Lesson Plan

Week 3 - Day 4

Lesson Introducing the Stages in a Date: Thursday, January 26th,

Title/Focus: Short Story 2023

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

- Check that students understand the different types of conflict that are found in short
stories.
- Check that students understand the importance of conflict within a short story.
- Check that students understand how to identify conflict in a short story.
- Check that students understand how conflict can vary, even if it is under the same
category as another conflict (self, nature, society, person). A person-vs-person conflict
in one story will be different than another person-vs-person conflict in another story.

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 2.3. Understand techniques and elements

Learning - 2.3.2.A. - Discuss the connections among plot, setting and characters
Outcomes
in oral, print and other media texts
 LITERARY LEARNINGS

Students will …
- Be able to identify the elements needed within the short story.
(unit plan)
- Be able to identify the stages within the short story. (unit plan)
- Be able to identify why these stages are essential in a short story.
(unit plan)

ASSESSMENTS

Key Questions:
From Unit Plan:
- What are the main elements needed within a short story?
- What are the stages needed to build a short story?
- Is a short story complete without a climax?

Additional:
- Do all the stages need to be in every short story?
- What are the elements introduced in each stage?

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:
- Can students distinguish the differences between the
different stages within a short story?
- Can students identify the different stages?

Activities:
- Opening Activity – Favourite Pixar Short from day before
- Short Story PowerPoint/Interactive Notebook
- Watch 3 Pixar Shorts, Tin Toy, Presto, and one they choose.
- 3 Blueprints for each student for the above Pixar Shorts
 - Mind Maps (Maybe)

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. By engaging students with personal
responses, they will feel more inclined to engage in class. Additionally, for
the Pixar Shorts activity, they can choose to do the blueprint for one of the
videos, or they can just watch and then verbally walk through the stages
with their EA.

- Embedded Formative Assessment

- Importance of Formative Assessment
- In this lesson, the Pixar Shorts activity will be used as formative
assessment, as well as the opening activity. Of course, there is always class
discussions that I will use as formative assessment.

- 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, I won’t do a mirror activity, rather, I will walk through the
activity with the students as a class.

- 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.

MATERIALS AND EQUIPMENT NEEDED

- Links for Pixar Shorts: Tin Toy, Presto, and one that they choose.

- 3 Blueprint sheets per student for when they are watching the shows. (87x3)

- Short Story Powerpoint – Pages on stages of a short story

- Interactive Notebook
 PREPARATION

- Ensure that the blueprint pages are printed out ahead of time (87x3 = 261 in total)
from the day before.
- 23 students in 6W
- 19 students in 6P
- 23 students in 6K (1 Spanish)
- 22 students in 6B

- Ensure that the links for the Pixar Shorts as well as the worksheet have been created
and posted on Google Classroom for the students.

- All the slides on stages ready on Short Story PowerPoint

 LAYOUT OF
LESSON PLAN ACTIVITIES - 45 mins.
Procedure Teaching and Learning Activities Time Formative
Assessment

Launching the
Task Attention Grabber
● Attention Grabber
● Assessment of - Ask students which of the videos they watched
Prior Knowledge yesterday (The Pixar Shorts) was their favourite.
● Expectations for
Learning and - Another survey: put a point under the video you liked 5 mins
Behaviour
the most.
● Advance
- Instead of the video For the Birds during the
Organizer/Agenda
● Transition to Body main activity in this lesson, we can re-watch the
video that the students choose and dissect it.
That way, the opening activity will have further
purpose in the lesson.

What are some of the elements that we have learned

over the past couple of weeks?

- Ask students what some of the elements that we have

learned about over the last couple of weeks: setting,
narration, perspective, imagery, symbols, metaphors,
characters, conflict, etc.
- Give students time to answer.

- Tell the students that we will begin putting all of Use questions
these elements together and looking at short stories as and discussion to
a whole. 5-10 check students
mins for understanding
Background Information and knowledge.

- Can anyone tell me what the different steps in a

short story are? A ‘blueprint’ that tells us what the
story should contain.
- Give students time to answer.
- If students tuck, give them a hint like “One
 example of a stage is the introduction, etc.”

Task Activity 1: Notes

Investigation
- Ask students to pull out their Interactive Notebooks
● Learning and turn to the sections on Stages. Then turn to the
Activities stages page in the Short Story PowerPoint and Use questions
remind students that they should be filling in the and discussion to
blanks as we are going over these pages. 10-15 check students
- Go through all the pages on stages in the Short mins for
Story Powerpoint, reading the slides out to the
understanding.
students and asking them questions.
- Ensure that the students have enough time to fill
in the blanks.

- Make sure to fully describe all the stages as well as

all the elements in each stage.
- Introduction:
- This is where the context starts: this sets up
the plot for the remainder of the story.

- Conflict/Initial Incident:
- What is the problem? How do we think it
might effect the characters or change the
story?

- Rising Action:
- How is the conflict evolving/affecting the
characters and storyline?
- Have any of the characters started to
change yet?
- What is the conflict heading towards?

- Climax:
- The big event! Where the conflict has
reached it’s highest point.
- Often the most exciting point.
- When the antagonist and protagonist clash.
- How will the conflict be resolved?

- Falling Action
- How has the conflict been resolved?
- Are there any consequences from the
conflict?
- Are there any lasting aftereffects?

- Ending/Resolution:
 - What is life like afterwards?
- How were characters affected by the
conflict?
- Did perspectives change?
- Are there any loose ends that need to be
wrapped up?

- Tell the students that in their notebooks, they have an

example of a Plot Diagram. The diagrams are
extremely useful when creating a blueprint for a short
story. It’s a good way to keep all the thoughts
organized.
- Tell the students that we are going to use these
plot diagrams to practice dividing stories into
the different stages. I have 3 more Pixar Shorts
that we are going to watch together and put onto
the diagrams.

Activity 2: Pixar Shorts

- As a class, we are going to watch 3 Pixar Shorts and

try to identify each stage within the videos.

- Students will be given 3 copies of plot diagrams and 15 mins Use questions
will be asked to fill out one diagram per video. and discussion to
- The three videos that we will watch will be Tin check students
Toy, Presto, and whichever video that the for
individual class picks as their favourite from the understanding.
previous day.

- The students will be asked to identify the stages

themselves while they watch the videos, and then we
will discuss the videos afterwards so that students
who missed a section can fill in their plot diagrams.

Summarizing Assessment of Learning

Discussion
- For closure, if there is time, we will go over the Mind
Maps that the students created during the first class Discussion about
● Assessment of
of this unit. mind map and
Learning
- We will see how close students were when they
● Feedback from how right they
guessed elements that they think should be in Leftover
Students short stories. were, will be
● Feedback to time closure/formative
- This can be a bit of a fun activity for the
Students students: can get them to compare their mind assessment
● Transition to maps to partners as a way to show how much
 Next Lesson they have grown.

- Remind students that they will have a quiz the next

day: they will be given a short story and I will ask
them to find examples of some of the elements, like
we have already been doing for many of the short
stories that we have read in class up to this point.

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.