Concept Unit Day Three

Mentor Text
Context:
English 9
Ninth Grade
90 minutes
Lesson Plan Type: Summary
Objectives
COGNITIVE:
A. Memoir is a genre that
establishes a dialogue
between the self and
memory.
B. Some structural and
stylistic features of memoir
as a genre.
C. Characteristics of strong
or memorable memoirs.
D. Strengths and
weaknesses of memoir as a
genre.
BE ABLE TO:
E. Identify features of
memoirs.
F. Analyze how the features
contribute to an effective
memoir.
G. Compose a memoir
(should they choose to.)

Corresponding
SOL
9.4 The student
will read,
comprehend,
and analyze a
variety of
literary texts
including
narratives,
narrative
nonfiction,
poetry, and
drama.
(c) Identify the
characteristics
that distinguish
literary forms.

Assessment
DIAGNOSTIC
Students will demonstrate
what they know about
memoir and its structural and
stylistic features during our
whole-class brain-dump.
FORMATIVE
Students will demonstrate
their progress towards our
goals during the creation of
our Genre Conventions
Handout.
SUMMATIVE
Students will demonstrate
mastery of our goals in their
final creative project.

Agenda:
1. Do-Now (Do the words we choose to read, or listen to, or remember, define
us?)
2. Mini-Lesson (Memoir as a Genre)
a. Brain-Dump (what is memoir? Is it fiction? Is it non-fiction? Why do we
write it? Why do we read it?)
b. Read selected memoir text
c. Practice Reading Strategies in Small Groups
d. Class Discussion (what were your thoughts on the memoir? How is the
memoir constructed? What does it do well?)
e. Build a memoir Genre Conventions Handout
3. Debrief
4. Introduction to our Unit Goals and Assessments
5. Homework: Come to class with first thoughts about your own writing. Journal
entry about possible topics/inspirations/etc. about your writing piece.

Beginning Room Arrangement:

Students will be seated in a horseshoe pattern facing the board.
Instructional Steps:
1. Do-Now [5 min]
Students will be greeted at the door and asked to take their seats and begin work
on the days Do-now in their journals. The prompt on the board will read: Do the
words we chose to read, or listen to, or remember, define us? Do we define
ourselves after them?
Students will be given a one-minute warning to wrap up their thoughts and put
the finishing touches on their entry.
2. Mini-Lesson: Memoir as a Genre
a. Brain-Dump [10 min]
I will begin by describing the order of our activities for the day; our goal today
will be to discover the genre of memoir and to use our reading of this text to gain
an understanding of the structure and features of memoirs in general. In order to
do this, we must begin with what we already know about memoirs in order to
build on it.
To this end, I will ask students to share what they know or have experienced with
memoirs in the past. These comments will be written on the board under the
header of KNOW. From this knowledge we will build guiding questions to shape
our reading and our class discussion. These will be written under the heading
WANT TO KNOW.
Possible (Student) Comments
Has to do with memory

Has a story

Takes place in the past

Written by famous people
Its personal

Possible
(Teacher)
Feedback
For
Question Building
Absolutely! But what, exactly, is its
relationship to memory? Whats the
link? Maybe thats something we could
search for when we read!
So its narrative, somehow. But what
kinds of narrative are involved? Past,
present,
future?
Fictional?
Nonfictional? How does that differentiate
memoirs from short stories, or novels?
Good thinking! But what about that
past? Does that mean its like an
autobiography? Or historical fiction?
Is it always written by famous people?
Also, do famous people write their own
memoirs?
If it is, then whats the purpose of
publishing it? How does it serve to
read memoirs? Who does it serve?

b. Group-work [10 min for reading, 20 min for analysis]

Students will be broken into groups of three or four and asked to use the step-bystep approach of our reading strategies to make sense of the memoir. Because
literary analysis is difficult and a built skill, I will circulate amongst the groups
and listen to each groups progress, providing support when students become
stuck or guidance when they come upon a problem theyre not sure how to
resolve. To make the most of instructional time, this is the schedule that will
ensure students progress in towards their goal in a timely manner:
Five minutes into analysis: I will ask about students first impressions, things
theyve noted as interesting or problematic, and any difficulties including
passages, phrases, or words.
Ten minutes into analysis: I will do a second lap of the room, asking students how
theyve made sense of the structure of the memoir and how it contributes to its
overall meaning and purpose.
Fifteen minutes into analysis: students will be given a two-minute warning to
synthesize their findings (from their reading strategies) and to select a
spokesperson to share two or three of these with the class.
c. Class Discussion [5 min for spokesperson sharing; 15 min for whole-class
discussion]
After calling the class to order, each group will take turns sharing the things they
chose with the class. Each group will be directed to add something new, so if
something they selected was already shared, they should make sure to either add
something else or point to an example of their findings. Students will be directed
to add the comments of other groups to their own findings. This will take up the
first few minutes.
When all groups have shared, I will ask students to look back at the board and
our WANT TO KNOW questions. We will try to answer these together as a class to
gain greater insight into the work. The goal will be define the memoir, describe
the structure it uses, note characteristics, benefits and shortcomings of the
genre.
d. Build Genre Conventions Handout [10 min]
Once these things have been isolated, I will get up and go to the computer and
turn on the projector. From the insight we have gleaned, we will build a handout
that describes some of the important features of the genre for them to use when
building their own pieces (also, for future reading.) Throughout the rest of the
year we would return to this handout and add new findings or complications (or
terms, as we learn them) but for now it is a preliminary skeleton of our
knowledge of the genre as a class. It will feature the following:

A class-generated definition of the genre that includes mentions of the role

of memory, individual perspective, reflection/hindsight, resemblances to
autobiography, and personal reasons for composition.
Descriptions of at least four characteristics of the genre such as voice,
imagery, characterization or personal growth, use of similes or metaphors,
and humor. These descriptions will use the literary terms as headings and
involve the class putting together a definition for each that makes use of
student language and examples from the piece to provide meaning and
context for these terms as they become part of our classroom vocabulary
A chart featuring the structure of the memoir, breaking it down into
possible components including retrospection, context, rising action, climax,
falling action, and resolution. This should feature examples in order to
clarify what we mean when we use these terms or attribute these terms to
the memoir. It should also make a mention of how these might be different
from, for instance, a short story.
A class-generated list of possible benefits and shortcomings of the genre as
they impact us as readers, writers and people; for instance, the ability to
learn from the experiences of others might be a possible personal benefit,
the story and vividness of the language might be a reading benefit, and the
example of the use of imagery might be a writing benefit; the narrow-ness
of the first person narrative (common in the memoir) might be a reading
shortcoming, the narrow context of the events might be a writing
shortcoming, or the limitations of the narrator might be a personal
shortcoming (making it hard for us to relate to him.) This is hardly true of
all memoirs, but the idea is for students to get involved in thinking about
how reading impacts them as readers, writers and people, and how
different genres might hold different promises based on who we are as
people, readers and writers and what we seek given our personal needs.

3. Introduction to our Unit Goals and Assessments [14 min]

At this point Ill thank students for their hard work and tell them how worth it its
all going to be in the context of what well be doing for the next couple of weeks.
Ill give students about a minute to get up and stretch while I hand out our Unit
Goals and Assessments Handout. Once students have taken their seats, I will ask
them to pull out a highlighter (if they dont have one, I will have a bucket full of
highlighters ready for them to use one.)
Together, we will look at what our goals are for reading and writing in the next
two weeks, and how journaling, building Genre Conventions handouts, and
composing our own pieces contribute to these goals. I will ask students, as we
read each section, to highlight the most important parts or just the things they
want to remember so that theyll stick out from the rest. Once weve done this,
well turn to our rubrics and spend a few minutes translating the verbiage into
words we understandfor instance, we will look at what kinds of things we have
to do to succeed and how we can demonstrate progress towards these goals. I
wont read the rubric myself, but rather ask students to read each category and
each section (each possible point category) and to translate this into their own

words or to try to explain it. If the student struggles, I will call on the rest of the
class for support. Ultimately the goal is for every student to have a turn getting
down some ideas about what were going to be doing to build up to our unit
assessment and how our various activities are designed to provide support to
reach this goal.
4. Homework [1 min]
With the last minute of class-time I will ask students to please come to class
prepared with an idea, or a topic, or a memory or story or emotionsomething
they can break down into their writing. They should write a short journal entry
that discusses this idea, what it entails, and what it means to them.
Materials:
Lots of highlighters
Computer and projector
Student journals
Accommodations:
Because this is our first time working with a text in small groups rather than as a
whole class, I want to make sure to check in with Rebecca to see how it went
with her group and whether she feels secure that shes grasped the material. I
will ask her if there are any phrases, words or idioms that tripped her up and if
there is anything I can do to support her. I will also check in to make sure that
her group is being patient and helpful, and that her shyness isnt leaving her
silent in discussions.