Mini-Unit Lesson Plan

Tom Meyers

Supporting Literacy Development

Edu 740

October 16, 2010

This project can be considered primarily a vocabulary vehicle although it incorporates a variety of emphases including components of fluency and comprehension. The instructor should allow a window of about two weeks to successfully implement this project, although its completion could require quite a bit more. It may be considered a template since both the core of the material and many of the separate steps are easily modified. There will be student directed teaching and several opportunities for team or small group work times. The students will be able to handle the material a number of times in a variety of ways. Much of the activity takes place on the Smartboard, utilizing multiple opportunities to include technology into the unit. Assessment activities include both a spelling and a vocabulary test. There should be a solid piece of original Readers Theater at the close, as well. The first step of the unit is a collection process that can take place over a number of days preceding implementation. Introduce the students to the concept of a Words and Phrases I Like list. This can be modeled several times by the instructor before being turned over to the students. Material can be drawn from subject texts, read alouds, magazine articles, or practically any source. Technology teaching is included as a file is named and saved and becomes the place where additions are made whenever the occasion arises. Students are encouraged to choose words that sound interesting, are descriptive, unfamiliar, or that they would like to use in future writing. As each new word or phrase is identified, the instructor adds them to the list. The amount of time needed for this list generation is quite modest. Since vocabulary acquisition is a primary goal, the teacher spells them correctly at the onset.

The following lesson specifics are designed to be carried out over the course of a normal week. On Monday, begin with an overview of the unit. After enough words have been added to the list, announce to the students that there will be two assessments at the end of the week utilizing twenty of the words. One of the quizzes will be based on spelling the words correctly, the other on each words meaning. In addition, the words will also be used in the creation of a Readers Theater piece, to be presented to the fourth grade the following week. The teacher passes out a list with each word spelled correctly on it. The students are then paired up and assigned three words from the list. They are instructed to look up the meaning of each word in the dictionary and to use each of their words properly in a sentence. When this has been achieved, each team goes up to the board and writes down their findings for the rest of the class to copy. Since this is being done on the Smartboard, this work will remain accessible to both the class and the teacher (this can be especially helpful for any absentees). The vocabulary assessment will use these student discovered definitions and sentences as its base. Before the quizzes, allow the students another chance to manipulate the words in a different exercise. Word search and word scramble generators are easily accessible on the Internet. One such site can be found at www. teach-nology.com. By allowing the students to unscramble the words, first individually, then in changing teams (shift every three minutes), they can focus on the words in another setting. Incorporating the social element enables the students to get a chance to benefit from a variety of problem solving strategies and peer support. Technology integrates easily into this assignment as each student volunteers to go up to the Smartboard and write the corrected scramble. This provides yet another opportunity to work with the correct spellings.

Thursday should be the day for a first attempt at the spelling assessment piece. If a student can score perfectly on this practice quiz, the grade stands, and they get free time during the actual quiz the following day. Friday is when both the vocabulary and spelling assessments go into the books. The vocabulary test involves matching definitions with the word as well as filling in the blank to demonstrate proper usage in context. The proper spellings of the words are available, keeping the focus on comprehension vs. spelling. The final piece of this mini-unit may well also provide the highest energy and student engagement. It is a great opportunity to model brainstorming and conduct some think aloud prewriting. It also provides some excellent occasions to utilize the split screen feature of Smartboards notebook software as the students fill in details to develop a general outline of a Readers Theater work. The instructor begins this last phase by revisiting some of the major components of a story: characters, setting, plot, problem, character growth, and conclusion. Here is a place where specific elements may be focused on in the future. The teacher can facilitate discussion of each piece, starting with a story idea, then fleshing out each category. The teacher writes all the ideas on the split screen, pinning the overall framework to one side and filling in details of the story on the other as discussion progresses. The beauty of the software is the ability to travel back and forth between pages to revise and revisit as needed. By saving this work, activity can span several days and nothing gets lost or misplaced. After a rough storyline has been created by the whole group, divide the class into teams once again and parcel out pieces of the story to be developed by each team. For example, one team tackles the beginning, one character development, another middle story action, and so on. Choose several words from the vocabulary list for each team to

incorporate into their contribution. The group may decide to make this a complete piece from beginning to end or may decide to create one of a number of episodes, depending on the enthusiasm of the participants. The time required for this unit per day can be flexible. The initial activities of searching out the definitions, then writing them on the board will take a fair amount of time. The word scramble and assessments should take less. The Readers Theater piece will be the most time consuming, but should involve a considerable number of teachable moments along a range of skills. Writing a piece of theater is different than writing narrative, for example, and will require a different mindset from the students. It creates an opportunity to mesh vocabulary with purpose. By the time this unit is complete, each student will have had a number of chances to examine and apply each word in the list multiple times. There will have been many opportunities to interact with different members of the class in a number of capacities. There will be a concrete creation that they will have all contributed to, as well as performed for another group of students. They might even have just a bit of fun along the way.

This mini-unit panned out well, perhaps even better than expected. Starting with the generation of the original Words I Like list, the students displayed an unusual amount of

cooperation and enthusiasm for the project. The amount of on task behavior was fantastic. The assessments went well (8As, 2Bs, 1D,1F). The Readers Theater was a big success even though it remains a work in progress. The whole project has helped me to adopt a modified attitude towards several of my long-standing practices that may prove beneficial to all concerned. When the kids were first looking up their definitions, they quickly discovered some disparities. For example, the bases of several verbs were listed but not in their past tense forms. This gave us openings to revisit how affixes can affect words and what changes, if any, they created in the meanings of the words from our list. This theme was to reappear throughout the lessons as unintended teaching/learning situations arose and were taken advantage of. As great as all those opportunities were, however, there also lay one of the potential drawbacks. Time allotted for the unit became drastically altered. Luckily, I have the ability to be every flexible with my schedule, so we pretty much went where the flow took us. I dont imagine every teacher has that luxury. Allow me to illustrate a significant departure from script. As we were getting involved with the lessons, I was asked to contribute to a workshop for some visiting educators from a sister school. Several colleagues and I were requested to show these visitors what we were doing with our Smartboard technology. What a stroke of timing! I opened up discussion with my kids about what I should share at the workshop. It doubled the involvement with the mini lessons. We navigated through the software, dealt with glitches, explored some options we dont usually use and brainstormed a new folder full of ideas to present. The students got as proficient with navigating through the notebook program as any I have ever had. This was spread throughout the class, from

the strongest to the weakest of the learners. Of course, this all meant less time spent with core curricular materials, but I was able to make that command decision. I think the learning was at least as beneficial. Which brings me to my next point. I have a tendency to assert a lot of control in the room. It is usually just easier that way. I normally do not utilize a lot of cooperative activities mainly because the behaviors of this age group are too immature to participate in them productively. During this mini-unit, there were a number of disruptive displays, but they could be addressed relatively quickly and easily. One of my favorite recollections was of two of the absolute weakest literacy students (and two of my bigger behavioral problems) really taking off with a phone call dialogue for the Readers Theater. They were so proud of their work. It was gratifying. Additionally, the assessments went very well, especially the vocabulary quiz. Several of the students got their highest marks of the year in spelling (I thought it was a challenging list). There was so much energy surrounding the play that we decided to make it chapter one as opposed to wrapping it all up in one sitting. The kids had so many ideas, I couldnt get them on the board fast enough. Im hoping to continue the process by generating the next list of words and running a similar unit but having the students include the words from the new list into the next installment of the theater. I am allowing that anything done for the first time (for instructor, as well as student) will require a time investment. When the students had to put their definitions on the Smartboard, they were not used to manipulating the pen, writing without lines, and a little shy in front of the class. I was strongly tempted to just do it for them. I am hoping to lessen the amount needed the next time through so as not to neglect other curricular areas.

It didnt feel that bad to give up a little command. Hopefully, the children will continue to rise to the occasion and make the best use of these learning opportunities. There has already been some carryover as I assigned teams to reread and create review questions for the next science quiz. After working in this fashion for the last two weeks they were able to get started in good fashion.

I have included the original word list, the vocabulary quiz, and several samples of the Smartboard pages (the whole file was 18 pages long).

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Vocabulary Test Use capital letters. Some choices may be used more than once, some not at all. plowing and fertilizing 1. _____ 2. _____ 3. _____ 4. _____ hurried run twist and wriggle thin and bony short and prickly A. redundant

5. _____ an angry and threatening growl 6. _____ to come into view

B. exquisite

7. _____ broad, flat thick surface or piece of material 8. _____ marked by an intricately beautiful design. 9. _____ exceeding what is required, extra 10. _____ improve land by

C. cultivated

D. snarled

E. scuttled

F. squirmed

G. gaunt

H. stubbled

I. loomed

J. slab

Fill in the blanks using words from the list below. Some choices may be used more than once, some not at all. 11. James _____________ looked for his missing pen. 12. Jill had to be careful with the icicle because it was so ____________. 13. After he caught the three pound trout, the boy thought he was quite an ____________. 14. The factory went into _____________ last week. 15. Our Boy Scout troop made an ____________ into the woods to watch for birds. 16. We tried to brainstorm a story about a couple who were almost ____________ to another planet. 17. Digging ditches is a very ___________ activity. 18. That last hurricane did a ___________ amount of damage to New Orleans. 19. That was quite a(n) ____________ the acrobats put on last night. 20. The fire finally ____________ out after we drenched it with water from the stream. angler expedition physical exhibition

sputtered brittle horrendous

operation

abducted

confoundedly

QuickTime and a decompressor are needed to see this picture.

QuickTime and a decompressor are needed to see this picture.

QuickTime and a decompressor are needed to see this picture.

QuickTime and a decompressor are needed to see this picture.