Sarah Hundt

TE 801-004

Unit: Day 1

Outline for a Daily Lesson Plan

Date: 10/27/14
Objective(s) for todays lesson: Students will be able to identify key features of biographies.
Rationale: Biographies provide factional information and allow students to learn what really happened in
history. These histories can also inspire us to help people, etc. Students might learn about a person and
their works within the community and feel that they could do something like that. I will work to make this
genre relevant to them by finding biographies about people they admire. This will show them just how
important these works are.
Materials & supplies needed: ELMO & Smartboard, Reading Street Teachers Manual & text books,
anchor chart paper, writing folders/notebooks, pencils
*The following lesson is adapted from Scott Foresmans Reading Street (Grade 2, Unit 2, Volume 1.)
Under procedures, anything in blue is what I have added into the typical RS instruction.
Procedures and approximate time allocated for each event
Academic, Social and/or
Linguistic Support during
each event
Introduction (5 minutes)
Have any of you ever wanted to learn more about someone? Maybe
you really like a baseball player or a singer but you dont know much
about their lives. Where could you find information about them? (Hot
call for 2-3 student responses)
Mini-Lesson
Does anyone know what a biography is?
(If no one knows) What are some ideas you have about what a
biography might be based on what I asked you about your favorite
baseball player or singer?
A biography tells about the life of a real person. It shares important
facts about the person (like when they were born, where they lived
and went to school.) Well, this week well be learning more about
biographies and youll be writing a short biography about someone
you admire!
To start, today we will identify the features of a biography.

OUTLINE of key events (10-13 minutes)

Mini-lesson continued:
Paper passers will hand out the biography packets and students will
turn to the Helen Keller biography. Have students locate the details
included in the text.

Were going to listen to a biography. Remember, when we

listen to something were following along on our own papers.
Who is this biography about? Find her name in the text and
circle it.
What happened with Helen got sick? Underline that sentence
(After that, Helen could not see, hear, or speak.)

Some students may have to

have new permanent spots on
the group carpet area to help
them sit and listen properly to
instruction. Show me good
listening behaviors!

Sarah Hundt

TE 801-004

Unit: Day 1

Who was Helens teacher? Can you make a box around her
name, please?
What did Annie Sullivan teach Helen to do? Can you underline
that sentence, as well? (She taught Helen how to speak and
hear with her hands.)
So how did Helen help others? (Helen Keller taught people
that they should never give up.)

Good job! This biography tells us about the life of Helen Keller and
she was a real person! It included important facts and ideas about
her life even some important dates that we should know! But it
wasnt very long, was it? Biographies can be short (like this one) or
longer.
Lets make an anchor chart to help us remember what is important in
a biography
What is a biography about? (a real person)
What did we learn about the person we just read about? (different
facts/details date born/died, jobs, etc.)
What does a biography do?
What kinds of extra things can be included in biographies, do you
think? (timelines, photographs, table of contents, chapter headings,
etc.)
Now, when we are working on our biographies later in the week, we
can use this anchor chart to remind us what kinds of things we should
keep in our own writing, and what things we might not need to use.
Lets think about what weve learned. We also read about Coretta
Scott King earlier today. We learned that she was born on April 27,
1927 in Alabama. What else did we learn? (Possible answers: the
author also told us what she did as a child and when she was in
college, shes most famous for being married to Martin Luther King,
Jr. and marching against unfair laws. She helped make the world a
more peaceful place.) Did they leave out any key features? Which
ones?

Conference briefly with students

that are having difficulty coming
up with ideas to write about
during their quick write.
Who do they admire or like to
talk about? If they cant think of
someone that has made
changes in history, have them
write about a family member that
they admire. Make sure that
theyre still including important
details that are common in
biographies.

Conference with students that

are sharing in front of the whole
class so that students can see
what kinds of details they should
be thinking about and including
in their own work.

Now were going to do a quick write. Open your writing journals to the
first blank page.
(5 minutes)
What is a biography? Try to think about what we just talked about
when we made our chart together. Think back to our readings about
Hellen Keller and Coretta Scott King.
-

Students should explain that a biography gives the reader

information about a real person. They can have timelines,
photographs, table of contents, or important headings to help
organize the information.

I will be walking around during instruction so that I can keep an eye

Creating a visual aid will help

students remember key features
of the genre when they are
working individually, especially
for students who are visual
learners.

Sarah Hundt

TE 801-004

Unit: Day 1

on my students (Are they able to apply the key features/concept of a

biography?)

Closing summary for the lesson (5 minutes)

Collect the quick writes for assessment. Ask for volunteers that can
orally share the features of a biography.
Tomorrow youll be planning your own biographies about someone
that interests you. Try to think about the people we read about today
to help you think of what things youll want to include in your own
biography!

Transition to special/lunch
Read Aloud activity throughout the week:
At the end of the day, read a biography picture book for a read aloud.
While reading, have students listen for important details/facts. When
students offer a detail, write it on the Smartboard. (important details
that the author has included in the book help us as the reader know
more about this person.)
Go through the list of details, talk about whether or not theyre facts or
opinions. What makes a detail important? Delete any facts that
arent important to teach us about the person.
Talk briefly about the features in the book that the author used that go
back to what we talked about in the morning during writing.

Assessment
I hope to see over the course of the week progress in remembering to
incorporate more features of biography/overall more detail to keep the
reader interested and provide us with important information. If they
dont understand what important details are, Ill need to focus more on
that key feature of a biography and remind them to review our anchor
chart while writing.
Ill be taking their biography packets home every so often to review
what they are working on a make notes since I cant conference with
them all each day. I want to make sure that students know Im paying
attention to their work and that there is a reason to write a biography
of someone.

Academic, Social, and/or

Linguistic Support during
assessment
Conferencing will be done more
or less depending on how
students are progressing
throughout the week. If students
seem to be having difficulty with
the concept of biography, then
more conferencing will occur
during individual work time.

I hope through conferencing during instruction, students will better

understand the action of writing for different genres in a way that is
still interesting to themselves and their potential readers.
Reflection
What students learned and which students struggled with the lesson.
Students didnt know what a biography was but they seemed like they were really
interested in the genre.

Sarah Hundt

TE 801-004

Unit: Day 1

They didnt know who Helen Keller was. Still didnt know who she was even after
reading the short biography. Students kept asking but who was she?!
Some students didnt fully understand what made a detail important/not important.
When we worked on creating an anchor chart with key features in a biography, students
couldnt think of unique details (beyond name, birthday) that would be important to
include about someone. Some suggestions were unimportant/opinion based details
about a person.
Scaffolding and discussion needed to take place during lesson and during the read aloud
of Houdini to help students think of features they should include.
When we began reading Houdini at the end of the day students began picking out
important details the author included (we wrote these details on the Smartboard.) We
then deleted the unimportant details after discussing our different facts and talking
about why some details were important for us to understand who Houdini was, and why
others were less important or didnt need to be included at first.

What are alternate reads of your students performance or products?

Some students might not have been as involved if they dont know a lot about a person
we were talking about or who they chose to write about.
Like I said, not one student knew what a biography was when I asked, so naturally theyd
be tentative when offering up ideas for what it might be.
What did you learn about your students literacy practices that extend beyond your objectives?
They could identify some key ideas that our biographies included. They grasped the
main ideas (real person, birthday, job, etc.) but could understand deeper ideas (ie. how
someone changed history.) During the rest of our literacy time we talked about how we
ourselves have changed history (not in the context of things stated in a textbook).
Examples were helping plant an apple tree, now we can have apples when we didnt
before, etc.
When and how will you re-teach the material to students who need additional support?
Allow students to read/view more examples of biographies (childrens books, etc.)
o I went to the DeWitt and East Lansing libraries and found different picture book
biographies. These books were up on the white board marker ledge all day, all
week. Students could read these books during read-to-self or if they finished
their morning work early. They could read only one book at a time, and they
could not put them in their desks or book boxes. If they didnt treat them properly
(as they would their own library books) they lost the privilege of using them.
Asking a student questions about themselves, and then writing a brief biography about
them, could help show them what a biography actually is if theyre not understanding the
key features and details that should be included.
Im keeping up my anchor charts that I made with students so they can look back at them
while they continue to finish their pieces. I hope to continue reading examples of the
genres well be learning about. Houdini will be an end of day read for the rest of the
week so we can focus on details, etc.
If you were to teach this same lesson again, what would you do differently and how do you think
the changes would improve students learning?
I would use more short biographies, either from Reading Street, or create some
examples for students to see how they can productively write short biographies.
Seeing more relevant biography examples would have helped them understand the key
features biographies need to have. I should have created a biography for different
people that they know (principal, teachers in school, etc.)
What did you learn so far about implementing your core practice and what do you need to do to
continue your professional learning?

Sarah Hundt

TE 801-004

Unit: Day 1

Today there wasnt much time where conferencing would have been applicable. If the
quick write would have been more extensive, then perhaps we could have done more of
a whole group conference. But I felt that that wasnt necessary as we focused so much
on the key features before the quick write. They didnt get to pick their topics at this
point, so I couldnt conference with students on their choices just yet.