LITERACY FOCUS LESSON PLAN TEMPLATE

Adapted from Calkins (2001)

Your Name: Becca Zatkulak & Jeep Morehouse

Unit Topic: Writers Workshop (read aloud & modeled/shared writing)
Focus Lesson Topic: Where Writers Get Ideas
Grade Level: 2nd grade

INFORMATION ABOUT THE FOCUS LESSON

Learning Goals/Objectives:

Children will learn to use personal experience as a strategy for finding writing ideas
Children will learn to read a story, find the main idea, and use that to come up with
writing ideas

Relevant Common Core Standards:

Pre-K and Elementary Classroom Teachers 1.1: Understand major theories and
empirical research that describe the cognitive, linguistic, motivational, and
sociocultural foundations of reading and writing development, processes, and
components, including word recognition, language comprehension, strategic
knowledge, and reading-writing connections.
Pre-K and Elementary Classroom Teachers 2.2: Use appropriate and varied
instructional approaches, including those that develop word recognition, language
comprehension, strategic knowledge, and reading-writing connections.
Pre-K and Elementary Classroom Teachers 5.1: Design the physical environment to
optimize students use of traditional print, digital, and online resources in reading and
writing instructions.
Pre-K and Elementary Classroom Teachers 5.2: Design a social environment that is low
risk and includes choice, motivation, and scaffolded support to optimize students
opportunities for learning to read and write.

Teaching Strategy:

Read aloud as Mentor Text

Modeled Writing
Shared Writing

Materials including literature:

Reading material
Blank paper for ideas
Lined paper for writing
Markers, pens, and pencils
Rationale for the Lesson:

According to Lester Laminack, read aloud is extremely important for students so that
they are able to hear someone fluently read the story before they begin trying to
comprehend it; however, reading aloud does not magically come up with topics for
writing. Barbara Orehovec and Marybeth Alley share that a mini-lesson for strategic
reading involves making connections, specifically connections from the text to oneself.
Therefore, after read aloud, the teacher should begin prompting the students to make
connections from the story to themselves, first by sharing a personal example and writing
a short descriptive story about it. According to Megan Sloan, modeled writing is very
important for students to first see the teacher model what is expected of them, so we will
model an example of something that stood out from the text and from there come up
with more specific details about the topic of this writing assignment. Once the teacher
has modeled this, Payne and Schulman mention that the class should then have time for
shared writing where students will come up with their own ideas of what the main topic
from the story is, and the teacher will write their ideas on the board for the class to see.
However, instead of students doing independent writing and moving on, Lucy Calkins
suggests partner work and Cambourne encourages keeping the students actively
engaged throughout the lesson. Therefore, once students have written their creative
story, they will have time to share their work with a partner, and later with the class.

References for Materials and Instructional Ideas:

Calkins, Lucy. The Nuts and Bolts of Teaching Writing. pdf from class.

Cambourne, Brian: notes from class.

Laminack, Lester. Why Read Aloud Matters. pdf from class.

Orehovec, Barbara and Marytbeth Alley. Revisiting the Reading Workshop. (2003).

Sloan, Megan. Into Writing. pdf from class.

Payne, Carleen and Mary Schulman. Getting the Most Out of Shared Writing.
 LITERACY FOCUS LESSON PLAN

Connection:

Today we are going to teach you how to read a book and pull out the main idea from
the story. By finding the main idea, we will then teach you how to expand your ideas
and find something interesting that you are able to write about. By being able to pull out
the main idea from a story, students are able to use that to write creative stories using
connections they have made from text-to self. The students will think about ideas from
the story that they can relate to in their own lives.

Teaching:

1. Read story together as a whole class

2. Share something you thought of with the class and write it on the marker board

3. Ask students what came to their minds when they heard this story and write their ideas

on the marker board

4. Expand upon one of the ideas and share a quick, creative story with the class about

that topic

5. Ask the class to look at the list they compiled and pick one topic to write a creative

piece about

Active Engagement:

Students will listen intently while the teacher is reading the story
Students will listen intently while the teacher is sharing her creative writing
Students will share at least one idea of what came to mind when reading this story
Students will pick one of the ideas on the master list and write a creative story about
it

Link:

Now that the teacher has modeled how to complete the task and the students have
shared what they think the main idea was and what idea they are going to write about,
it would be time for independent writing. Students have now started to complete their
creative writing piece by choosing their topic ideas, and they have seen a model for
what to do, so now it is their turn to write independently. From there, students will be able
to share their writing with a peer and move into revision.
 ASSESSMENT & SUPPORTS

Chart:
Sub
topic Sub
topic
Main
Idea

Sub
topic

Formative Assessment:
We will be using a rubric to assess the student independent writing (see below)

For the assessment students will be writing their own stories

These stories must contain the main idea discussed in class and then branch off into three
sub-groups.
These sub-groups will branch off from the main idea to form a complete story that forces
the students to focus on the main idea and connecting with the read aloud book.
Students will then be graded and assessed on their independent writing with a rubric that
includes: how well the student composes, crafts, and appropriately writing conventions
throughout the text.

Formative Assessment for Student Writing:

4 3 2 1

Composing - Writing is well - Writing shows - Writing is not - No evidence

organized with some well organized of organization
beginning, organization and is missing a - Does not stay
middle, and end with a beginning or on topic
- Stays on topic beginning, ending - Does not
throughout middle, and - Tends to elaborate
paper end digress and
- Elaboration - Most stays on write off topic
contains topic - Little attempt
interesting word Some at elaboration
choices for elaboration,
specific although word
examples and choices are not
descriptions specific
 Craft - Words have - Words are - Words are - Words are not
been carefully chosen for the general and specific
chosen and topic not well - No variety of
specific - Some thought out sentences.
- Sentences evidence of - Little evidence Some are
show variety sentence of sentence vague or
and fluency variety variety awkward.
- Writing shows - Some attempt - Little attempt - No structure of
an obvious at structuring to structure writing
structure the writing writing

Conventions - All sentences - Most - Some - Sentences are

are complete sentences are sentences are incomplete
- Correct use of complete complete - No attempt at
capitalization - Most words - Inconsistent capitalization
- Uses proper capitalized use of - No attempt at
punctuation correctly, but capitalization punctuation
- All core some capitals Sometimes uses - Numerous
words are are found in the punctuation spelling errors
spelled correctly middle of words Some core including those
(doG, rEd) words are that are core
- Most of the spelled words
time uses correctly
correct
punctuation
- Most core
words are
spelled
correctly

Summative Assessment:
We will be using an author's chair for a summative assessment

We choose this assessment as it allows the students to share their own writing and also
receive feedback from their peers
This also allows students to read and pay attention to what other students wrote and
learned from the mini-lesson

Supports and Accommodations (for children with special needs and/or language differences):
Extra teacher assistance with coming up with the topic for writing

Maximize peer interaction so that students with special needs and/or language
differences are hearing from other peers
Translated version of the story read in class for students with language differences
Teacher should use very specific and explicitly directions to accommodate for any
students with learning disabilities