ELA Lesson Plan

“What’s In Your World?”

Marco Carreiro

Concordia University

EDUC 380: Language Arts I

Dr. Martin-Chang

December. 2, 2021
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ECEE 380 LESSON PLAN

Name: Marco Carreiro

Age of children: Grade 2 (Cycle 1)

Number of children: 16-24

Title of Lesson and Brief Description:

“What’s in your world?”

This lesson is based on the short poem called Miss Misinformation from the book “A PIZZA the size of the
SUN” by Jack Prelutsky. The lesson will be separated into 3 activities:
1. We will start off by reading the poem as a group, answer questions related to the poem, and
then continue with the activity. The poem talks about many different objects and creatures with
purposely incorrect or mixed-up facts. The reading strategy that will be used is “Reader’s
Theatre”. In this strategy, every line in the poem will be assigned to a student. Each student does
not need to memorize their line, but instead, re-read it several times to focus on fluency and
pronunciation. The poem will be read like a script, with the teacher starting first, and then the
order of children following. Once the poem has been read, there will be a brief question and
discussion period.
2. The children will be asked to write a poem where they describe their own world and what is in
their world. It is suggested that their world has a theme. The children must also make all their
information false or different. The children can be as creative as possible throughout this lesson,
but they must create a character who is speaking in their poem.
The children should add 3 rhyming word pairs throughout their poem. The poem may have a
maximum of 5 sentences.
3. The children will present their poems in front of the class, but they must read them aloud acting
like the character they created. Each poem should have a character who is narrating, and the
students will pretend to act like them by attempting to change their talk and walk.

Their poems can start with “I am Captain Boots. In my world, we have …”.
Sentence examples:
- Marshmallows are hard but are found in a yard.
- Dogs are blue and made with glue.
- Apples are silver and shiny and dogs are ugly and tiny.
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Curriculum Areas and Targeted Competencies:

Language Competencies

Competency 1: To read and listen to literary, popular, and information-based texts

- Develop a range of different text type(s) from which s/he constructs meaning
- Begins to acknowledge and support different interpretations of the same text
- Begins to identify some structures and features of text type

Competency 2: To write self-expressive, narrative, and information-based texts

- Uses signs, symbols, illustrations, and words to communicate to a familiar audience
- Uses a limited range of developmentally appropriate spelling strategies, including purposeful
approximations
- Begins to adapt ideas and structures drawn from reading/viewing experiences to own texts.

Competency 3: To represent her/his literacy in different media (through additional activity)

- Experiments with images, signs, symbols, logos, and/or words when producing texts
collaboratively with peers, for a familiar audience.

Competency 4: To use language and communicate and learn

- Uses language/talk as a means of exploring, expressing, and developing thoughts, feelings, and
imagination.

(Québec Ministère de l’Education, 2001. pg. 74-75, 82-83, 91-93, 99-101)

Objectives:
- Identify and show the use of different sentence structures, word structures, and features
through reading and writing.
- Phonics
- Rhyming words
- Word families
- Minimal pairs
- Decode/recode
- Syllables
- Nouns
- Adjectives
- The children will be writing about common nouns being described with different adjectives,
meanwhile attempting to use rhyming words, minimal pairs, and word families throughout each
sentence. Following this activity, they will also be presenting their poem, using decoding and
comprehension.
- E.g. “In my world, apples are silver and shiny, but the dogs are cute and tiny.”
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- Further develop spelling and grammar on small, common, and regular words.
- Spelling
- Grammar
- Repetitive words (animals, places, objects, own name, colours)
- The children will practice repetitive words such as colours, animals or objects, and their own
names. They will also be repeating the words “In my world”.

- Practice creativity and artistic expression through creative literature.

- Use of colours
- Choice of words/ideas
- Poem ending/signature
- Design
- The children will be able to colour their pages and draw some of their ideas around the paper.
They can design their page however they feel comfortable with no set outline.
- E.g: A student wrote his story at the bottom of the page, but he coloured the top of the
page with a sky full of marshmallow clouds. His poem mentioned that everything in his
world is a marshmallow.

Rationale:
The poem Miss Misinformation by Jack Prelutsky involves many literary techniques for younger children
to start working on. These techniques include:
- Simple view of reading (decoding print to speech, recoding speech into print. Both contain
language comprehension)
- The children will be reading the poem (decoding), followed by writing their own poem
(recoding), and then using speech to say their poem aloud (decoding).
- Phonemes & Graphemes (Ex: task & ask, know & snow / share & hair)
- Vowels (minimal pairs)
- Consonants (Onset)
- Words that rhyme with the same rhyme (Ex: “The skies are purple straw, you hammer with a
saw”) (6 syllables per line)
- Syllable patterns (traditional poems have a pattern to the number of syllables per line, the
pattern of accented and unaccented syllables)
- Breadth & Depth (students will work on the number of words they know, and the number of
definitions they know)
- Anaphora (many of the sentences start with the same word/repeating expression)
- Alliteration (when rhyming, the sentences start with the same letter. Same letter pattern)
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The purpose of this lesson is for the children to practice their fluency and pronunciation on a specific set
of words through the reader’s theatre, but they must still pay attention and listen to others' lines while
reading the poem. The students will discuss any thoughts or questions, and then use language
comprehension and recoding to write their own poem.
The students will slowly be entering phase 4 of Ouellette’s writing phases as they enter and proceed
through grade 2. In Brain Words (2019), they state
“In Phase 4 the developing Word Form Area begins to store phonics chunks and words for automatic
retrieval. The chunks include high-frequency long and short vowel patterns, some affixes such as –s and
–ing, at least five of the basic syllable types, and meaning based word parts such as the in and to in into,
the can and not in cannot.” (Gentry and Ouellette, 2019. Pg. 134)
They will further develop their syllable patterns and phonemes to create words that rhyme. They will
also use their knowledge of words they know and definitions they know to help them create the nouns
and adjectives in their poem. The poem will be short with a maximum of 5 sentences so the students can
focus on quality over quantity. Once they have finished their poems, they will re-read and decode their
poems as best as possible, and then they will present their poems in front of the class while acting as
their own character.

Materials:
- 25x copies of the poem Miss Misinformation from “A PIZZA the size of the SUN” by Jack Prelutsky
(1 per student, 1 for teacher)
- 24x pencils
- 3x (12-pack) of Crayola colouring pencils
- 1 pack of printing paper

Additional activity (designing and drawing their story on a Bristol board)

- 24x (24x36”) Bristol boards

- 3x (12-pack) of Crayola markers
- 12 Arts & Crafts packs (feathers, googly eyes, polka dots, pipe cleaners)

Organization of Space:
- Stationary desks
- Sectional Floor mat in the back of the class (for children who would prefer working on the floor)
- Open space in the front of the class (for when children will be presenting their stories)

Procedures:

Introduction
Lesson 1:
- The lesson will start after recess at 9:15 A.M.
- I will wait until everyone is at their desks either reading a book or writing in their journal as they
wait for the class to start.
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- Once the transition is complete, I will start off by asking what the students prompt questions to
transition into our lesson.
- I will ask questions such as “What does it mean to be creative” followed by “Do you think art is
creative? If so, what types of art are out there?”. I will end with my last question saying “Do you
believe that poetry is creative?”.
- I will allow the students to think on each question and answer when they are comfortable. I will
also respond to their questions and answers.

Development
Lesson 2:
- Once the students have answered and they are ready to continue, I will have a few students
hand out the poems to the class. The poem that we will be reading is “a PIZZA the size of the
SUN” by Jack Prelutsky (see APPENDIX A). I will assign each one of them a line to learn and
practice reading it for a few minutes. Everyone will also get a number ordered from one to
twenty-four.
- When I feel that everyone is ready, I will start by reading the first line and then the order will
follow. Once we finish the poem, I will ask the students prompt questions related to the poem.
- The questions can be “What did you like about this poem?” or “Did you notice that the writing in
the poem sounded like a song?”
- When the questions are finished and answered, I will hand everyone a paper and explain to
them that their activity is to write a small poem related to the theme of our poem.
- I will let them know that they can design their paper and write it how they’d like as long as they
follow a few rules.
- The students will be explained that their poem should be 3 - 5 sentences long, they must count
their syllables, they must have sentences that rhyme with adjectives and nouns (using minimal
pairs and word families), the spelling and grammar is important, and every fact in their poem
should be creative and fake.
- I will provide the students with an example such as
- “My name is Doctor Bat, I am small like a cat.”
- The students will proceed to write for the next 20-30 minutes.
- I will walk around the class helping students who ask for assistance.
- Once they have finished, I will offer to proofread their work and they can practice reading their
poems and developing their fluency for the next 5 minutes. When all the students are ready, we
will start the presentations.
Lesson 3:
- The students will go up one at a time with their paper to read aloud in their character. They can
try their best and be creative with their character and voices.
- All the students will be listening at their desk or they can choose to sit on the floor mat.
- After each presentation, I will have the students snap their fingers as an appreciation to the
poems.
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- Once all the presentations are finished, the students can return to their seats or the floor mat to
fix anything in their poems for 5 minutes before they become finalized.

Closure / transition
- Nearing the end of the lesson, I will remind all the students of the time remaining, and then I will
proceed by playing a soft and calm song for the students to listen to as they slowly get up and
hand in their poems. Students who have finished before the song ends can pick up a book and
read while waiting, or they can take a ‘brain teaser’ activity off my desk to practice. Once the
song finishes, everybody should be handing in their poems if they have not done so.
- Once they are all handed in and the students are at their seats, we can begin the next lesson.

Follow-up Activity:
Once the students have completed their poems and design on their paper, their next activity will be to
design their world through drawings, arts and crafts materials, and colour onto small Bristol boards (see
APPENDIX B). I will show them my world design as an example and explain why I chose those specific
ideas to encourage them. The children will be asked to design and draw their own worlds, and inside
their little designs, they will try to write the word associated with that noun.
- E.g. If a student draws a cloud and a sky, they will try to write the word ‘cloud’ inside the cloud,
and ‘sky’ somewhere inside the sky.

Alternate or Contingency Plan:

Instead of presenting their poems in front of the class, students can choose to present their world in
private or in a group. We will also pin up all their poems on the classroom wall with their world drawings
under each poem for every child to view and interpret in their own time.

- This alternate plan is useful for children who have a lot of difficulties presenting in front of an
audience. The children can be strong in other competencies but have difficulty in this one.
Creating an alternate plan for groups of children can help relieve stress and promote their work
ethic.

How to Assess:
Students will be assessed through:
- Reading comprehension (recoding & language) and questions or comments proposed during the
discussion in lesson one.
- Improvements in writing (graphemes) through spelling, grammar, minimal pairs, syllables, and
use of words in lesson two.
- Dialogue reading and practice of regular words, rhyming, and phonics in lesson one and three.
- Active listening and communication abilities during discussion, reading, and presentations in
lesson one, and three.
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References

Prelutsky, J., & Stevenson, J. (2013). A Pizza the Size of the Sun (1st ed.). Greenwillow Books.

Gentry, J. and Ouellette, G., (2019). Brain Words. Stenhouse Publishers.

Bafile, C. (2021, September 09). Reader's Theater: Giving Students a Reason to Read Aloud.
Retrieved December 1, 2021, from
https://www.readingrockets.org/article/reader-s-theater-giving-students-reason-read-aloud

Québec Ministère de l’Education. (2001). Quebec Education Program - Approved Version.

http://www.education.gouv.qc.ca/fileadmin/site_web/documents/PFEQ/educprg2001.pdf

Martin-Chang, S. (2021). EDUC 380: Language Arts I [PowerPoint presentation]. Concordia

University. Retrieved December 1, 2021.
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APPENDIX A
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APPENDIX B

(Caption: “What’s In Your World?” Bristol board example created by Marco Carreiro.)