Lesson Plan for TLLSC Sequence 5

1. Introductory Information:

Your name Najiyah Bello

Grade level Fifth Grade Subject area(s) Fluency | Phonics

Topic of lesson Improving students’ reading fluency through purposeful text reading | Readers Theater.

Instructional Group ● For today's lesson, students will be working in three (3) small groups of 6 students to work on their reading
and Strategies fluency and comprehension. In their groups, students will be given a script to read. For each group, students
will have to dramatize their lines in order to provide purposeful expression when in character. To do so, the
educator will be providing a mini, whole group instruction that will go over the importance of expression.
Students will be taught how to fluctuate their voices in order to better read and understand their characters
words, thoughts, and emotions. To gain practice, the educator will be providing one sentence to the students
and they will be directed into saying the same sentence in a variety of different ways as practice of voice
fluctuation. For instance, students could be given the sentence “ The dog ran across the road” which they will
be directed into saying in a way that is sad, scared, happy, angrily, hopeful, etc. To ensure students are
understanding they will be given the opportunity to come up with other ways to say a sentence for the class to
try out, before breaking off into their small groups. Additionally, in order for more fun and active engagement,
students will be encouraged to make or find props around the classroom to use during their role playing. Good
—just one thing to add—are the groups formed in a certain way or randomly?

● While students are in their small groups, the educator will be walking around to each group providing
clarification or any other guidance the students may need through their process. Consequently, the educator will
be checking on students' fluency and ability to pause or add more dramatic effects in their reading and asking
questions to ensure the students are understanding parts of the play as the plot progresses.
● At the end of the time of students working in their small group, each group will then perform their version of
 the play and be able to compare and contrast with their peers. During this time, the educator will be assessing
the students on how well they understood the play by asking students to summarize characters' emotions during
a time in the play, summarize the overall play, pick out common themes in the play, etc. The educator will be
making ideas, words, and concepts the students are not quite understanding or common fluency errors being
made.

Instructional Strategies:
● Students will be engaging in Serravallo strategy 1.6 “ Characters Do, Characters Say” by which in their plays
they will have to enact their characters' written words with corresponding, possible actions that their character
would do. This is in hopes to gain their audience (peers) attention and to improve the comprehension of the
overall play/skit. This strategy also helps students with memorization therefore, if they are confused on a
vocabulary word they will be able to think of an action to do in place of the word to help them know it for the
next time.
● Students will be engaging in Serravallo strategy 1.8 “Express the Emotions” by which in their plays students
will practice voice fluctuation to improve their reading comprehension. As practice, students will be given
sentences and asked to say the sentence in a variety of ways that provokes different emotions one could feel
during the scenario. With this practice and strategy, students will hope to understand how important it is to
connect situations with proper voice implications to understand characters' thoughts, emotions, and feelings.
Additionally, this works to help the students think about the author's purpose/ playwrights purpose of trying
putting those feelings with the character.
● Students will be engaging in Serravallo strategy 6.7 “ Role-Playing characters to understand them better” by
which they will be given reader theaters play they will work to build their reading fluency by working on their
ability to read with purpose and understanding in which they will engage in voice fluctuation and clarifying
questions of their characterizations.

References ● https://jappleyard.weebly.com/uploads/5/2/3/2/5232362/readers_theatre.pdf
● http://web.archive.org/web/20060117000155/http://hometown.aol.com/rcswallow/VoiceInflection.html
● Reading Strategies Book; Your Everything Guide to Developing Skilled Readers by Jennifer Serravallo
Purpose/Rationale/ ● This lesson is meant to be taught with fifth graders who have already developed the understanding of the
Academic Language fundamental skills when it comes to decoding the basic literary words. Additionally, students are expected to
have a greater understanding of vocabulary and word association to images, concepts, or other daily
connections. The learning objective is appropriate for a fifth grade level reader because it works to incorporate
prior built fundamental knowledge while working to further the students' learnings through challenging and
more structural text and word choice. Students will be improving their fluency in reading and their word
identification strategies in order to improve their reading comprehension skills.

● Students will be reading plays that may contain vocabulary words or description words that are new to
them.List the specific examples here In this case, students are encouraged to use context clues and each other in
order to come to a conclusion of what the author is saying. However, the educator will continue to provide
guidance and clarification to the students about unknown context in their plays in order to build their
understanding.

2. Standards: Include those that apply to this lesson, but limit these so that you have an instructional focus for this specific
lesson. There should be one from each section below as indicated.

CCSS ELA CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.5.4.A

Standards Read grade-level text with purpose and understanding.

3. Objectives
1. Students will be able to summarize new information gathered from a given text by using comprehension strategies with 80 % accuracy.I
don’t know if you want this here---you seem to want to focus on fluency, so stick just to that. Even if you do a quick comprehension
check, your goal for the lesson is fluency.
 2. Students will be able to facilitate a fluent reading of role playing fluenty read a scripts with 90% accuracy by using emotional
expression.

4. Assessment

Content Students will be able to summarize new information gathered from a given text by using comprehension strategies with 80%
Objective 1 accuracy.

How will this be assessed?

● After working in small groups, students will then perform their plays in front of the whole class. During each play the educator will be
taking informal notes about characters, emotions, plot, setting, etc. that students will be asked about at the end of each play. For instance,
one of the plays is Red Riding Hood, students will be asked about what is the central issue that Little Red Riding Hood is having, how did
they solve the issue ( if it did), if not how could it be solved, etc. These questions will be testing how well the audience were able to
understand their peers' performance of the skit and will be testing how well the performers were able to articulate purposeful emotion and
engaging props to better their performance.

Content Students will be able to facilitate a fluent reading of role playing scripts with 90% accuracy by using emotional expression.
Objective 2

How will this be assessed?

● Extending from the last assessment of objective one, if the audience is accurately able to identify common themes, describe characters
emotions, provide accurate summaries/ be able to retell each play in their own words, be able to provide possible alternative solutions to
the end of each play that are accurate and fitting of the plot, etc. then the educator will be able to know that the performing groups was
able to purposely apply emotion to their characters in order to help their audience understand their characterizations. Additionally, as
students are performing the educator will be reading the script to monitor the students pronunciation of words, ability to incorporate
meaningful pauses as punctuations, etc. to ensure they are reading their script slowly with the purpose of understanding and word
articulation in order to test their fluency.
I would first eliminate the comprehension objective and focus just on fluency. After that,note taking about their fluency is highly appropriate for
assessment.
 5. Materials

● Text/scripts:
○ https://jappleyard.weebly.com/uploads/5/2/3/2/5232362/readers_theatre.pdf
■ Page 309 The Irish Cinderlad by Shirley Climo Adapted for Reader's Theater by Colleen Devine
■ Page 358 Little Red Riding Hood Dramatization by Tara Clark, Paula Lutz, Christine Miller, and Danielle Speca.
■ Page 396 Officer Buckle And Gloria by Peggy Rathman
Glad you included these!
● Props/ Classroom materials:
○ Construction paper
○ Scissors
○ Other classroom items students may find to incorporate in their plays.

6. Procedure

Initiation ● Hello everyone, I am so excited for the lesson we are going to be doing today! We have worked so hard this year so far
and you all individually have been working so hard in school that I strongly believe today is the perfect day for us to put a
lot of what has been taught and studied into effect today!! In this class, we have been working with wanting to improve
our reading comprehension and fluency so I have decided to use this class time to put you all in small groups for you all
to work on dramatizing skits or plays to be performed before the end of class time today. Raising your hand, how many
have participated in a skits or play before? Has anyone seen a skit or play? What was it about? Did you enjoy it?
Personally, I am not a huge fan of skits but I have seen many back when I was in school and thought they were funny and
I always found it interesting how they were quickly able to move stage props, use lighting to evoke emotions from the
audience, or even incorporate the audience into plays so I thought it would be fun to be able to use written skits and
dramatize them in our own ways. That being said, for your skits you will be able to use classroom props or make your
own props to go along with you getting into character or setting the scene for your performance and I overall want you all
to have fun. Our learning objectives for today are: one, students will be able to summarize new information gathered from
 a given text by using comprehension strategies with 80% accuracy. For this you will be assessed on how well the
audience, you peers, are able to understand your play based on your performance. And two, students will be able to
facilitate a fluent reading of role playing scripts with 90% accuracy by using emotional expression. You will be assessed
by how well you were able to incorporate vocal and facial expression to get into character while close reading you lines
with accuracy. This is just a personal preference suggestion---I think bullet points would be more helpful for you if you
were actually using this lesson to teach. It’s easy to get lost in a long narrative like this.

Lesson ● Raising your hand, How many of you know what the word fluctuate means? Who can tell the class? Who can provide us
Development with an example? [based on the students' responses, either correct their understanding with proper examples and
definitions or agree with their responses and continue the lesson] why do you think it is important to fluctuate your
voice when reading? [ Again, based on students' responses either correct their understanding with examples and
accurate explanation or continue building off their responses with more guidance] It is important to fluctuate our voice
when reading because it creates purpose while we are reading a text that only helps up better comprehend what is going
on in our given text. So let’s practice different ways we can fluctuate our voice given one sentence. Our sentence for
today is “Mary, you won’t believe this, but I’ve just seen a bear.” Using this sentence we are first going to say it as if
we are in shock, then we are going to say it as if we are scared, and lastly we are going to say it with so much excitement
and happiness. [During this time engage students with this exercise] How was it different saying the sentence in shock
compared to being scared? What did you do differently with your voice? What about how you said it being scared
compared to being excited and happy? What did you notice about the change in your peer’s voices? When I think of my
own voice, it gets higher when I'm happy compared to a low kind of soft, hesitant tone when I am scared right? Who can
give the class other scenarios of how to say this sentence? [Possibilities can vary] The main takeaway of this exercise is
to show how much difference it can make in understanding a sentence when we change our tone. How many would be
afraid to see a bear? How many would be excited to see a bear? How many would be so shocked to see a bear you would
barely be able to say you even saw a bear? Based on your tone you are able to tell someone's emotion, right? If I have a
high pitch and jump on my toes you would assume that I love bears and want to go chase after them but if I'm shaking
and stuttering to get the words out then you would know I'm super scared of bears. So in other words we can learn alot
from a person when we focus on how they are presenting the situation. So, while you are reading and practicing your
scripts I want you all to think about what your character could be feeling and match your voice with how the sentence
 could be said so your audience can comprehend how your character is feeling. Give me a thumbs up if we understand
what we are going to be doing today? While you all are in groups, I will be walking around to be available for any
clarifications or guidance for any questions or confusions that may come up. [break students off into their assigned
groups and allow them time to read through their plays, establish roles, make props, etc.]

Closure ● [After allowing students time to prepare, having them regroup to desk but sitting in their groups] Now we are going to
perform our skits in front of our peers. [Have students volunteer or call groups up in order or by random while each
group is performing take notes on the student fluency and ability to use props and their voice to articulate work and
produce meaning with them also. At the end ask students clarifying/guiding questions about each play]
What was this play about? How do we know?
How did...feel when...?
What conclusions can we make from…?
What predictions do we have based on…?
What was the difference between … voice when ...happened compared to ...voice when...responded?
Take notes on students' responses. So what did we learn from this play? How did their voices help you all? What was easy
to understand? How many understood them better? I hope this activity helped you all feel more comfortable in having
another way to help build your reading fluency while you all are reading text. When you add emotion into the words you
are reading you are furthering your understanding of the author's purpose of the text so just by knowing the words and
expressions come easily.

Great level of detail in here. You have a good lesson for fluency with older students!