EDIS

5882
Lesson Plan Template

Unit Title: Personal Narratives

Unit Big Idea (Concept/Theme): Personal Narratives

Unit Primary Skill focus: Generating Ideas to Write a Personal Narrative

Plan type: Full-Detail

Critical Learning Objectives being taught in this lesson:
SWBAT:
Cognitive (know/understand):
Students will understand that there are multiple ways to generate ideas for a personal narrative.
Students will know what a personal narrative is.
Students will know how to use an Important Moments Chart to generate writing ideas.
Affective (feel/value) and/or Non-Cognitive:
Students will value emotional moments in their life not only as a learning lesson but also as inspiration
for a personal narrative.
Performance (do):
Students will be able to state what a personal narrative is.
Students will be able to fill in an Important Moments Chart.
Students will be able to share their ideas with a partner.
Students will be able to, as partners, share ideas with the class.
SOLs:
SOL 6.1 The student will participate in and contribute to small-group activities.
a) Communicate as a leader and contributor.
SOL 6.7 The student will write narration, description, exposition, and persuasion.
b) Use a variety of prewriting strategies including graphic organizers to generate and organize ideas.
c) Organize writing structure to fit mode or topic.
d) Establish a central idea and organization.

CCSs: [List with numbers portrayed in the CCS document]
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.6.4 Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and
style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.6.5 With some guidance and support from peers and adults, develop and strengthen
writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.WHST.6-8.10 Write routinely over extended time frames (time for reflection and revision_
and shorter time frames (a single sitting or day or two) for a range of discipline-specific tasks, purposes, and
audiences.
Procedures/Instructional Strategies
[Note: Any words that represent what I would say directly to students appear in italics.]
Beginning Room Arrangement:
Students are arranged in 6 different groups made of 4-6 desks.
There is a grey carpet in the middle of the room for students to sit on during the mini lesson/group
reading time.
Boys and girls, we have just finished going over the poem for today. Please quietly grab your notebooks and
pencils and head to the carpet for our mini lesson.

 Students come and sit on the carpet with their pencils and journals.
1. [5 minutes] Bridge to lesson:
Okay, lets settle down and talk about our writing. What did we focus on yesterday in writing workshop?
I will randomly pick a name from the Popsicle sticks for a student to answer.
Student will answer that we made maps to generate writing ideas.
So Mary reminded us that we created maps to focus on specific places where things happened to us. And these
moments may create a story that we want to write about today. This is a really cool way to come up with
ideas. Today we are going to learn another strategy for generating ideas for personal narratives. Can someone
remind me one more time what a personal narrative is?
I will pull another name from the sticks for a student to answer.
Target answer: A story about a moment in your life that happened to you.
Thank you. Yes. So personal narratives are true stories that tell something that happened to you. Now lets
talk about some moments in your life where you realized something important and how that can help you
write a story!

2. [2 minutes] Step 1: Introduce Strategy
When writers are looking for a new idea to write about, they sometimes brainstorm times when they came to
an important realization about themselves or other people or their lives. Then they look at these ideas and
look for a small moment that they could add lots of detail to and that would be exciting for their audience to
read.

Whats cool about these kinds of ideas is that its about more than the actions in a story there is an
underlying meaning that you want to tell your readers.

It could be difficult to come up with ideas like this, but we have a few tools to help us along the way.

3. [5 minutes] Step 2: Using the Chart to Generate Ideas
Im going to open my journal to where I glued in the chart that includes The First Time I and The Last Time I
and The Time I realized When I first thought about ideas that I could show you all that help me think of ideas
as a writer and that could help you think of ideas for yourself, I struggled a little bit. It was hard for me to think
about something I would want to write about.

The more I thought about it, I realized that these moments when I realized something important in life, it was a
very emotional time for me. This might mean I was upset or really low, but it could also mean really happy
emotions. When I realized this, I began to think about moments in my life where I was filled with a lot of
emotions.

One story idea I came up with was writing about my best friend Lucy. My idea sentence is The last time I saw
Lucy. You see my friend had a disease all her life, and when we were in 11th grade, she died in the hospital. I
went to visit her, and hours later she passed away. I was really sad about this because she did not look like
herself when I saw her for the last time. She had all kinds of wires and tubes everywhere, and she didnt even
know I was there. Looking back at this time, I realized that life can be really hard and really sad for no reason
that makes sense. Because of this, we need to live every moment like it could be our last one. We need to
appreciate every little thing. So I am going to write this under the Last Time Icolumn.
I will write The last time I saw Lucy in the hospital.

Before we move on, I want to remind you that you may not have realized something important in that
moment. For example, when I looked at Lucy in her hospital bed, I didnt think about how I need to appreciate

everyday. I was just really sad and overcome with a sense of helplessness. But when I think about it now and
when I write about that moment, I can process it better and make my realization now.


4. [10-12 minutes] Step 3: Think-Pair-Share
So now that I have told you about a moment that I could write about and I put them in my chart, it is your turn.
We are going to do a quick Think-Pair-Share. You will have a few moments by yourself to think about any ideas
that popped into your head as I was modeling my ideas just now. After that, you will work with a partner, and
finally we will share these ideas as a class. This is good for you to think on your own and then gather ideas
from your classmates. So please open your journals to your own Important Moments and begin writing down
ideas.
Students open their journals to the Important Moments Chart
For 3 minutes, students will brainstorm independently.
I will walk around the circle to check on students and ask questions to inspire ideas.
You all have been writing a lot of good things! Now we are going to pair you up and you will share the ideas
you have come up with with your partner. The reason we are allowing time for you to talk with a partner is
because sometimes ideas they may have can trigger a certain event that happened in your own life. If this
happens while you are discussing with your partner, go ahead and jot down that idea that popped into your
head.
I will pair up the students based on who they are sitting next to.
Students will discuss ideas for 4 minutes.
Lets come together as a class. What are some moments you shared with your partner?
I will pull another name from the sticks for a student to answer.
I will make a list on the whiteboard of ideas students share.
We will share as a class for about 5 more minutes.

5. [5 minutes] Closure: Wrapping Up & Directions for Reading Workshop
I hope that our sharing helped you come up with a few more ideas. We are heading into writing workshop
time, and you can find your options on the agenda posted up front (options are continuing work on this chart,
writing a personal narrative based on an idea from this chart or an idea from a map (a la Jack Gantos) created
the day before OR continuing work on another personal narrative they have already started). If youre not sure
where or how to get started, meet me up here on the carpet.
I will dismiss the students by table number for writing workshop.

6. [20 minutes] Writing Workshop
I will stay back with the students who feel they need more support in generating ideas and beginning writing
on their personal narratives. This allows for self-differentiation as needed. Because students disperse all over
the room, sitting on the carpet does not seem like an obvious setting apart from the rest of the class. This way
students will feel more comfortable working on the carpet with me. I have noticed that the main struggle
students have when it comes to writing workshop is not knowing where to start. When we sit together on the
carpet, I will see which of the following best meets the needs of the students:
o Webbing to expand on ideas
o Questioning to narrow or decide on a topic

As students settle into writing workshop and the group of students that stayed with me on the carpet have
begun writing, I will walk around and begin conferencing with individual students. I will target students who
are obviously at a point of struggle or who seem to have slowed in their progress. I will keep note of this in
our index card system to guide our future planning for these students.

Methods of Assessment:
[How will you know if the intended learning occurred?]
The ultimate assessment of this lesson will be the drafts of the writing students create based on one of
these ideas.
The goal of this lesson is to introduce a new way of generating writing ideas.
When we have conferences with each student during writing workshop, we will talk with them about
which methods of idea generators they liked best and why. We will also look for the actual pieces of
writing they create from these tools.
-One way of assessing students in this lesson is to conference with them during writing workshop. This will all
me to see where they are and areas of struggle for them. Keeping track of their work gives me a reference
point to guide future planning for these students.
-When students choose to stay on the carpet and work with me, they are self-assessing their needs. They may
no be aware of exactly what they need help with, but by working I can provide assistance and see where these
students are struggling.
Differentiated Instruction to accommodate one or more of my students:
Overall, this is a lesson that I feel doesnt need much differentiation.
For students in the collab class who seem to struggle a little more with ideas, we will sit by them as
they come up with ideas.
o We will ask questions such as, What are some moments when you felt either really mad or
really happy or really sad? Why did you feel that way? Did you realize something about
yourself? Did you realize something about the world? Or someone else?
I will also show them an example chart from another middle school student to help create more ideas.
I will read some of them out loud before moving into the Think-Pair-Share.


Materials Needed:
Important Moments Chart
Writing Journals
Pen/pencil
Elmo for modeling
Whiteboard
Materials Appendix: (e.g., supplementary texts, Ppts, overheads, graphic organizers, handouts, etc.)
See below.

The First Time I

Important Moments Chart

The Last Time I

Time When I Realized Something