Lesson Paws & Peaks – 24 Date October 23, 2023

Title/Focus

Subject/Grade Grade 9 English Time 80 minutes

Level Duration

OUTCOMES FROM ALBERTA PROGRAM OF STUDIES

 2.2. Construct Meaning from Texts.

General Learning Outcomes:  2.3 Understand Forms, Elements, & Techniques.

 2.2.1 (d) compare and contrast own life situation with themes of oral, print, and other
Specific Learning Outcomes: media texts.
 2.2.1 (e) – express the themes of oral, print, or other media texts in different forms or
genres.
 2.2.2 (a) – analyze how the choices and motives of characters portrayed in oral, print,
and other media texts provide insight into those of self and others.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Students will be able to:

● Students will be able to… extract relevant information from the anchor text.
● Students will be able to… summarize/paraphrase scene, concepts, examples from the anchor text that support a thesis.
● Students will be able to… answer questions about leadership using prior and learned knowledge.
● Students will be able to… collaboratively perform the pre-write portion of their essays with one another.

ASSESSMENTS (How I will know students have achieved the objective(s)

 Google Classroom – Student Inquiry Questions will be completed here. This will allow me to follow along with what they
are writing and know who to bring to my desk for brainstorming / conferencing. I will be providing real-time feedback as
well as prompting students for more detail, etc.
 Teacher Conferencing – Students that missed classes leading into the essay assignment or have little written down
regarding the essay and its content will be asked to join me at my table for a small group discussion. Students will catch
up on notes and asked clarifying questions.
 Classroom Discussion – Based on prior discussion and notes from the past few classes, I will use full class discussion to
help show students how to relate their text to leadership. I will ask guiding questions to help facilitate the discussion.
 Sticks of Doom! – If there is a lull in our class discussion, I will use the Sticks of Doom! to select students to participate
and answer the guiding questions. This is also a way to have a range of students answering, rather than the same ones
every time.
 Small Group Discussion – In groups of 4 students will complete the rest of the discussion box activity that we started last
class. During this time, I will circulate the room and listen in on discussions as well as guide groups that appear to be
struggling or off task.

PRIOR TO LESSON/PREP MATERIALS AND EQUIPMENT

● Create Slideshow ● Projector / Laptop

● Watch The Dawn Wall so I can better explain the thesis & ● Chromebooks
introductory paragraph’s example. ● D.E.A.R Book
● Leadership / Lion King Notes

PROCEDURE

Introduction 7 mins.
Hook: ● W.O.D & Agenda – Thesis Statement 7 mins.

Key Questions:  LGQ#1: Based on The Lion King (1994), what are important qualities, challenges, and/or N/A
growth that is important in creating a positive and effective leader?
 LGQ#2: What are 3 pieces of specific evidence that can support my thesis?

Transition/  Alright y’all, please grab your books. We will be reading for 15 minutes. <1 min.
Expectations:

Body 70 mins.

Learning  D.E.A.R Time 15 mins.

Activity 1 - Each class students will be given 15 minutes of D.E.A.R Time to strengthen their
reading comprehension skills. This time (if given permission) can also be used to
catch up on assignments at times.
 Allow Skyeler to go read with Mrs. Strate. Be sure that she spends the last 5 minutes
asking comprehension questions to help strengthen his reading skills. At this time,
Mikey is allowed to listen to an audiobook while using headphones, whenever possible I
would like him to be following along with a physical copy of the book.

Learning  Leadership – Inquiry Questions Assignment (due. October 24, 2023 @ 11:59 P.M.) 20 mins.
Activity 2 - Turn to this assignment on Classroom and work on it individually for 20 mins.

- During this time, use a combination of observation and Classroom to engage with
students and check for understanding about the activity and its questions.
- This assignment is due tomorrow at midnight.

Learning  Finish Discussion Box Activity 35 mins.

Activity 3 - Fill out the “Discussion” box in the document in front of the class. Then add as
many synonyms for the word leadership as we can. (10 mins.)
- Students NEED to type the inquiry questions under the “Leadership” title under
the brainstorming heading.
 Brainstorm (10 mins.)
- As a whole class we will break down the different prongs of the question that
they should address in their essays. (Qualities, challenges, and growth of
leadership in The Lion King, as well as defining what a “good” and “effective”
leader is.
- What is a “positive” leader? & What makes a leader effective? Write out
responses in front of the class on the whiteboard. After students have given their
initial responses, we will define what we feel is a positive and effective leader.
 Create a Thesis & Introductory Paragraph (15 mins.)
- Grab a Chromebook & sign into Classroom.
- Walk students through this section of their assignment on Classroom.
- Type out the legend that I’ve created in their own document to help guide their
understanding of what the introduction should have, where each requirement
should be, as well as an example for students to replicate using their own ideas.
- Quickly, read over what a thesis statement is from our “Essay Terminology”
handout. Have students highlight the first, third, and last sentence.
- Begin drafting their own thesis statement to the essay’s inquiry question.
MUST get my approval before they can move on to the next step.

Closure 3 mins.

Transition to ● Red Robin… Before you begin to pack up… Please close your Chromebook and place 3 mins.
 next lesson your head down on the desk. By a show of hands, who is finished their outline and
ready to begin their first draft? Based on the response, determine if class time will be set
aside for students to complete their outlines or if we can move on to the next step.
● Remember that your leadership inquiry questions assignment is due tomorrow at
midnight.
● Thank you for your hard work today grade 9s. Now I need y’all to please place your
Chromebook back into its proper slot, clean up the area around your seat and tuck in
your chair, then you are good to go.

Sponge: What can students work on if done

 Go over the “Integrating Quotations” and “Checklist” sections of our Writing an Analytical Response assignment.
 Begin first draft.

Differentiation:

 Locating students that do not have much information or seem confused and have them sit around my desk and we can
work on their outlines together. Hopefully this will build trust with those students and help to cultivate a safer learning
environment where students are less hesitant to come to me with questions and more willing to help one another.
 Verbally go through the W.O.D and other slides so that my students that struggle with dyslexia and reading
comprehension get more out of the activities than simply notetaking without any form of comprehension.
 The Analytical Response assignment has been chunked into different steps to help facilitate a realistic pace for the
assignment to get done. It also presents students with a variety of ideas of how to structure their essays and gives space
for me to model different types of writing so that students understand the expectations for each prong.
 The leadership inquiry questions intentionally set students up to write out various paragraphs about leadership, so they
have less to come up with for their essays and spend more time developing than generating (if they were thoughtful in
their responses). The prompts also were a way to get student to think of leadership from a range of perspectives.

Reflection:
Like last class, there were a couple of last minutes adjustments that I decided to implement to
differentiate and get more participation from a variety of students rather than the ones that always contribute
to our class discussions. Rather than use a full-class informal questioning method to identify and discuss the
qualities that Scar, Simba, and Mufasa have concerning leadership; I asked students to get in groups of 4 and
discuss the 3 questions with their group. One of the group members was a scribe and after 10 minutes we
collaborated as a full class to discuss our findings. This went a lot better than I think solely relying on full-class
discussion would have gone. We also created symbols for each of the characters being discussed and provided
bullet point notes that described each characters’ relationships with leadership. It was an intentional shift
from simple notetaking as it requires students to thoughtfully consider a symbol and by drawing it, it made the
notes taken more memorable through a different form of kinesthetics. Though these changes resulted in us
not getting as far along in our lesson as I had originally planned, I believe they positively impacted my
students’ engagement and understanding.
There was a chain reaction that resulted from not finishing my last lesson plan. I had to spend time
today catching up and couldn’t finish this one either. Today we spent time in small groups finishing up the
discussion box that we left off on during our last class and started the Leadership – Inquiry Questions
assignment that is due tomorrow at midnight. This will not be a number graded assignment but collected as a
completion grade. It requires students to answer questions regarding leadership outside of the context of The
Lion King. Students also did a writing journal assignment that required them to write an introductory
paragraph. If these were well-done then students could potentially be done their first paragraph of their essay
or at least have a head start and will only need to revise and edit it. I will be sure to model how to write an
introductory paragraph once we get to the brainstorm & thesis/intro paragraph section of the assignment
tomorrow.