Lesson Plan

Week 1 - Day 2

Lesson Introducing the Setting Date: Tuesday, January 10th, 2023

Title/Focus:

Subject/Grade Grade 6 - English Time 45 Minutes

Level: Language Arts Duration:

Unit: Short Stories Teacher: Kailyn Smalley

Critical Inquiry What are the elements needed to create meaningful and powerful short
Question: stories?

CURRICULAR OBJECTIVES

- Teach students what a setting is.

- Teach students the different ways in which a setting can be introduced in a short story.
- Teach students ways to expand their description of a setting.
- Teach students how to identify descriptions of a setting.
- Teach students ways in which our own personal lives can influence the settings that we
utilize within our own writing.

OUTCOMES FROM ALBERTA PROGRAM OF STUDIES

General
Learning 2.0 Students will listen, speak, read, write, view, and represent to
Outcomes comprehend and respond personally, and critically to oral, print and
other media texts.

Specific
Learning     2.2.   Appreciate the artistry of texts
Outcomes - 2.2.3.B. - Experiment with sentence patterns, imagery and exaggeration
to create mood and mental images.
- 2.2.3.C. - Discuss how detail is used to enhance character, setting, action
and mood in oral, print and other media texts.
 LITERARY LEARNINGS

Students will … - Be able to identify what the setting contributes to the short story
(From unit plan).

- Be able to explain what a setting is.

- Understand the different ways in which a setting can be described
within a short story.
- Be able to identify the setting within a short story.
- Understand the ways in which their personal lives may influence
and be useful in creating setting without their own writing.

ASSESSMENTS

Key Questions:
From Unit Plan:
- What are the main elements needed within a short story?
- Why is the setting important for understanding a short
story as a whole?
- In which ways can student’s experiences influence how
they read and understand short stories?

Additional:
- In which ways can the setting enhance a short story?
- In which ways can a setting be described within a short
story?

Questions for Teacher:

From Unit Plan:
- Are students understanding how to dissect the elements
of a short story?
- Are students understanding the elements they need to
include within their own short stories?
- Are the students understanding why these elements need
to be included within short stories?

Additional:
- Are students able to brainstorm their own examples of
setting to be used for future writing endeavors?

Activities:
- Class discussion
 - Short Story PowerPoint
- Interactive Notebook
- Describing setting Game
- The Wish activity
- Individual brainstorming activity – Interactive Notebook

LEARNING RESOURCES CONSULTED

- Educational Psychology by Nancy Perry, Philip H. Winne, Anita Woolfolk

- Differentiating the lesson for students who have higher learning needs.
- Multiple students with learning needs. In this lesson, differentiate the
amount of images during the game of describing setting – give students
one to do rather than 6 different ones per group. Additionally, instead of
circling every description of imagery in The Wish, I will ask that they
circle/highlight 2-3 examples. The Interactive Notebook will be
optionally for them, and if they do want to do the brainstorming activity,
they need only write down a couple of examples.

- Embedded Formative Assessment

- Importance of Formative Assessment
- In this lesson, class discussion, the assignment while reading, the class
game about describing setting, and the Interactive Notebook will all be
used as formative assessments. All of these assessments will be used to
inform the teacher of the student’s understanding of what the setting is and
their ability to identify setting within a short story, as well as the ability to
describe a setting for their own future writing.

- Every Kid a Writer: Strategies That Get Everyone Writing by Kelly Boswell
- Teacher should work as a mirror. Do activity first so that students can mirror
your actions, words, and thinking process
- In this lesson, there will a couple of mirror exercises. During the setting
game, the teacher will describe a part of the image before the class
engages in the same lesson, and then describing a different image on their
own. Additionally, for the Interactive Notebook activity, the teacher will
have an example that they will use first to show students how they can
utilize the page to brainstorm ideas.

- Language and Literacy: Content and Teaching Strategies by Robin M. Bright, Gail E.
Tompkins, and Pamela J.T. Winsor
- The importance of making students from different cultures and countries
welcome in the classroom.
 - For my couple of students who are not fluent in English, I will give them a
copy of their Interactive Notebook in Spanish. Additionally, I will upload
a copy of the Short Story PowerPoint in Spanish on Google Classroom
for these students to have the resource available. As for the short story, I
will give these students their own copy of The Wish in Spanish.

- Short Story Presentation

MATERIALS AND EQUIPMENT NEEDED

- Short Story PowerPoint

- Pages on the setting. Have images ready for the setting game: 6 images for the 6
different groups.
- Have the example page of the brainstorming activity in Interactive Notebook
ready to show students

- Interactive Notebook
- Fill-in-the-blank pages for chracaterisics of a setting
- Have brainstorm page ready for the final activity
- Have additional activities on the setting ready for students who finish early

- Copies of The Wish for students and teacher to read

- 85 English copies + 1 for teacher
- 2 Spanish copies

PREPARATION

- Ensure that the Short Story Powerpoint slides are ready and pulled up on computer to
project for the students.
- Have physical copies of powerpoint in case technology fails: 23 copies

- Interactive Notebook pages should have already been handed out previous day.

- Copies of The Wish all printed out and ready for students.
- 23 copies for 6W
- 19 copies for 6P
- 23 copies for 6K
- 22 copies for 6B
 LAYOUT OF
LESSON PLAN ACTIVITIES - 45 mins.
Procedure Teaching and Learning Activities Time Formative
Assessment

Launching the - We will start on actual unit today with the

Task introduction of the first element in a short story: the
setting.
● Attention Grabber
● Assessment of
(Background Information): Class discussion
Prior Knowledge
- I will ask the students if anyone can tell me what they will be used as
think the setting is in a short story. formative
● Expectations for
- Students will be given time to answer – pick 3 5-10
Learning and assessment to
students who raised their hands to answer.
Behaviour mins gauge student
- If students become stuck are unsure, remind
● Advance (Depending
prior
them what you said the say before (A classroom on whether
Organizer/Agenda understanding
is an example of a setting). brainstorm
● Transition to Body is done now and knowledge
or not)
- If students come up with the correct statement about on what the
what the setting is, ask the students if they can come setting is.
up with some examples. If they do not come up with
the right answer, do the brainstorming after
introducing ‘setting’ in the Short Story PowerPoint.

- Once discussion is done, tell students that we are

going to see if our guesses were right.

Task Activity 1: Class discussion

Investigation will be used as
- Once the discussion is over, open the setting page in formative
Short Story Powerpoint and ask students to turn to assessment to
● Learning
page 4 in their Interactive Notebook.
Activities gauge student
prior
- Go through page in the Short Story PowerPoint, 5-10 understanding
reading out the information to the students. mins and knowledge
- Ensure that students have time to fill in the (depending
on whether on what the
blanks in their Interactive Notebook.
brainstorm setting is.
was done
- If not done beforehand, this is the perfect time to before or
brainstorm some ideas for places that can be used as a not)
setting.
- Ask students what they think could be used as a Checking
setting. Write down answers on the whiteboard. student’s
- If students stuck, use guiding questions: “is notebooks to see
 there a place that you go on the weekend.”
For students like Norah, Ryder, Cameron, if they filled in
etc. who play sports, can ask them “where the blanks for the
do they play those sports.” “Do people live proper pages.
in the city vs country?” etc.
This will allow
them to check
these pages later
Activity 2: Setting Game (F) on if they are
unsure of an
- As a class, the students will play a short game that element.
will get them used to identifying and describing a
setting.
- On the next page of the Short Story
Powerpoint, there is a series of images that as a
class, we will identify. I am looking less for
imagery (which will be learned tomorrow) and
more on what constitutes as setting. Class discussion/
- For example, one of the images is a meadow. student response
The purpose of this game is to identify not only to the setting
the fields, but how there are flowers in the field, images game
and buses, and clouds, and even the outline of a 10 mins
will be used as
mountain. It also seems to be during the day.
formative
- Each group will be given one image and I will
give them 5 minutes to discuss as a group the assessment to
different aspects that they can use to describe the gauge student
setting. prior
understanding
- But first, the class will do this activity together with and knowledge
an image of the yellow brick road. The teacher will on what the
start it off saying that she can see red flowers, then
setting is.
ask the students what else they can see.
- This will allow the students to identify what is
being asked of them for when they do the game
as a group.

Activity 3: Reading + Activity

- There is a slight change of plans from the unit plan.

In order to make time for the Interactive Notebook
after reading and to ensure that the short story does
not serve as a trigger for any students (a man dies in
the original short story), instead of reading The Class discussion
Garden Party, the class will be reading The Wish by 5-10 and student’s
Roald Dahl.
mins selecting of
- This short story will serve the same purpose as
the Garden Party, meaning that it will be used passages in The
to help students identify different ways in which Wish will be
the setting is introduced and described in a short used as formative
story. assessment to
gauge student
 - As a class, the students and the teacher will read the
short story, with the teacher reading the story out prior
loud. understanding
- While the teacher is reading, students will be and knowledge
following along, reading silently.
on what the
- The activity: setting is.
- While the class is reading The Wish, the
students should be circling or highlighting any
passage within the short story that has to do with
the setting.
- The purpose of this activity to is to
introduce students to the ways in which the
setting is introduced and described within a
story. Whether that be physical
descriptions of the setting, or the
temperature, or the time, etc.

- After the class has finished reading the story, the

teacher will ask the students to share any of the
descriptions that they found.
- As students are answering, write down the
descriptions on the whiteboard (ex. During day
because sun was out, there were trees, heard a
bird, etc.)

- As the students are sharing what they found, ask

additionally questions to further the depth of the
discussion:
- What did you highlight/circle?
- Why did you highlight/circle those passages?
- Is there anything else that you would have
added to describe the setting better?
- What do we think the main setting was of the
story?

- Don’t need to write the answers of these

questions on the board. The questions are
there to get student’s thinking more about
why and how setting can be used.

Summarizing Assessment of Learning

Discussion
- To finish off the lesson, students will be given
individual time to work on their Interactive
● Assessment of
Notebooks (F) in concerns with the activities on the Student’s
Learning
setting in a short story. brainstorming
● Feedback from
- Within their notebook, there is a page with some
Students activity in their
examples of setting, as well as a large area for
● Feedback to the students to brainstorm some more ideas for
Students possible settings. 5-10 notebook will be
● Transition to - There is an example page of this in the mins used as a
Next Lesson Short Story Powerpoint, can pull it up so formative
students know what the page looks like.
assessment to
Teacher can also make a couple of points
on there to show student’s one of the ways gauge student
of brainstorming. understanding
after the lesson.
- I will be asking the students to use the remainder of This will tell
the class to brainstorm some ideas of settings that teacher if there
could be cool to write a story on. This can be settings needs to be
that we brainstormed as a class, or new settings that
further
the students themselves are personally interested in
(again, use students as examples: hockey rink, discussion and
gymnastics, a farm, etc.) learning on what
- Remind students that all they need to put is the setting is.
the name of the setting, however, if they want
to add more description, that is up to them as
it is their notebook.

- If students think that they have brainstormed

enough, there are additional setting activities
in their notebooks that they can play around
with.

MODIFICATIONS NEEDED (BY STUDENT)

OVERALL MODIFICATIONS:
- Many students become easily distracted: ensure that teacher is constantly walking around, checking up
on everyone but especially the students noted above. Redirect students who have become distracted.

- For students who become easily overwhelmed and anxious, ensure that they have extra time to work, or
that they have extra time to finish their assignments. If need be, these students may work on assignments
instead of engaging in class activities. However, I will let them choose.

- For students who need complete modifications:

- The work that these students complete will either be easier or lesser. For the activities, I will give
these students three choices: they may either join in for the group activities, they may do the
activity be themselves with their EA, or they can choose to listen as well. Additionally, with the
reading, they can choose to either watch the video with the rest of the class or they can get their EA
to read to them via the printed copy.

- General Modifications:
- If a student is not able to learn in a group, then they may research the terms by themselves – all of
these terms will be on the assignment sheet that will be handed out later in the lesson.
- If a student is having trouble with the video, I can have the slides printed out for them to read the
words directly. Also, the majority of the information that is in the video, will also be in the
assignment hand out.
- Make sure that after giving the class instructions, go over to the couple of specific students.