Direct Instruction Lesson Plan Template

Grade Level/Subject: 4
Literacy

Central Focus: Characters

Essential Standard/Common Core Objective: CCSS.ELALiteracy.RL.4.3 Describe in depth a character, setting, or

event in a story or drama, drawing on specific details in the
text (e.g., a character's thoughts, words, or actions).

Date submitted:
taught:

Date

Daily Lesson Objective: Students will be able to read a text and summarize a character using a
character chart with 80% accuracy.
21st Century Skills:

Academic Language Demand (Language Function and

Vocabulary): Summarize

Prior Knowledge:

Activity

1. Focus and Review

2. Statement of
Objective
for Student

Description of Activities and Setting

Time

While you are reading, there are certain things that it is very
important the take notes about. The characters are one of
those things. If you don't understand the characters, then you
cannot fully understand the story.

1 min

Today we are going to use this character chart to review what

we need to notice about characters while we read.

1 min

3. Teacher Input

I would like you to all turn to page 345 in your book. ___, can
you read the first paragraph for us please. After read, refer to
chart projection on board. Thank you ___. As I listened to ___
read, I heard some adjectives that describe Bob. So let make
this chart about Bob. We will write his name here in the
middle. Down here in this square is where we are going to
write the adjectives that describe Bob; those are his character
traits. Who can tell me one that we read in the first
paragraph? Accept 2-3 student answers.

10 min

4. Guided Practice

Continue having students read and stop to fill in chart. Fill in

character problems, how the problems were solved an what
you know about the character.

15 min

5. Independent
Practice

After reading the text, have students independently complete

how did the character change over time? After giving them a
chance to answer on their own, have them raise their hand to
volunteer to share their response with the class. Record
responses on chart.

5 mins

Students completion of chart will be graded. 20 points for each section

6. Assessment
completed.
Methods of
all objectives/skills:

7. Closure

So as you read, you always need to be looking for this

information about the characters. You need to notice
adjectives that describe them, conclusions that you can draw
about the character, problems that they encounter and how
they solve those problems, and how the character changed
over time.

1 min

17 out of 18 students met the objective. The student who did not meet the objective
8. Assessment
and the student that was absent for this lesson, will be included in a small group
Results of
all objectives/skills: remediation lesson.
Targeted Students
Modifications/Accommodations:
Materials/Technology:
Projection of chart
28 copies of chart for students
copies of the text for the students

References:
Reflection on lesson:

Student/Small Group
Modifications/Accommodations: Chart words in L2
for ELLs

Small group lesson:

After talking with the teacher, and looking over results from a recent assessment,
we decided it would be a good idea for me to pull a small group of 4 students and
focus on main idea. I looked closely at the questions on the test that went along
with that objective, CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.4.2 Determine a theme of a story, drama,
or poem from details in the text; summarize the text. I saw that most students were

making mistakes by choosing a specific detail of the test. So I inferred that they
were reading the text and that they were able to take details and find them in the
answer choices.
I hope

that

through this small group lesson, I can help the students improve their ability to find
the main idea of a text. I will have the students read a short 1 page text and use a
highlighter to point out key details of the story. After we do that, I will have the
students read what they highlighted. Ill then have them combine all of these and
take out the details to leave only the most important one that includes a short
description of the entire story. We will then talk about how this is the main idea and
all of the other things that we highlighted were supporting details of the main idea.

This small group lesson went really well. One student took a little longer to catch on.
He was still trying to use too many details from the story. After we got done with
what I had planned, I still had some time with them. I decided to get of copy of the
test they had taken earlier and go over the ones that they had missed that had to
do with main idea. We found the right answer, talked about why it was right, and
then talked about what tripped us up and why we originally picked the answer that
was wrong. The have a better understanding of how to find the main idea of a text
now.