LESSON TITLE: Grammar Lesson on Commas Lesson #: 1 

 
TEACHER NAME: Jonathan Huang  DATE: 02/22/2019 
  
Preparation/Planning 
ESL Course:           
Writing/Reading  Level  Beginning  Intermediate  Advanced  Multilevel 
X  X  □  X 
Topic/Theme: 
Grammar - Comma Rules 
and Coordinating 
Conjunctions 
  Listening  Students will be able to listen for differences in texts containing different 
Objectives  punctuation.  
Students will be able to understand verbal questions and instructions as 
presented during the lesson. 
Speaking  Students will be able to read sentences containing commas out loud with 
the correct pause.  
Students will be able to generate spoken sentences or clauses using 
comma rules.   
Students will be able to discuss uses of commas and coordinating 
conjunctions with peers through a Think-Pair-Share. 
Students will be able to participate in whole class dialogues on comma 
rules and coordinating conjunctions. 
Reading  Students will be able to read complex sentences containing commas 
and determine what the sentence is doing: listing, separating 
non-essential information, or using coordinating conjunctions​.  
Students will also be able to evaluate when sentences use commas and 
coordinating conjunctions incorrectly. 
Writing  Students will be able to identify rules for commas and correctly use 
commas in sentence writing.  
Students will be able to write their own sentences containing correct 
uses of commas in lists, in separating nonessential information, and in 
coordinating conjunctions.  
Students will also be able to determine the best fitting coordinating 
conjunction to link two ideas together into a compound sentence. 
Bridging 
What background knowledge  The students will have background knowledge in reading, having the 
do the students already have?  ability to read both silently and out loud, though they may not be able 
to inflect punctuated text correctly.  
The students will also know how to write basic sentence structures. 
This lesson will be taught after students have completed the first draft 
of their first essay assignment; therefore, they already know how to 
write complete essays. 
The students will also have finished reading Charles Duhigg’s ​The Power 
of Habit​, so they have information from the book to use in their essays. 
What will you do to activate  1. First, I will open the class with a presentation of the lesson 
or link students’ prior  agenda. The agenda will briefly list the activities that students 
knowledge or experience to  will be doing. I will further explain the agenda by showing the 
upcoming content?  lesson objectives slide. After these two slides, students will have 
learned that today’s class is about commas. This knowledge will 
give them more context going into the warm-up activity. 
2. Then, I will use a warm-up activity to link students’ prior 
knowledge to the upcoming content. I will hand out slips of 
paper containing passages from Dear John letters, a text 
designed to showcase the differences punctuation can make to 
meaning, with all the punctuation taken out. Students will 
receive instructions to punctuate their passages, and will be 
informed that their passage is either a break up letter or a love 
letter. Then, students will find a partner whose slip contains the 
same highlighted phrases or words, and they will discuss the 
differences between their two passages. I will ask students 
verbally and on a presentation slide to think about what 
differences they see between their passage and their peers’. We 
will go around the class and take responses from each group. I 
can ask more eliciting questions to each group; for example, Do 
you think your passage was from a love letter or a break-up 
letter? Why or why not? Then students will return to their seats. 
Engagement with New Material 
What will you do to engage  Materials:  
students in the active  a. Dear John Letters: a text that could either be a love letter or a 
learning of the new material?  break-up letter, depending on how the text has been 
punctuated. 
b. Student Worksheet: a handout that contains independent and 
paired/group activities corresponding to each of the three rules 
of comma usage discussed in the lesson. 
c. PPT: The presentation will serve as visual support and focus for 
direct instruction on commas and their rules of usage, task 
giving for the worksheet, and whole class activities involving 
student responses to questions and prompts on the slide. 
d. Kahoot: a game that asks students to read four given sentences 
and identify the sentence that is correctly written in terms of 
comma usage and/or coordinating conjunction use. 
 
1. I will start with whole class reading the Dear John letters and 
have students take turns reading chunks of the letter. 
Afterwards, I will ask students what they noticed about the 
letters. I will mention that the letters contain identical wording 
in the same order - the only difference is the way each letter has 
been punctuated. I will emphasize that punctuation impacts and 
creates meaning for each letter. 
2. Then, I will will begin my direct instruction on commas and their 
3 rules of usage. I will alternate between direct instruction and 
 student-centered activities using the worksheet and the 
whiteboard as mediums for student engagement. 
a. My direct instruction will include reviewing and defining 
important terms such as “coordinating conjunction”, 
“compound sentence,” “independent clause,” and 
“commas”. This will ensure students have the 
information they need to understand the lesson. 
b. Students will be invited to perform whole class activities 
such as: offering ideas to complete a sentence about 
Jonathan’s weekend activities, writing and competing 
for funniest side-note sentences, and verbally matching 
two independent ideas with coordinating conjunctions. 
3. I will utilize Think-Pair-Share, group work, and 
student-to-student interactions to engage students in the 
practice and the discussion of the content points. During group 
work, I will walk around the classroom and monitor groups for 
the worksheet completion, active discussion, and elicit 
questions for further clarification. 
4. I will also invite students to share their ideas with the class, on 
the whiteboard, or verbally in response to prompts on the 
presentation slides. 
a. I will model how to use commas in lists in sentences, by 
first providing the items in the list, and them writing a 
sentence on the board or showing it on the slide. Then, I 
will ask students to help me create a 1-sentence 
weekend recap using a sentence list of three 
items/actions that student will be able to provide. I will 
use student submissions to model writing a sentence on 
the whiteboard. 
b. I will also model putting commas around nonessential 
information on the screen, and also model matching 
ideas with coordinating conjunctions to form compound 
sentences. 
5. Finally, I will open up a Kahoot game to enable students to 
participate and practice identifying correctly written sentences 
out of sets of 4 given sentences with varying configurations of 
comma usage. 
What will you do to ensure  1. I will walk around the room during direct instruction to maintain 
that all students are  active body language and to keep students in multiple areas of 
engaged?  the classroom focused. 
2. I will ask students to contribute ideas to complete sentences 
and to write them on the whiteboard. 
3. I will walk around during Think-Pair-Share group activities and 
monitor students for worksheet completion, active discussion 
with their partners, and answer questions. 
4. I will ask students to read from the slides, and to repeat task 
instructions for the whole class. 
 5. I will elicit student questions during whole class and group 
conversations by asking “What questions do you have for 
me/What questions can I answer for you right now?” 
6. I will also elicit student responses by asking open ended 
questions about the content and student work: “Why did you 
choose this coordinating conjunction?” “How are commas used 
in this sentence?” “What kind of comma rule is this sentence 
employing?” 
Application 
What opportunities will you  Students will be able to follow the PPT presentation with a worksheet 
provide students to practice  that they will complete in time with the slides. The worksheet contains 
and apply their  activity sections corresponding to each of the three comma rules 
knowledge/skill to meet the  taught in this lesson. Through this worksheet, students are able to 
objectives for this lesson? To  practice reading and identifying sentences with correct uses of 
apply to other contexts?  commas, and the specific rules they use, and also writing sentences with 
correct comma usage. The worksheet keeps students on task and 
focused while direct instruction is occurring. The students are also 
provided opportunities to meet the speaking learning objective through 
peer-to-peer and peer-to-teacher dialogue in order to complete 
worksheet activities, implement content knowledge in group tasks, and 
offer ideas for the whole class conversations. 
 
Students will compete in a small contest to write the sentences with the 
funniest tangents or side-notes (extra information in a sentence) to 
apply their knowledge of using commas to set apart nonessential 
information. Students will also create their own coordinating 
conjunction pairs using pre-written clauses displayed on the screen. 
These activities will build on the speaking, reading, and writing learning 
objectives. 
 
At the end of the lesson, students can apply their knowledge skills 
through participation in the Kahoot game, through writing a listing 
sentence recap of the lesson, and through extending the knowledge of 
comma rules into their essay draft revisions. These activities help 
students practice metacognition, to think about their learning while 
applying the skills they just learned. 
 
Students will utilize the skills gained from this lesson to revise and edit 
their essay drafts as immediate application. 
Assessment 
How will you assess their  I will assess student learning of the objectives informally and formally. 
learning of the objectives?  The informal assessment will take place through my observation of the 
class throughout the lesson. I will observe for students’ verbal 
responses to questions and check whether their responses align with 
the content and demonstrate understanding of the material and 
mastery of the speaking objective. I will check that they are following 
task instructions correctly, through checks for understanding and 
 instruction repetition, to assess that listening objectives are met. I will 
also observe students during group activities, during which I will 
monitor for worksheet completion and active discussion.  
 
I will look at student worksheets to check that students are completing 
writing problems correctly and demonstrating success in choosing best 
coordinating conjunctions to connect ideas, a combination of writing 
and reading objectives being met.  
 
At the end of the lesson, I will use Kahoot as a review, content 
reinforcement, and whole class informal assessment for reading 
objectives by checking how many students are able to successfully 
answer each Kahoot question.  
 
After the lesson concludes, I will collect the worksheets for use as 
formal assessment to ascertain individual students’ meeting of 
objectives.  
 
Finally, throughout the lesson, I will assess for student comprehension 
by eliciting and noticing student questioning, to see which areas 
students are struggling to understand. Knowing what common 
questions students have will enable me to reinforce areas that students 
don’t have mastery over through more practice time, or more direct 
instruction, either as individualized events or whole class events. 
Closing 
How will you help students  I will include a recap of the lesson at the end of the session. I will ask 
recap the learning and link it  students “What did we do today in class?” and have a few students 
back to the original purpose  respond verbally using sentence starters such as “Today, we...” or “We 
of the lesson?  learned about…” Then, I will ask students to write a quick, three item 
listing sentence to recap the lesson, which should take 1-2 minutes. 
Every student will share out. Then, I will show the next slide containing 
things that students may have mentioned, or left out of their recap 
sentences, and I will review main points of the lesson. Finally, I will link 
the content knowledge of commas back to their essay drafts that they 
are working on, and encourage them to start making revisions by using 
commas correctly. 
Technology   
If applicable for your context  I used Google Slides as primary medium for direct instruction, task 
and your lesson, how will you  giving, and interactive whole class prompts. This will be meaningfully 
meaningfully integrate  integrated as a visual support for students to follow along as I am giving 
technology into your lesson?  direct instruction and giving tasks. I will also use Kahoot  
Kahoot as assessment and reinforcement for content knowledge. This 
will be meaningfully integrated as a end-of-lesson activity and review, 
and will be further used as a way for me to repeat lecture points on 
comma rules based on what problems students incorrectly answer. 
Reflection 
What went well? How do you  I think the activities that I had planned specifically for the simulation 
know?  lesson were a helpful and a fun addition to the lesson I’d already taught 
previously. For example, I tried out a peer’s quotes-on-paper-strips 
idea from the week before, since that had stuck out to me as a great 
way to ease students into a reading. I think using that activity to also 
ask students to think about what went into a love letter/break-up letter 
made it easier for them when they had to read the entire letters, 
because students were able to access the text in smaller chunks and 
derive meaning from small pieces before putting their ideas together 
once they view the complete texts.  
 
I also utilized writing on the board for “What did Jonathan do this 
weekend?” which was something I wanted to try after seeing my 
cooperating teacher move between powerpoint slides and whiteboard 
writing. Having an activity where actual writing was involved helps 
students visualize the process. Students seemed engaged across all the 
activities, and especially in ones where their names were used as 
prompts or questions.  
 
Additionally, I think I was able to manage my time effectively, in my own 
head, by using a countdown timer on Youtube. Even though I didn’t 
leave myself enough time for a more involved opening and closing, this 
error was more a result of how I pre-planned than time management. 
What didn’t go as planned?  This was my second time teaching this lesson, and I had a different 
group of students. I had assumed that this second iteration would 
largely be the same as the first; however, there were some differences 
in the way I delivered the lesson.  
 
I had planned to ask open-ended questions, such as “What questions 
can I answer for you?” or “How does changing ___ impact the meaning of 
the sentence?” but I defaulted to a lot of closed-ended questions and 
display questions. This lesson was time-limited to an hour, and I felt like 
I wanted to be time-efficient and quickly check in with students. 
However, in utilizing closed ended questions and display questions, my 
checks for understanding were shallow and did not truly engage 
students. I also did not ask students to read from slides as I had initially 
planned on doing. This was also because I wanted to move the lesson 
along quickly and felt, in the moment, that students reading slides 
would slow down the presentation. 
 
Finally, I did not anticipate how stressful Kahoot would be for students. 
When I first delivered this lesson to other students, the response to 
Kahoot was positive and enthusiastic. However, with this lesson, 
students felt that the time limit on the Kahoot questions created 
additional stress and prevented them from answering correctly. 
What contingency plan did  I had planned multiple activities for the simulation in case I had a lot of 
you employ?  time left over. I planned to use Kahoot as a final exit ticket/assessment 
 tool, which was what I ended up doing. Instead of taking the time to 
really get students’ authentic responses (referential questions), I 
wrapped up activities and introduced new ones quickly, in a way that 
didn’t make sense for students, but this also allowed me to do every 
activity I had planned. 
What would you do  I can see this lesson being a 90 minute lesson, if I were to do things 
differently next time?  differently and if I took the time to really open and close the lesson in a 
meaningful way by bridging, connecting to students’ own experiences, 
and also getting students more involved in the process of writing 
sentences, reading slides, relaying instructions, and discussion 
questions. Specifically, I would take more time to elicit student 
responses by asking open-ended questions and utilizing more wait time 
to ensure students feel welcome to share out. 
 
I would also use an agenda slide at the beginning of the presentation 
and create clearer separations between tasks as I am moving from one 
comma rule to the next. I will refer back to the purpose of the lesson 
and remind students throughout the lesson about where we are in 
terms of comma rules.  
 
Finally, next time, I might consider separating the lesson into two - to 
focus on the first two rules in one lesson, and then to address 
compound sentences and coordinating conjunctions in the next lesson. 
This would allow me to spend more time reviewing the definitions for 
terms like “coordinating conjunctions,” “FANBOYS,” and “compound 
sentences” at the start of the lesson. 
Did your students meet the  Most of my students met the purpose and objectives for the lesson. The 
purpose and objectives for  handout I had each student fill as the lesson progressed served as an 
this lesson? What is your  assessment tool, and I was able to walk around the room and look at 
evidence for each?  each student’s sheet. I used student errors as opportunities for 
individual conversations reinforcing comma rules and how students 
should correctly use them. 
What do your students need  I think my students need to work on writing and revising sentences 
next? How do you know?  next, now that they have basic comma rules to work with. They can 
start with past assignments and find instances of listing, non-essential 
information, or coordinating conjunctions, and make the necessary 
edits to their work. I know from the Kahoot game that my students will 
need more practice with comma usage. I would like to get them to 
practice writing specific kinds of sentences using commas (lists, 
nonessential information, and compound sentences), to get them in the 
habit of including commas and understanding the structure of these 
ideas. 
What did you learn about  I learned that I needed to work on opening and closing the lesson. I also 
your glows and grows as a  learned that I need to develop a more effective way of communicating 
teacher? What can you do to  why a warm up activity or a lesson is important and meaningful for 
work on your areas needing  students. Simple actions to resolve this could be to provide more 
growth?    information at the start of an activity, describing what my expectations 
for student work will be, and modeling the action. I can also verbally tie 
in the activity to the lesson objectives. I also need to work on recapping 
activities, and then extending the lesson and giving students a way to 
practice and apply the learned concepts individually.