Name: Betsi Cardenas Secondary Lesson Plan

Cooperating Teacher: Jennifer Duke

Subject & Grade Level: English 7th

Lesson Topic: Review the Story Elements

Date: August 22, 2023,

Estimated Time: 76 minutes

Standards: RI.7.3, RI.7.5, W.7.10

2. Teaching Model: Lecture, and Cooperative Learning

3. Objective: By the end of the day, SWBAT identifies and summarizes the story’s elements:
characters, setting, plot, conflict, and theme with an accuracy of 95% when analyzing a one-page
short story. Also, SWBAT identifies and differentiates each action stage of a story plot with an
accuracy of 70%.

4. Materials/Resources: Google Slide presentation, white sheets, colored pencils, colored

markers, and two short fiction readings, tape, and smartboard.

Introduction:
The teacher will introduce the lesson objectives displayed on the smartboard. Then, the teacher
will pull up a Google Slides presentation with the five Elements of a Story. The teacher will
review the definition of each element with the students. The teacher will use the Lemov Strategy
Show Me to review with students previous concepts that they will be using throughout the unit.
The teacher will use the popular kid's story "The Little Red Riding Hood" as an example to
model to students what characteristics and elements they should look for when analyzing each
stage of a story plot.
The teacher will use the Lemov strategy Stretch It by integrating critical analytical questions
into the presentation, which will help students start warming up their critical thinking and
analytical skills.
The presentation will last from 10 to 15 minutes.

Activities or Learning Experiences:

The teacher will divide the class into two groups. The first group, which is confirmed by table 1#
to table 4#, will receive a copy of the short story titled "Cemetery Path" by Leonard Q. The
second group, which is confirmed by table 5# to table 8#, will receive a copy of the short story
titled "Ruthless."
The students will have 10 minutes to read the stories in their groups and discuss and share their
thoughts and reactions. Then the teacher will display and explain the following instructions on
the whiteboard.

Each group will analyze their story to identify a specific stage of action previously introduced to
students at the opening of this lesson. The distribution would be as follows:

Table #1 and 5# Exposition (Setting, Conflict, and Characters)

Table #2 and 6# Rasing Action (Present Conflict)
Table #3 and 7# Climax ( Moment of Major Tension)
Table 4# and # 8 Falling Action and Resolution

Students will identify the scene in the story that contains the stage of action assigned to their
table. Using colored pencils, and markers, the students will illustrate the scene and copy and
write down the part of the text that narrates that scene. Students will have 20 minutes to work on
their project.

Closure:
After the 20 minutes of group work, the teacher will remind students of the lesson objectives
and state load the learnings from the day. Then she will introduce the final activity:

The teacher will project a Story Plot Diagram labeled with the five stages of action discussed in
the lesson. Each group table, in order from 1 to 4, will come up to the front of the classroom and
explain the drawings and illustrations to their classmates. The same procedures will be used for
the second group of students. The closure activity intends to support students in identifying and
understanding the five stages of action in a story at the same time that they visualize all elements
in a sequence of order schema.
Lastly, students will be asked to complete an Exit Ticket with three open-ended questions
where students will self-evaluate their understanding of the story’s elements and the five stages
of the story’s plot, as well as exchange their opinions regarding small-group collaborative work.
Students will have the last five minutes of class to complete their Exit Ticket.

Extension/ Contingency Plan:

If students finish earlier, they will be asked to stay in their assigned seats and discuss with
their classmates how they will divide presentation duties.

If not all groups finished with time enough for presentations, whole-class presentations would
be held the next school day as part of the warm-up activity for the day.

6. Accommodations/Modifications
Students have assigned seats with the objective of supporting them in better concentrating,
developing more social and communicative skills, and being motivated to improve their work
performance; Therefore, I would respect students’ seating charts.

7. Assessment/Evaluation of Learning
There would be a two-part student assessment. One of the content information they selected
and illustrated into their group's project. For the second one, the expository, students will receive
full- points on the second part of their assessment if they mention the stage action they are
discussing and utilize at least one strategy question introduced at the beginning of the lesson to
justify the elements and text in their project.

8. Homework Assignment
Students are not going to be assigned homework. The learning activity is intended to be
completed at the end of the period; if the class time does not allow all students to present, the
teacher will consider the participation and engagement of the student during the group project to
assign a participation grade.

9. Pre-Lesson Reflection
Strengths: When I reviewed the lesson before teaching it, My Mentor teacher mentioned that
the Warm-Up interactive game to review story elements was a good idea and would be engaging
for students.

The lesson also counts with visual hits and critical thinking- analytical questions that help
students reflect on the meaning behind elements and character traits they will identify as the
story progresses to build the story theme.

The learning activity convenes Arts with reading and collaborative work for students to be
engaged, develop effective communication skills, and feel less overwhelmed having to identify
all the five stages of the story plot by themselves.

Weaknesses: The information regarding characters' traits and their role in the story theme is
briefly introduced to students since there was no concise data on how far students got to
characters’ traits the day before the lesson.

The final part of the lesson is instead to be a whole-class presentation session, but if not all
groups work at the same pace, students' presentations will be scheduled for the next class day.

10. Post-Lesson Reflection

Based on what I have learned from my first lesson, I will implement more hands-on
interactive activities with my 3/4 and 5/6 periods. These two classes were engaged during the
smartboard matching warm-up, while there was a lack of participation and disengagement during
the teacher-lecture part of the lesson. For my next lesson, I will integrate shoulder partner
discussions to support the students' processing and understanding of questions better. Also, I will
integrate some Kigan games to make the lesson more engaging and dynamic for these student's
periods.
The teaching instructions worked well for the last period since this class is composed of a
significant number of accelerated and motivated students who can work independently and do
not need much gaming incentives to participate and stay engaged in class.
The Exit Ticket questions worked well to let me know how the students experience working in
small groups. Also, I could measure how confident students feel regarding the lesson's learning
objectives. I will use the Exit Ticket Lemov strategy in my future lessons.

Very Short Stories for Middle and High School Students to Read Online - Owlcation