Mini-Lesson Plan
Teacher Candidate: Liz Stanley, Cassidy Rogers, Caroline Parr, Shelby Stoudt, Bailey
Moore- Smith
Date: 10-5-20
Student(s): Avatars
ESSENTIAL
QUESTION:
What is the Essential
Question for this lesson?
(Consider the standards-
based question the students
should be able to answer at
the end of the lesson.)
What are the objectives for
this lesson? (Consider the
concepts skills, and strategies
students should master.)
What standards are
emphasized in this lesson?
ACTIVATING
STRATEGY:
What strategy will you use to
activate your lesson, link to
prior knowledge, and
promote knowledge of key
vocabulary words?
KWL Chart
TEACHING
STRATEGIES:
What instructional strategies
will you use in your lesson?
Grade Level: 5th
Essential Question:
Can you identify the overall theme of this book? How are the characters in
this book responding to the challenges they are faced with?
Objective(s):
Students will be able to determine a theme of a story, drama, or poem from
details in the text
Students will determine how characters in a story or drama respond to
challenges, or how a speaker in a poem reflects upon a topic
Students will be able to summarize a text
Standard(s):
ELAGSE5RL2: Determine a theme of a story, drama, or poem from
details in the text, including how characters in a story or drama respond to
challenges or how the speaker in a poem reflects upon a topic; summarize
the text.
KWL Chart-
Students will use a KWL chart to activate their prior knowledge on the
lesson topic. Students will fill out what they already know about the topic,
what they want to learn about the topic, and what they will learn about the
topic. The students will also write down their own definitions of vocabulary
words theme and summarize.
I do:
To begin, I will read the book Salt in His Shoes by Deloris Jordan out loud
to the class. Before I begin reading, I will tell the students to listen out for
any themes they might hear, and to pay attention to how the main character
reacts when he is faced with hardship. The students will use this time to just
listen to the story and keep mental notes about what they are hearing. The

SUMMARIZING
STRATEGIES:
How will students
summarize what they are
learning during the lesson
and at the end?
REFLECTION
What is your analysis of the
lesson? How well did the
student grasp concepts in this
information the students gather from the initial reading of the book will be
used in the we do section of the lesson.
We do:
During this section of the lesson, students will get with one partner. The
students will participate in a Think, Pair, Share. Students will think about
the book, and what themes they came up with. Students will also think
about how the main character responded to any challenges he faced and
summarize the book together. Students will create one list of possible
themes together, and students will write down the hardships from the book
the character faced, and how that character reacted. Then we will gather in
a circle together as a class. I will call on students to share their ideas about
the theme, and about how the main character responded to any challenges
he was faced with. As students are sharing their ideas, I will create one
cohesive class idea list for the students to all see. This class list will have all
of the themes the class thought of for the book, and all of the ways the class
saw the character react to his challenges, and an overall summary of the
book from the student’s thoughts.
You do:
Now, the students will have a chance to discover a book on their own, and
determine the theme of the book, and how the main characters of the book
responded to challenges they were faced with. Students will have the
opportunity to use computers for this portion of the lesson, to read a book.
Students will log onto getepic.com and pick out a book that is interesting to
them. After reading their e-text, students will fill out a prompt I uploaded to
a website called Padlet. Students will fill out the theme of their e-text, the
main characters and how they responded to their challenges and give an
overall summary of their e-text. The padlet will be visible to the other
students as well, so that all of the students can see multiple different
examples.
“Ticket Out the Door” -
Students will fill out an index card with their answer to the essential
questions, which was Can you identify the overall theme of this book?
How are the characters in this book responding to the challenges they are
faced with? The book they will refer to, in order to answer the EQ, will be
the e-text they read on their own and answered questions about in the
Padlet. Students will turn these into me so I can see which students have
grasped the concepts, and which students still need more help. This is also a
good way to formatively assess the overall learning that took place for each
individual student and take note of any differentiation that needs to occur
for the next lesson.
I think in this lesson, students will be using prior knowledge to build on
and through hands on practice of reading and breaking down a text by
pulling out the theme and other key information, as well as being able to
see their peers opinions and perspectives on how they completed the padlet,
students will really grasp the lesson content because they are determining a
 lesson? Will you use a re-
teaching strategy after this
lesson?
theme of a story using details in the text then summarizing and organizing
the text. To re-teach this strategy even after the lesson, we can have
students repeat this process of anything they read, have them break down
the story and organize it, as well as highlight key information for maximum
comprehension.

References

Inc., E. (n.d.). Instantly access over 40,000 of the best books & videos for kids on Epic.
Retrieved October 07, 2020, from https://www.getepic.com/?affiliate_id=753865

Math-K-5 //. (n.d.). Retrieved October 07, 2020, from

https://www.georgiastandards.org/Georgia-Standards/Pages/Math-K-5.aspx

Jordan, D. (2019). Salt in his shoes: Michael Jordan in pursuit of a dream. New York: Aladdin
Paperbacks.

Appendix
Mini-Lesson Resources and Artifacts:
● Padlet Link For I Do Section
● Salt in His Shoes by Deloris Jordan
● E-Text Explore Link
● KWL Chart

What I Know What I Want to Know What I Learned

My definition of My definition of
theme… summarize…