Sara-Ellen Snow

Lesson Plan 3

Introduction
English 10
Lesson Topic: Dante’s Inferno
Length of Lesson: 50 minutes

VA SOL: 10.7 The student will develop a variety of writing, with an emphasis on exposition.

10.8 The student will edit writing for correct grammar, capitalization, punctuation, spelling,
sentence structure, and paragraphing.
10.9 The student will critique professional and peer writing.

Cognitive Objectives:
Students will write new blog entries
Students will comment on peer blog entries
Students will develop their writing portfolio
Students will debate about the 9 circles of hell

Materials and Advanced Preparation:

Laptops
Copies of Dante’s The Inferno

Teaching and Learning Sequence:

Introduction/Anticipatory Set
The teacher will meet students at the door and ask them to sit in their assigned seats
The teacher will ask students to take out laptops for class
The teacher will ask students to sign into the blog
The teacher will ask students to find a picture that they think defines hell and put it
in today’s blog post (15 minutes). Creativity is encouraged, but guidelines must be
followed and pictures must be school appropriate.

Lesson Development:
After students have picked their picture and saved it to the blog, the teacher will
lecture for 10 minutes about the 7 deadly sins and Dante’s version of hell. (10
minutes)
Next, students are asked to refer to their picture of hell as a writing prompt and tell
the teacher WHY that pictures spoke to them and HOW it symbolizes one of the 7
deadly sins. (15 minutes)
The teacher will then assign students to view each other’s blog post and respond
and comment on the picture. (7 minutes)

Closure: To make sure students are all understanding this difficult reading, the
teacher will again ask students to define their version of Evil. High-level questions
will be asked like “DO they see more evil in current times than in Dante’s time?
Would they order the levels of hell the same way Dante did? Why or Why not? These
questions would lend itself to a classroom debate and reflection question the
teacher would post for homework.

Homework: Respond to the discussion thread that the teacher has posted. Each
student must post 1-2 paragraphs as an answer. The writing is to be informal but
grammatically correct.

Assessment:
Formative: The teacher will circle the room engaging students in conversation about
the picture they have chosen and posted. The teacher will make sure they
understand the concept and symbolism Dante is trying to express.

Summative: The classroom writing exercise and blog responses for homework will
be graded.