ELA Lesson: Writing Narrative Poems

Part 1: Classroom Information

Grade: __5___Content Area: ELA -Writing_ Group Size: _32__ Lesson Length: _60__ minutes

Part 1: Planning for the Lesson

A: Standards

i. Key Content Standard:

5th Grade: Writing

W.5.3b 3. Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using

effective technique, descriptive details, and clear event sequences.
b. Use narrative techniques, such as dialogue, description, and pacing, to develop
experiences and events or show the responses of characters to situations.

ii. Related ELD Standard (must be included when using an ELA Standard):
Fifth Grade: Productive, Expanding
ELD.PI.5.10 - Writing
a) Write longer literary and informational texts (e.g., an informative report on different
kinds of camels) collaboratively (e.g., joint construction of texts with an adult or
with peers) and with increasing independence by using appropriate text
organization.

B. Objectives
i. Learning Objective/Goal: The students will (DO __) to (LEARN ___).
Students will read a poem and brainstorm a past experience for their original narrative
poems.

ii. Language Objective (transfer this from "Incorporating Academic Language"):

The student will describe a surprising or unexpected event for their narrative rhyming
poems.

C. Assessments:
i. Informal assessment strategies you will use during class (What informal assessment
strategies will you use, what specific evidence will you see and/or hear and how will you
note it?)
Assessment Strategy Evidence of Student Learning
Students are able to answer questions in
Monitor and check in with students as
their journals that will guide them in
they brainstorm their poem
creating their poem.

ii. Written assessment you will use to determine, for each individual student, to what extent
they have met your learning objectives. (What evidence will you collect?)
Students will answer a set of questions to help them brainstorm a surprising or
unexpected moment in their life:
 o Student will have written 2-3 sentences for each question.
o Answers will be clear and all align with the single event they choose.
o Students should make sure they use proper spelling, grammar, and punctuation
as they respond the the questions.
o Questions:
1. Think of an event from your life that was surprising or unexpected. Write
what was surprising in the space below.
2. What was happening before the surprising event?
3. What changed because of the surprising event?

D. Lesson Resources/Materials (e.g., student handouts, manipulatives, PPTs, text pages, special
supplies) Attach copies of any student handouts or worksheets:

Snow Dust by Robert Frost

Brainstorm Exemplar
CKLA Poets Journal 5.3

Part 2: Instructional Sequence - Engaging Students in the Learning Process

Writing Process - Describe the strategies for each step of the writing process. Indicate which step is
included in this lesson plan.

Prewriting - See the following lesson focusing on analyzing a poem before planning a narrative
rhyming poem on a surprising or unexpected event.

Prompt - Write your own narrative poem about something that was surprising or unexpected using an
ABAB rhyme scheme.

Drafting - Students will work independently to draft their own rhyming poem. Students will use the
information from the questions they answered in the prewrite and previous class exercise as a resource
while drafting.

Sharing - Students will share their poems in a Think-Pair-Share activity. Each student will share with
their peer what they liked about their poem and will give constructive feedback.

Revising Teacher will teach a lesson on poetic devices, specifically rhyming and as a class they will
practicing identifying and using rhyming words in a ABAB rhyme scheme. Students then re-examine
their own poem and make revisions or add words to create a ABAB rhyming poem. In addition,
students use peer feedback and revise their drafts with particular attention to their word choice.

Editing - Students will self-edit their papers before submitting a rough draft for review.

Evaluating The teacher will be evaluating the students rough drafts and later their final products
using the Narrative Poem Rubric (see last page of the lesson plan).
Introduction (__2_ min.): Describe how you will 1) make connections to prior knowledge, tap
into their experiences and interests or use a hook, AND 2) let students know what the objective of
the lesson is.
Tell students that this lesson looks at another poem with a poetic device that involves
repetition. That device is rhyme, or the repetition of sounds. Also, similarly to yesterdays
poem My Father and the Figtree by Naomi Shihab Nye, the author is describing a personal
experience.

Share with students that in the lesson today they will be analyzing a narrative poem and then
will brainstorm ideas for their own narrative poems that they will be drafting the next day.

Body of the Lesson (__54_ minutes): Describe step-by-step what the teacher and the students
will be doing during the lesson.

A. Reading
Tell students that they will listen to you read the poem Snow Dust by Robert Frost. As
they listen, they should follow along in their Poets Journal and try to understand the scene
the poem describes.
Read Robert Frosts Snow Dust aloud.

Snow Dust by Robert Frost

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart

A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.

Ask Students Discussion Questions During Read Aloud

1. What happens to the speaker in the first two lines of the second stanza?
o His heart changes mood
2. What does the speaker say was saved?
o He says that part of his day was saved.
3. The speaker says that at first he rued the day, but it was eventually saved by the crow
shaking snow onto his head. Based on his use of the word saved, what do you guess
rued might mean?
o Answers may vary.
The discussion should culminate in helping students understand the correct
meaning of rued, which is felt sorry about or regretted.
4. In your own words, describe the change that took place for the speaker.
o Answers will vary, but the key is the word rued, which tells students that the
speaker had been having a bad day until the snow hit him.
5. Summarize the events of the poem in your own words. Think-Pair-Share with a partner.
 6. Answers will vary, but students should understand both that the speaker encountered a
crow who shook snow
Ask students to read the poem again silently.
o Assess: monitor and notice any students who are disengaged and may be struggling
reading the poem
o ELL Support: students needing extra support can read with a partner or join the
teacher in a small group to re-read the poem.

B. Brainstorm: Tell students that now they will turn to Poets Journal 5.3 to brainstorm ideas for
their own poems.
Tell students like Robert Frost, you will write your poem about something that was
surprising or unexpected.
Instructions
o Tell students that now they will turn to Poets Journal 5.3 to brainstorm ideas for
their own poems.
o Review the questions (below) they will answer in their journals.
Think of an event from your life that was surprising or unexpected. Write
what was surprising in the space below.
What was happening before the surprising event?
What changed because of the surprising event?
Examples
o Give a couple of examples of what they could write about. Examples should be
projected on the whiteboard as they are read aloud.
Possible topics: surprise party, someone scared you, you got an unexpected
present (puppy) for Christmas.
o Ex: A graduation surprise
1. Think of an event from your life that was surprising or unexpected. Write what
was surprising in the space below.
The day of my high school graduation, I was suddenly surprised when I
answered the door, and found my baby nephew in his car seat, all alone,
looking up at me with big owl eyes. Seconds later, my sister popped out
from around the corner and yelled, surprise!.
2. What was happening before the surprising event?
My sister told me a few days before that she wouldnt be able to make the
trip down from San Luis Obispo for my graduation. I was getting ready for
the ceremony, thinking about how I wish my sister, her family, and my new
baby nephew was there for the big day.
3. What changed because of the surprising event?
My sister, husband, and my sweet baby nephew came to my high school
graduation, making me at the time, the happiest girl as I received my
diploma.
 Assess: monitor and check in with students as they complete the exercise. Make sure they
understand the ask and chose an appropriate event. Assess whether they have completed the
three questions using complete sentences.
o Whole-Class Support: For those students struggling to complete the brainstorm on their
own, ask prompting questions to jumpstart their responses (e.g. Where did their
surprising event take place?; And then what happened?). Then, suggest they start
writing using that information
o ELL/Additional Support: Teacher can give students sentence frames to use for their
responses. If needed, pull a group of students to a table and use a similar event they can
write about (ex: unexpected birthday surprise/present, Halloween scare).

Closure (__4____minutes): Describe how you will prompt the students to summarize the lesson
and restate the learning objective.

Think-Pair-Share: Have students think-pair-share their responses and what event they were going to
use for their event with an elbow partner
After they had time to think-pair-share with their elbow partners, ask 2 students to share what their
partner had said. Reinstate the students answers for questions 1, 2, 3. Remind students that they will be
using their responses to the questions tomorrow when they start on their drafts.

Part 3: Incorporating Academic Language

1. Describe the rich learning task(s) related to the content learning objective.
Students brainstorm surprising or unexpected moments in their life which they will use for their
poem.

2. Language Function: How will students be communicating in relation to the content in the learning
task(s)? Identify the specific function (purpose or genre) you want to systematically address in
your lesson plan that will scaffold students to stronger disciplinary discourse. The language
function will always be a verb. Some examples are: describe, identify, explain, justify, analyze,
construct, compare, or argue.
Describe

3. Language Demands: Looking at the specific function (purpose or genre) your students will be
using, what are the language demands that you will systematically address in this lesson?
Vocabulary:
Key to this lesson:
Rue (v.) - to feel sorry about or regret
Rhyme (n.) - words that end in the same sound or sounds
Rhyme scheme (n.) - the pattern of repeated rhyming words in a poem
Narrative (poem) (n.) - a form of poetry that tells a story, often making use of the
voices of a narrator and characters as well

Syntax1:
Some of the rhyming words I heard include
 A surprising or unexpected event that happened in my life was when.
Before the surprising event,
Because of the surprising event,

Discourse2:
Students are able to describe a surprising or unexpected event that they experienced. Student
also have to explain why the event was surprising.

4. Language Objective: What is/are the language objective(s) for your lesson? (The students will
(FUNCTION) (LANGUAGE RELATED TO CONTENT) (SYNTAX AND/OR DISCOURSE)
For example: The students will compare different types of parallelograms using transition words
such as similarly, different from or by contrast. Note: be sure to copy and paste this into the top of
the lesson planner.

The student will identify, describe, then explain a surprising or unexpected event for their narrative
rhyming poems.

5. What does your language objective sound like/look like for different levels of language learners?
Ask yourself, What would the students say/write when using the language function. Remember
to consider the language demands while creating sample language that the students might use.

Emerging Expanding Bridging

__made me surprised.
Before I was
This event made me
I was surprised was
when.
Before it happened I was
____.
Because of this event
A time I was surprised was
when.
Before the event, ___was
happening.
The outcomes of this event
were

6. Language Support: What instructional strategies will you use during your lesson to teach the
specific language skill and provide support and opportunities for guided and independent practice?

Instruction Guided Practice Independent Practice

Modeling Sentence frames Sentence frames
Sentence frames Pair Sharing
 Narrative Poetry Rubric
W.5.3b 3. Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective
technique, descriptive details, and clear event sequences.
b. Use narrative techniques, such as dialogue, description, and pacing, to develop experiences and
events or show the responses of characters to situations.

4 3 2 1
Brainstorming Worksheet
I responded to the
brainstorming questions.
Rough Draft
Narrative Poem Genre
I create a poem that is written
in the narrative genre, and
tells a story in sequential
order of an unexpected or
surprising event
Length
The length of my poem has a
minimum of 4 lines (1 stanza)
Structure of Poem
My poem is written in the
ABAB rhyming scheme.
Grammar and Spelling
I check my work and fix
errors before and after the
peer review.
Word Choice
My poem contains descriptive
words that provide the reader
details of the event.
Final Draft
Illustration/ Display
Ive created an illustration or
display that enhances my
poem.
Final Copy Poem 0-1 errors 2-3 errors 3-4 errors 5 or more errors
I create a final draft fixing all
of the revisions and edits from
my rough draft.
Final Copy Poem
I typed an organized, neat
final draft.