, fables books, cause & effect worksheets, grammar
books

Back desk clear for centers.

The description of (script for) the lesson, wherein you describe teacher activities and student
activities
I gather the students at their desks and briefly explain what the centers will be.

Centers:

Writing: Students write a fantasy story with characters talking to each other. They can take a prompt
from the fantasy envelope hanging on the board if they want, or they can use their own ideas. They
should make sure that the story is not real - it could NOT actually happen, because its fantasy.
Working with Words: Students illustrate their story. If they have already written it, they can draw a
picture of what they wrote, otherwise they will have to draw the picture first and then write the story to
go with it.
Phonics: Students will work on two pages in their grammar book about lists of nouns.
Reading: Students will come to my desk and work on identifying cause and effect in the fables that they
read. I will also lead a brief comprehension discussion to prep them for the reading test later on.
I will allow the students to go through two rotations of the centers, ringing the bell after each one.
After the second center, I will have all of the students come back to their desks. The first thing I want
them to do is talk with their table and see if they can remember what cause and effect is, and make an
example. After a minute, I will ask each table group to share what they can remember.
8:50 9:00

After they share, we can watch the Brain Pop video and then take the easy quiz (teacher helper at the
computer). After the quiz, I will ask the paper passers to give out the worksheet. I will pull up the
equivalent on Brain Pop Jr. so that I can show them what Im doing.
I will read the instructions for the students - draw one line under the cause and two lines under the
effect. I will read the first line out loud. Then I will ask the students which one is the cause. Then which is
the effect. We will re-write the sentence Because the neighborhood was noisy, Moby did not sleep
well.

9:00 9:10

For the second one, I will read it, then ask the students to close their eyes. Ill read it again, and then say,
If you think the part that said Grandpop closed the window is the cause, raise your hand. [pause] If
you think the part that said The weather outside was cold is the cause, raise your hand. Then they can
open their eyes. I didnt want them to see the others votes.

Closure

Then they can finish the rest of the sheet on their own.
They turn in their work and line up for swimming.

Your reflection on the lesson including ideas for improvement for next time:
Ai yai yai. This is discouraging. Im trying to balance teaching so many things at once. This kids are supposed to be mastering
quotation marks, cause and effect, noun lists, fables, morals, plural nouns, proper nouns so many things! If I work toward one
thing, another falls behind. I expected this to be a fun unit on fables, but instead its been a unit on quotation marks and nouns
and cause and effect. Its so much.
During the centers today, [Mrs. Smith] had to step in and give the students direction who were supposed to be drawing a picture
for their story. They had started writing their story on the same page. I was frustrated with my group that they just werent getting
cause and effect. Shawna said that normally she spends two weeks on it. I dont know why there has been so much crammed into
the past two/three weeks.
Because [Mrs. Smith] asked me to extend the center time to include reading the books and doing cause and effect and doing
another activity with the teacher-led center, I didnt have as much time for cause and effect at the end. We watched the Brain Pop
video again, then did the quiz. I had another activity set aside, but didnt get to it. Maybe tomorrow.
If I were doing this unit again, I would know what I was getting into before the last two days, and I would schedule it all out from
the beginning.