Lora Kelly Core Decisions: Literacy We will attempt to present this material to the students through the use

of an exemplary passage from a picture book exhibiting who, what, when, where, and why details, personal writing narratives as springboards to employing the new detail strategy, and a worksheet to help the students visualize the details of which they will be asked to pull out from a partners writing. Through the use of small group discussion, we intend to make the instruction more individualized so as to give particular attention to each of the students writing samples. The students will select a sample of writing from a previous assignment that has not already been chosen for revisions. This will better personalize the lesson as we will be focusing on strategies for improving these pieces. While we will engage the students in small group, we will also be utilizing peer-revisions during the time where each of the students will look at a partners piece of writing. With small group as well as peer-to-peer conferencing, we will ensure that each student will be an active participant in the workshop. We hope to make the workshop less teacher-centered and more focused on studentcentered work and discussion. While using the given worksheet, the students will independently pull on the information about who, what, when, where, and why details previously discussed during wholegroup instruction as well as exemplified in the picture book. The book that we have chosen to read to the students prior to presenting the task at hand is intended to present students with a short piece of writing that has an example of almost all of the elements that we are asking them to use. While the passage will not have each of the w details, we will discuss with the group, ways in which we can help to improve the passage using a w detail. A majority of the workshop will be centered on the students individual writing. Using these pieces of writing will help to target areas in which the students currently need more attention with regard to adding details about an event. The lesson was chosen because of its relevance to previously presented writing strategies and elementary literacy standards. The lesson was designed in such a way that employs the use of varying

Lora Kelly Core Decisions: Literacy teaching strategies and methods based on differing ways in which students best operate in workshops. Allowing students to present opinions and ideas in a small group may be more comfortable than in a whole-class discussion; however, some students may be most comfortable sharing ideas in a peer-topeer discussion. The students were previously working on a unit in which they were asked to write memoirs about themselves or someone they knew/know. The students were asked to focus on different detail strategies, and the who, what, when, where, and why details were part of the detail strategies. While the classroom teacher does not have a concrete literacy curriculum, he tends to gravitate towards practices of which Lucy Caulkins discusses in Learning to Teach Writing. Within the classroom, there is very little room for individualized, or even small group, writers workshops as time is spent doing readers workshops. Students are often presented with literacy and writing strategies while in whole-class instruction seated on the rug and are then released to utilize the strategy discussed. However, there is no follow-up with a teacher to check in with students as to whether or not they are successfully using the new writing strategy. This lesson plan is designed in such a way so as to present information, allow students to work on the new strategy while seated at the conference table, and come back together to discuss if they were able to develop the strategy in such a way that they can use it in their own writing. As it would be easy for us to present specific writing strategies to students through the use of multiple passages from relatable to books, it is more effective for the students to be hands-on with their own writing while using it as a reference. In the Pennsylvania Common Core Standards for grade 4 English Language Arts, the students should be able to use descriptions to develop experiences to develop experiences (CC.1.4.4.0). We will be ensuring that students fully grasp and understanding of how to give adequate details to the audience so as to present a full picture of an event.