Lesson Plan

• Class: First grade
• Enrollment: Twenty students
• Period: Fourth
• Duration: Sixty minutes
• Time: 11:00-12:00
• Date: November 30, 2007

2. Topic:

3. Conceptual Theme/Guiding Question:

• To expose students to an assortment of strategies that serve to enhance the fluent and proficient use of language arts.
• Structure and Function-How are organisms structured to ensure efficiency and survival?

4. Content Standards:

• 1.1-Students use appropriate strategies before, during, and after reading in order to construct meaning
• 1.2-Students interpret, analyze, and evaluate text in order to extend understanding and appreciation.
• 1.3-Organisms change in form and behavior as part of their life cycles

5. Learning Objectives:

1. Students will be able to describe the stages of a butterfly’s life cycle.
2. Students will be able to demonstrate the stages of life of butterflies and moths in a puppet theater venue.
3. Students will be able to write a sequencing essay about the stages of life of a moth/butterfly.

6. Students’ Prior Knowledge:

Students will have seen caterpillars and butterflies, but did not know about the concept of metamorphosis and that caterpillars were a stage in the life cycle of a butterfly or moth.

Students will have listened to stories being read to them.

Students will have played with puppets and/or seen puppet shows in person, on DVD, or television.

7.

• The book: The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
• Story character puppets made by teacher using the following:
  • 4 empty toilet tissue rolls
  • Templates for butterfly egg on leaf, apple, cocoon, butterfly
  • Old sock
  • Drawing paper
  • Glue
  • Computer lab with internet access: Website: http://www.exhibits.pacsci.org/insects/buttermoth.html

8. Learning Activities:

a. Initiation: 

·         Students are invited to sit on their squares on the story rug.

·         Puppet theater and puppets are displayed.

·         Students are asked to think about a summer day.

·         Students are asked if they have ever chased a butterfly.

·         Follow-up by asking: “Where do you think butterflies come from?” Listen to a couple of responses. (10 minutes)

b.     

·         Read the book: The Hungry Caterpillar to the entire class.  Stop periodically to ask questions such as, “Do you think caterpillars really eat pizza?” or “What do you think will happen next?”

·         Select 5 students to take character parts from the story: The egg on a leaf, the very hungry caterpillar, the apple, the cocoon, the butterfly

·         Select 1 student to read the story.

·         As each character is discussed, the children crouch down and hold up their respective puppets at the appropriate time in the story sequence.

·         Select 5 more students to play the story roles as someone reads the story until all students have participated. (40 minutes)

9. Closure

·         Metamorphosis is defined as a life cycle process of the butterfly that ensures the organism’s efficiency and survival.

·         The students are asked to review the stages of the butterfly lifecycle:

·         Stages: egg, caterpillar/larva, cocoon/pupa, and butterfly or moth/adult (10 minutes)

10. Summative Evaluation: Assessment of Student Learning:

·       Students retell the story in a puppet show venue.

·         Students write an essay describing the story sequence of events. A drawing is included.

11.

·         Repeat important points of the lesson.

·         Tell Maria to pay particular attention to specific points made in the lesson.

·         Visual information supports auditory input.

·        Present information slowly.

·         Stop frequently to clarify important facts.

·         Ask Maria to paraphrase the directions, explanations, and instructions after hearing them.

Implement the following provisions for Michael, who has a visual impairment. He is unable to copy at a close distance:

·        Highlight or underline material.

·         Frame material to be copied.

·         Student will copy small amounts of material at a time.

·         Teacher-made materials to be provided with enlarged print.

12. Homework /Assignment

·      Students were asked to sit “cris-cross applesauce” on their respective color squares on their classroom rug. This is the classroom policy and it works well. I used arbitrary birthday sequence for choosing the order that children were chosen to be the puppeteers.

·      I used the informal procedure of asking students for predictions during the initial story recitation and allowed students to finish sentences orally during subsequent recitations. I learned that students needed to be instructed in terms of when they were to hold up their characters in the puppet show venue. (It helped that the classroom teacher was the stage manager!) The formal assessment will be a sequencing essay depicting what happened “first,” “second”, “then,” “next,” “finally.”

·         I learned that I could plan a language arts lesson and teach students how to do a reenactment of the story using puppets. I did not know that this was such an engaging and viable method to teach language arts to elementary students. It was a lot easier to make the puppets and to coach the students than I thought it would be.

I had the ability to read to children with animation and I had some teaching tools, such as writers’ workshop, due to my experience as a parent, a tutor, and a substitute teacher, but I did not know the rationale, the standards, and the components of creating a lesson plan.

In terms of behavior management, I know that it is important to keep students engaged and the puppet theater venue amused and interested the students due to the novelty and break from the routine of guided reading.

During the semester, I learned that language arts skills could be assessed in many ways. I have the ability now to observe student writing ability and story sequencing due to the lessons modeled in Prof. Maimon’s class.

I learned about puppetry as a strategy and used it in my lesson. Puppetry is a creative and fun way to clarify a story and/or scientific facts. Three other strategies are: story mapping, group story writing, and role-playing. The graphic organizers used in story mapping help to clarify the characters, setting, and plot of a piece of literature. Collaborative work fosters classroom unity and creativity in the activity where each person adds a sentence to a story. In the exercise where we interviewed the emperor’s tailor, role-playing increased comprehension of the story.

In my earlier essay I stated, “ I hope to be equipped with the tools and methodologies necessary to teach language arts effectively to all of the students in my classroom regardless of skill level and country of origin.”

 I feel confident in my ability to teach valuable lessons to a diverse population because of the “activities” and “mini-research” assignments required for this class. I also think that the classroom activities and handouts provided viable lessons and creative opportunities for assessments, such as, portfolios, projects, and puppet shows.

I have more confidence in my ability to teach language arts to a diverse population of learners, because the social construction constructivist pedagogy was modeled so well in Prof. Maimon’s class. Sometimes the activities were alien to me and to my classmates, but we “got into it” and invariably learning was fun and relevant to our daily lives, which is important in the field of education.

I am closer now to becoming  a “professionally qualified and passionate educator,” because I am well-versed in the goals and standards of language arts education and I hope to instill the love ( like my own) of language arts in our younger generation, in an effort to promote lifelong learning.