My Trip to the Zoo!

Name: Eden Peters

Date: Thursday February 2, 2017

Grade: 1/2 Split Class

Unit/Subject: Personal Narratives (Literacy) – I will be working with the ELL students (English Language Learners)

Materials

• Worksheets that I have prepared

• Markers

• Pencils

Objectives

• To enhance the children’s understanding of the 5 W’s (who, what, where, when, why)

• To assist the children in organizing their thoughts in a sequential order

Anticipatory Set

• I will have them my story about my trip to the zoo

• After each sentence, I will re-read what happened

• Together, we will summarize the story

Teaching (Step by step discussion for how the lesson will be taught)

Instructional Input

What knowledge will you communicate to the children so that they understand the objective of the lesson

• I will tell the children that we are working on personal narratives. Together, we will review the components that make up a personal narrative (only the ones that they have already learned)

• 5 W’s (who, what, where, when, why)

• The main character of a personal narrative is “I”

Guided Practice

What activities will the students perform under your supervision to ensure that they are able to practice the concept taught? How will you support students when errors are made?

• The children will read the story – about my trip to the zoo – (each reading a sentence) and then together we will summarize what is happening

• I will ask them to take turns filling in the blanks of who the story is about, what is happening in the story, where it takes place, when it happened, and why

• As we are answering the questions, they will circle the answer on their papers using different coloured markers (e.g., put a red circle around the WHO of the story)

Modeling

How will you demonstrate the skill or competence so the student will also be able to do it?

• The first story will be one that I created, we will go through it together and take apart all the essential pieces – this will be the ‘model story’ for the lesson

• Once we have reviewed my story, the students will create their own

Checking for Understanding

How will you check that the students have understood/learned the objectives?

• Before the students write down their own stories, we will record the 5 W’s on a blank piece of paper

• The children will tell me their stories and then share what the 5 W’s of their own story are

Questioning Strategies

What types of questions might you ask to probe for higher thinking level?

• While the children are thinking of an event or a story to tell, I will encourage them to add more details to their story

• I will ask questions such as:

• Why did you have a play date with your friends?

• Where did you have the play date?

• To further enhance the students knowledge, I will introduce feeling words (which we will be going over next week)

• How did you feel when you had a play date with your best friends?

Closure

• Once the students were finished creating their own short personal narratives, I had them read each others, picking out the 5 W’s (to ensure their understanding of the concept)

• I then told them what a great job they both did and explained their homework

Independent Practice

When the activity was finished, I told the students to think of a story over the weekend and write down the details of it (5 W’s). Next week we will do another activity similar to this one but we will take it one step further.

Reflection

Overall, I feel that this activity went really well. Both of the students that were involved were able to answer the 5 W’s for my story and create their own narratives as well. While both of the children are new to the English language, I feel that Student K is at a higher level than Student I. During the lesson and activity, Student I needed more one to one direction and instruction than Student K. I learned that synonyms are very important when working with ELL students. When I was explaining that the Pandas are my favourite, it seemed that Student I didn't fully grasp that concept, so I explained it as I like the Pandas the best. If I were to do this activity again, I would use simpler words such as I like best rather than favourite to ensure their understanding. Once I am sure the students understand the concepts, I will use bigger and more complex words. Due to the students finishing the activity earlier than I had anticipated, I had them review each other’s stories and retell them. To extend this activity, I plan on creating another one that is very similar to this, however it will include more descriptive words such as some transition words and feelings.