Lesson Plan Template

Date: 5/1/2020 Teacher’s Name: Camryn Kidney

Subject: ELA Grade level: 12
Unit: Finding and Citing Evidence in an Informational Text
Length of each lesson: 60 minutes
For unit: 5 of 5

Central Focus: During this unit, students will learn and practice how to identify and
analyze evidence of a narrator’s argument in informational texts. To do this, they will
annotate texts and discuss their discoveries as a class, then they will organize these
discoveries independently. The purpose of teaching such a lesson is that understanding
a text’s meaning is the fundamental essence of reading comprehension. This skill is
paramount to future exploration of texts. Additionally, in making discoveries about
authors and their arguments, students will also learn about how to discover an author’s
bias, how that bias reflects their values, and how they try to persuade the reader to
share their values. It’s crucial for students to learn how to analyze texts in this way, as
people encounter media that attempts to persuade them every day.

Essential Question(s):
 How do you know what an author’s argument is?
 What is bias?
 How can you determine an author’s biases?
 How do authors encourage readers to subscribe to their values and
standards of morality? What strategies do they use?
 Can even subtle bias have an impact on a reader/viewer?
 Am I susceptible to bias in texts?
Learning Standard: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.11-12.1
Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says
explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text, including determining where the text
leaves matters uncertain.

a. Pre-Assessment: The teacher will begin by writing the word “Bias” on the board
and giving students two minutes to define it. The definition should read
something like, “A positive or negative attitude toward something, often based on
preconceived prejudices or viewpoints rather than evidence.”

Differentiation:  

In addition to modifications/accommodations outlined in students’ IEP’s/504’s:

1.The text that the students will annotate during the Middle Phase, “How to identify bias
in the News,” will vary based on reading level.

2.For their discussions, students with higher and lower reading levels will be paired
together, and students with average reading skills will be paired together.

3.Students will complete writing assignments before engaging in discussion with their
classmates, so as to hold each student accountable for independently thinking
and writing.

Academic Language Plan: 

Language functions: Identify, Analyze, Evaluate, Support.

Language demands: Read. Write. Annotate. Discuss.

Vocabulary: Informational Text, Propaganda, Evidence, Bias, Agenda, Values, Evoke.

Learning Objectives:  Assessments: 

Students will:
• “Use quotes from the article that
• Identify the bias within news articles..
support the author’s argument.
• Annotate and paraphrase a text.
• Complete questions that evaluates
• Identify and analyze an argument within
their understanding of how to
a text.
identify the author’s main
• Support this argument with main ideas.
argument and bias.
• Discuss bias and the linguistic
strategies that convey it.

Procedure: 

Anticipatory Set (3-5 mins):

b. The teacher will begin by writing the word “Bias” on the board and giving
students two minutes to define it. The definition should read something like, “A
positive or negative attitude toward something, often based on preconceived
prejudices or viewpoints rather than evidence.”

Initial Phase (15 minutes):

a. After completing the Do Now exercise, the teacher will move into the Direct
Instruction portion of the lesson, which will consist of a lecture on the way that
authors use different linguistic strategies to evoke certain reactions from the
reader. The teacher will write the following words on the board:
a. Egotistical v. confident
b. Slender v. underweight
c. Proud v. confident
 b. The teacher will note that though these words are synonyms, they have different
connotations.

c. The teacher will discuss the idea that media contain ideological messages and
have social and political implications and ask students why news is particularly
significant when it comes to bias.

d. The teacher will ask students to brainstorm other ways in which bias might occur
in news sources: what choices might writers, editors, producers, and so on, make
that reflect a biased view of the subject?

Middle Phase (35 mins)

Students will read the article, “How to Detect Bias in the News,” annotating, and then
responding to the following prompts:

Compare the forms of bias in the article to the list the students brainstormed in the
previous activity.

Which forms of bias did they miss?

What about these forms of bias might be difficult for people to notice if they’re not aware
of them?

Concluding Phase (5 minutes)

At the end of the discussion, students will reconvene and revisit one of the quotes from
earlier in the unit: “At first, I thought it seemed like a very naïve endeavour: who would
start believing in an ideology just because they read the same message constantly?
After a few days however, I started to wonder whether you ever question a statement if
you’re constantly exposed to it from birth.” What have students learned about finding
bias in a text intertwined with their argument that they didn’t know before?

Materials:
 How to detect bias in the news article:
https://mediasmarts.ca/sites/default/files/pdfs/lesson-
plan/Lesson_Bias_News_Sources.pdf
 Whiteboard
 Pen and Paper
 Highlighter