INQUIRY (5E) LESSON PLAN TEMPLATE

Teachers: Courtney Wiatt Subject: ELA Grade: 8

Common Core State Standards:

 8.W.7 Conduct short research projects to answer a question (including a self‐generated question), drawing on
several sources and generating additional related, focused questions that allow for multiple avenues of
exploration
 8.SL.1 Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one‐on‐one, in groups, and teacher‐led) with
diverse partners on grade 8 topics, texts, and issues, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own
clearly.
 8.RI.10 By the end of the year, proficiently and independently read and comprehend informational texts and
nonfiction in a text complexity range determined by qualitative and quantitative measures appropriate to grade
8.

Objective (Explicit):
Students will be able to discuss the negative impacts off stress through the collaborative exploration of
informational texts discussing stress and complete the prewriting stage of the creation of a stress board,
integrating at least two pieces of factual information from the informational text.
Evidence of Mastery (Measurable):
 Include a copy of the lesson assessment.
 Provide exemplar student responses with the level of detail you expect to see.
 Assign value to each portion of the response

 Mastery: Students will be able to create a rough draft of a “stress board” that includes at least two pieces of
factual evidence from the informational text, three concepts that cause them stress, and three things that make
them happy.
 Proficiency: Students will be able to create a rough draft of a “stress board” that includes some evidence from
the informational text, a few things that cause stress, and a solution that makes them happy.
 Novice: Students start to create a rough draft of a “stress board” that displays fewer than three of the following:
evidence from the informational text, causes of stress, and solutions that bring joy.
Sub-Objectives, SWBAT (Sequenced from basic to complex)
 How will you review past learning and make connections to previous lessons?
 What skills and content are needed to ultimately master this lesson objective?
 How is this objective relative to students, their lives, and/or the real world?

Students will be able to collaborate with others to explore how stress affects our everyday actions, while also using
critical thinking skills to examine and explore informational text, making connections back to the original question.

Key vocabulary: Materials:

 Stress, anxiety, factual evidence, understanding - Writing utensil, teacher provided survey, sticky notes, stickers

Teacher Will: Students Will:

- Provide students with a calming environment when they walk
into the room. Play music proven to reduce stress, decrease
bright lighting, diffuse calming oils into room.
- Begin the MOOD CHART. Place options on the board off to
the side of the room that say “doing great today, having a
mediocre day, having a not so good day, having a really rough
day and don’t want to talk about it, having a rough day and
would like a check-in” Give students a sticky pad on each
group’s station to place on the chart when they come in the
room.
- Come in quietly and find a seat with a survey at it.
- Follow directions placed on the board and place a sticky
note on the MOOD CHART
- Take a seat and begin filling out the survey quietly and
honestly without influence of others
- Report the results of their survey with stickers on
graphs/charts on the poster boards at the front and
choose to write the reasons they are stressed on the
anonymous sticky note.
- Begin thinking about WHAT causes stress and HOW it
makes people feel
 - Have survey asking about stress levels already placed on
each student desk. Place colorful stickers on each desk.
- Have directions on the board “come in quietly, write your
name on the back of a sticky note and place it on the
anonymous MOOD CHART, take your seat, and begin filling
out the paper survey without discussing with others”
- When survey is completed, ask about results if students are
comfortable with sharing. Have students place colorful
stickers on already created poster boards that are home to
charts, indicating their numeric responses to questions about
stress levels.
- Ask how stress can affect us and how we can prevent it.

Explore
 How will you model your performance expectations? (Remember you are not modeling what you want students to discover but need to
model expected behavior or required procedures.)
 How will students take the lead and actively use materials to discover information that will help them answer the question posed in the
Engage?
 What questions or prompts will you be prepared to use with students while they are “exploring”?
Teacher Will: Students Will:
- Facilitate an activity simulating results of extreme stress and - Get in groups prepared to collaborate. Each group will
anxiety receive objects that simulate stress and exhaustion.
- Provide groups of students with “impairment goggles” that Groups will designate who experiments with each tool
simulate extreme exhaustion, arm weights that also simulate - Groups will read list of designated tasks and complete,
extreme physical exhaustion, give some students distracting working together to finish.
headphones and give students papers that have words - Explore and record observations made about ability to
“jumbled.” Each group will have each type of impairment, as do task, what it feels like, and more
well as a student who listens to the calming music and has no -
distractions as the control
- Provide students with a list of menial activities/tasks: take
everything out of your backpack and put it back, have a
conversation with your friend about something exciting, write
a sentence, etc. and have them “just do it” and record their
observations without giving them much direction
- Steer thoughts by asking how that made them feel, how the
tasks became more easy/difficult

Co-Teaching Strategy
 What co-teaching approach will you use to maximize student achievement?

Differentiation Strategy
 What accommodations/modifications will you provide for specific students?
 How will you anticipate students that need an additional challenge?

For a student with autism, I will have him be the control that does the task without any impairments to avoid overstimulation, and I will
partner him with another student to do the control with him as well. For students on IEPs, I will place them in groups with students who
have a grasp of the task and who are understanding. For students who need more of a challenge, I will give their group more of an
opportunity to use the

Explain
 How will all students have an opportunity to share what they discovered?
 How will you connect student discoveries to correct content terms/explanations?
 How will all students articulate/demonstrate a clear and correct understanding of the sub-objectives by answering the question from the
Engage before moving on?
Teacher Will: Students Will:
- Prompt each group to share out their experiences with the - Share their experiences with each tool as a group for
tools and the “stress” the class
- Invite students to get out of their seats and ask them to move - Move around the room to signify their observations to
to the left side of the room if the tools made the task easier, what happened during the experiment
and the right side if the tools made the task harder. Repeat - Discuss as a group how the tools relate to stress, how
this with each tool so students can see the statistics in action they are affected by stressful situations, quality of work,
- Allow students to talk amongst themselves about how the and more
tools relate to stressful situations
- Redirect if students get away from the topic of stress

Co-Teaching Strategy
 What co-teaching approach will you use to maximize student achievement?
Differentiation Strategy
 What accommodations/modifications will you provide for specific students?
 How will you anticipate students that need an additional challenge?

A student with autism will be partnered up with another student in his group as the control variable. Students who need modifications will
be deliberately placed in supportive groups. For my group that needs challenge, I will have them ponder even more extensive questions
about how stress affects them daily.

Elaborate
 How will students take the learning from Explore and Explain and apply it to a new circumstance or explore a particular aspect of this
learning at a deep level?
 How will students use higher order thinking at this stage (e.g. A common practice in this section is to pose a What If? Question)?
 How will all students articulate how their understanding has changed or been solidified?

Teacher Will: Students Will:

- Provide each group with a different, short, informational piece
on stress and how it affects us
- Walk around and discuss themes with each group
- Ask students to answer “what if we didn’t have stress?” in
their groups
- Read short informational pieces in groups while
evaluating information and themes
- Discuss “what if we didn’t stress” in groups and draw
their depiction of the world without stress as a group
- Explain their drawing and their ideas to the class along
with three key points from their article

Co-Teaching Strategy
 What co-teaching approach will you use to maximize student achievement?

Differentiation Strategy
 What accommodations/modifications will you provide for specific students?
 How will you anticipate students that need an additional challenge?

A student with autism will be in the group with a less detailed piece of writing to help maintain focus. The more advanced group of
students will receive a more in depth and abstract piece on stress.

Evaluate
 How will all students demonstrate mastery of the lesson objective (though perhaps not mastery of the elaborate content)?
 How will students have an opportunity to summarize the big concepts they learned (separate from the assessment)?

Teacher Will: Students Will:

- Provide students instructions for a ‘stress board’ that will
be worked on in the next couple of days
- Pose the question again: how does stress affect us? How
do we fix the problem?
- Watch students interact and create their rough drafts.
Collect drafts at the end of class and evaluate for mastery.
Adjust the introduction to include more information at the
beginning of next day’s class if students are not grasping
the concepts.
- Create a rough draft of a “stress board” that includes at
least two pieces of evidence from the informational text, at
least three things that cause stress, and at least three
things that bring them joy and reduce stress
- Collaborate and discuss with one another what they
learned for the day
- Write down more questions that arise at the end of the
period and insert them into the “question box” as they
leave for an exit ticket