Lesson Plan Observation #3

Context:
Course name: English 9 AA
Grade level: 9
Length of lesson: 75 minutes
Description of setting: Albemarle High School. Students are seated in a U-shape around the
room.
Students: 10 students
Curriculum: Students have started taking notes on the Introduction to The Odyssey Study Guide.
They have been learning about some of the background on the Odyssey. They also are looking
up the definitions of the weekly vocabulary in the dictionary for this lesson. They are learning
about different ways of doing research or finding information that is not only using Google. In
this portion of the lesson students will be doing a pre-reading activity where they discuss what
they would be doing in different scenarios of the Odyssey.

Strategy Requirement Satisfied:

(Note: Refer to the list in the syllabus or the document called “Lesson Plan Overview”)

Objectives (KUD format)

SWBAT:
Know:

Students will know that pre-reading strategies are used to help students to start thinking critically
about their reading. (K1)

Understand:

Students will understand the importance of participating in a pre-reading activity to activate their
prior knowledge. (U1)

Students will understand that understanding the background information about a certain work of
literature, will support their understanding of the work as a whole. (U2)

Do:

Students will be able to identify and explain the context in which the Odyssey was written. (D1)

SOL’s:

Methods of Assessment:
[How will you know if the intended learning occurred?] Describe all methods of assessment used
in this lesson or which are related to this lesson and come in a future lesson (use the sentence
stems provided). After each assessment, indicate in brackets the number(s) of the related lesson
objectives that the assessment is evaluating.
Diagnostic Formative
Title of assessment tool: Title of assessment tool:
Journal Prompt Pre-Reading Activity
Students will Students will show their
demonstrate what they progress toward understanding
already know about The different topics and themes
Greek society, and how in The Odyssey by answering
heroes were portrayed in different pre-reading scenario
that society, as they prompts.
complete their daily
journal prompt. Criteria:
I will be looking for active
Criteria: participation and engagement in
I will be looking to see this activity. The students will
if the students are able be expected to answer the
to activate their prior prompts, and then share their
knowledge from our answers with the class. This
previous mythology gives them an opportunity to
unit, as well as any other think more critically about some
background knowledge of the different obstacles
they may have about Odysseus has to face during his
heroes, or Ancient journey, and what the students
Greek society in might do if they are confronted
general. with the same type of obstacles.
How data will be used: How data will be used:
The data will allow me I will be using the data to see
to gauge how much how the students react to the
frontloading I will need different scenarios, and to
to do as we prepare for gauge their ability to think
the Odyssey. critically about what they might
do if faced with challenging
How students will obstacles and situations.
receive feedback:
The students will be How students will receive
receiving oral feedback feedback:
from me, as they share Students will be receiving oral
out their answers. feedback from me as they
discuss their answers as a class.
They will also be receiving
Summative
Title of assessment tool:
Odyssey Part 1 Assessment
Questions
Students will ultimately be
assessed (today or in a future
lesson) on their
understanding of the different
themes discussed in The
Odyssey, as well as their
implications in our society
today.
Criteria:
Students will be taking a short
assessment at the end of the
first part of the epic. I will be
checking to see if they have
understood the themes of this
epic, and are able to discuss
how they are relevant to the
epic itself, and how they are
relatable in our society today.
How data will be used:
This data will help me gauge
the students’ understanding of
the themes in the epic. It will
also allow me to see what I
need to reteach before
continuing on to the second
part of the epic.
How students will receive
feedback:
Students will be receiving
written feedback once they
have turned in their
assessments. We will also go
over the assessment in class
 feedback on their written once it has been graded and
portion of the answers as a class returned to the students.
grade.

Differentiated Instruction to accommodate one or more of my profiled students:

(This is where you identify specific aspects of this lesson which have been differentiated in order
to address the needs of one or more of your profiled students—identify them by name)

What have you done (visible in the lesson plan procedures) that differentiates for the a)
readiness, b) interests, and/or c) learning environment for your profile students.

Student Readiness Interest Learning Environment

Name

Erika Below Erika is mostly interested in Flexible seating is available for

grade being on Instagram and “hip”
level with the latest technologies. It is
very tough to get her to put her
electronic devices away during
the class.
her. I allow Erika to type notes
on her computer, as well as fill
out electronic copies of the
work we are doing in class. This
allows her to feel like she is not
being restricted in her
technology use, but I know she
is also still participating in the
class, and on task.
 Zeke On grade Zeke typically does not
level participate much in class. He is
very reserved, and has a hard
time speaking up for himself, this
also makes it difficult to know if
he understands directions. He
also stops writing after a sentence
or two. If he feels as though he is
not going to be able to keep up
with the pace of the class, he
sometimes will just “give up”,
and try to complete the rest for
homework.
I will be checking in on Zeke.
He likes to work independently
so this activity should fit with
this desire. I will also encourage
him to think about the ways in
which the hero’s journey also
applies to books or movies that
he is interested in.

Procedures/Instructional Strategies
Each step should have bolded heading that identifies the activity, and then is followed by the
teacher scripting, student and teacher actions, and a description of the activity.
[Note: Any words that represent what I would say directly to students appear in italics.]

Beginning Room Arrangement:

Albemarle High School, students are arranged in a U-shape around the classroom. There are
only 10 students in this class. There are also standing desks in the back to allow for flexible
seating.

1. [2 mins.] Welcome/greeting/announcements

Here I always take about 2 minutes to greet my students, ask them about how their
week/weekend has been. I also give them time to hand in any homework they have to turn in, or
to ask any clarifying questions from the previous lesson.

2. [15 mins.] Journal Prompt & Share:

Alright y’all please get out your English writing journals. We are going to get started
with some writing this morning. Today’s prompt is: “What is an obstacle that you needed to
overcome? How did you overcome it?” Remember that I am expecting y’all to write at least 5
sentences.
I am going to give y’all about 10 minutes to write and then we will share what y’all wrote. Does
anyone have any questions before we get started? Alright, get to writing.
While students write, I circulate the room to make sure they are on task, and to check in more
individually with each of my students. For a question like this, I usually will ask one of my more
outgoing students to get us started with the discussion, so that this can help prompt the other
students who may be too nervous to share their answers.
Once students are done writing, I will then ask them to volunteer to share what they
wrote about the prompt. This is a very quiet class, but by having one or two students share first,
usually I can get them warmed up and comfortable to share their own answers. Especially in a
situation like this where this is a little bit of a more personal question, having some of the more
talkative students share first, helps the other ones to want to discuss their own answers.

3. [25 mins.] : Grammar Practice

Alright y’all, very nice work on the journal prompts. Now we are going to transition to
some grammar practice. I noticed in the short stories that were recently turned in, that there
were a couple of grammar rules we needed to go over. Can please get y’all to open your laptops,
and get on Google Classroom. The assignment is called Grammar Practice 1. I am going to give
y’all about 5 minutes per sentence that I will have you correcting, then we will go over it as a
group, and go over the different grammar rules.

I will be giving the students about 15 minutes to correct the couple of sentences that I
have prepared for them. I am having the not only correct them, but write/identify why they made
that correction. While they do that, I will be circulating the room to make sure that they are on
task, and I will be checking in with each of my students to see if they are able to complete the
assignment.

Once the students are done, I will be going over each of the sentences, allowing the
students to share their answers, and corrections. Then I will be briefly going over each of the
rules, and the reasons why these changes had to be made. I am expecting almost every single
student to get these right, and know the grammar rules, but it is good practice for them to go over
it all.

4. [ 25mins.] Pre-Reading Activity:

Nice job y’all. You did some great work on that grammar activity. We are now going to
shift gears, and start thinking about the next book we are going to be ready: The Odyssey. Has
anyone heard about this work? Or know anything about it?

I will give students the opportunity to share what they know about The Odyssey as I pass
out the pre-reading activity.

That’s awesome that so many of you have heard of it, and know so much already. Our
next activity for this class, is a little pre-reading activity that I hope is going to be really fun for
y’all. The hero of this epic we are going to read is going to have to face many struggles. I have
written down some of the different struggles he faces on this sheet of paper. What I would like
y’all to do, is to take about 15 minutes, and answer using 4-5 sentences, each of these scenarios.
What would you do if you had to go through all of these things? Then we will come back as a
whole class, and discuss each of them together. We got some pretty good laughs in my last class,
so I’m really excited to hear how y’all react!

While the students are working on answering the scenarios, I will be circulating to make
sure they remain on task, and that they all understand what each of the scenarios mean and what
it is implying. Once the students are finished, we will discuss each of the answers as a whole
class.

5. [ 5 mins.] Exit Slip – Summary Paragraph:

Before the bell rings for the period, I always make sure to have some kind of a check-in or exit
slip. Right now our focus of the class is to practice paragraph writing, so I am going to have the
students write a one paragraph prediction of what they think might happen in The Odyssey. This
will also allow me to gauge how much they got out of the pre-reading activity and if it was
beneficial to them.