WVSU LESSON PLAN FORMAT (Updated 1/13)

Teacher Candidate: Ashley King

Date: 11-13-14
School: Dunbar Middle School
Grade/Subject: 7th grade/ Reading (Inclusion class)
Unit Topic: Achieve 3000
Lesson Topic: Did weather change history?
INSTRUCTIONAL OBJECTIVES/ STUDENT OUTCOMES
1. Students will be able to analyze text structure (sequence).
2. Students will be able to use context clues to understand the meaning of words.
WV CSOS
ELA.7.L.C17.1: determine or clarify the meaning of unknown and multiple-meaning words and phrases
based on grade 7 reading and content, choosing flexibly from a range of strategies.
ELA.7.L.C17.1a: use context (e.g., the overall meaning of a sentence or paragraph; a words position or
function in a sentence as a clue to the meaning of a word or phrase.)
ElA.7.L.C17.3: acquire and use accurately grade-appropriate general academic and domain-specific
words and phrases; gather vocabulary knowledge when considering a word or phrase important to
comprehension or expression.
NATIONAL STANDARDS
MANAGEMENT FRAMEWORK
Overall Time 55 minutes
Time Frame:
Pre-test: 10 -12 minutes
Introduction video: 3 minutes
Discussion of video: 2 minutes
Reading first paragraph of article aloud: 2 minutes including discussion
Watch El Nio video: 5 minutes including discussion
Reading rest of article: 15 minutes
Discussing article: 5-10 minutes
Post-test: 10-12 minutes
Closure: 2 minutes

STRATEGIES
Active participation; addressing Special Needs Students; Addressing student learning styles; checking for
understanding; connect to prior knowledge/learning; giving students examples; diagnostic assessment;
formative assessment; oral reading.
DIFFERENTIATED INSTRUCTION/ ADAPTATIONS/ INTERVENTIONS
(Learning Styles, Students with Special Needs, Cultural Differences, ELL)
Word bank for pre and posttest for all inclusion students and regular students benefit; test read allowed
to all students with microphone for hearing impaired students; read article together as a class for
auditory learners; have article on the Smartboard for visual learners; videos to enhance the ideas in the
article for visual learners and students with MI.
PROCEDURES: Introduction/ Lesson Set
Give pre-test. Give students about five minutes to try the test on their own, and then read the test to
the students after these minutes are up, give students enough time to finish before starting the lesson.
Prior to beginning the lesson, help students build background knowledge about Ferdinand Magellan by
allowing the students to watch the video on Magellan at http://mrnussbaum.com/explorers/magellan/ .
Explain that Magellan was a Portuguese explorer who lived from 1480 to 1521. Magellans expedition of
1519 to 1522 became the first to sail from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean, and then to
circumnavigate, or sail around, the Earth. Discuss video when it is over. Have students have a sheet of
notebook paper so that they can write down facts, their thoughts, and their opinions about the videos
and article.
PROCEDURES: Body & Transitions
Ask a student volunteer to read the first paragraph making sure to go over the vocabulary words in the
first paragraph. Ask students if they know what each of the words mean before defining them.
El Nio: a disturbance of wind patterns and ocean currents in the Pacific Ocean that causes
temporary climate changes in many parts of the world.
Phenomenon: an occurrence or event, or something that is impressive or extraordinary.
Confounded: present with a difficult problem
Climatologist: an expert in climatology, which is the study of climate
Ferdinand Magellan; a Portuguese explorer who lead a successful journey around the world
nearly 500 years ago.
After going over the vocabulary, watch the video that will define and show examples of what El Nio can
do: http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/el-nino . Stop the video at various points and explain the
key terms.
Next put the Voyage map up on the Smartboard for the students to look over: at
http://mrnussbaum.com/explorers/magellan/
Next, continue reading the article aloud. Have a different student read each paragraph, making sure to
explain each paragraph, ask questions, and define vocab for the students.
On the second paragraph, ask students:

Why are the islands important? The resources found there: rice nutmeg, cloves; clove is
used in Asian foods; nutmeg is used in Indian foods. Without this trip, America may have
never received nutmeg for pumpkin pie. Why would they want these foods?
In the third paragraph, explain what riddled is (set up) and what tempestuous means (very stormy).
Ask the students to imagine stepping into one of a group of sailboats, getting ready to begin a journey
across thousands of miles. Now imagine that you have very little idea of what lies ahead. Thats what it
was like for Magellan when he set out for the Spice Islands.
Strait: a narrow passage of water that connects two large bodies of water.
Fleet: a group of ships
Why would mild weather be a good thing?
Paragraph 4: ask new student to read
What is scurvy: a disease that causes general weakness and gum disease.
What does vitamin C do for our bodies? Growth and repair of tissues in the body; regrowth of
hair and nails.
What is Vitamin C found in? Fresh fruits such as lemons, oranges, limes, mangoes; and
vegetables such as: broccoli and green peppers.
Why do you think that they were lacking vitamin C?
Paragraph 5:ask new student to read
Anthropologist: someone who studies human development/ culture
Paragraph 6: ask new student to read
Reinforce that El Nio can produce different climates.
Why would they study the tree rings to figure out if El Nio was occurring? How is this done?
Drought produces narrower rings and abundant rainfall produces thicker rings.
Paragraph 7: ask new student to read
Prevailing winds: winds that blow from one general direction.
Enable: to make possible
Why would it be possible to navigate with fewer crew members? They needed less help on the
ship to control the sails.
Paragraph 8: ask new student to read
Why go somewhere there is a famine? Less people to deal with; easier access to the land; a
better reason to save the food that is dying.
Paragraph 9: ask new student to read
Sir Francis Drake carried out the second voyage around the world
Captain James Cook was seeking evidence of the unknown southern land.
Paragraph 10:
What do you think that proving the world was not flat meant for the rest of the world?

PROCEDURES: Closure
Ask the students if the ocean winds would help or hurt Magellans cause and would storms be severe
enough to capsize his ships in the middle of the ocean? Tell the students that ocean was vast and it took
a long time to cross. The food ran low and some of the men had to resort to eating rats! Some of them
came down with scurvy because of this. Magellan himself reached as far as the Philippines, where he
was killed. His men completed the journey. They returned to Europe in September 1522, more than

three years after they had begun their journey.

ASSESSMENT: Diagnostic
Pre-Test
ASSESSMENT: Formative
Asking students throughout the article the questions mentioned above.
ASSESSMENT: Summative
The post-test, the same as the pre-test, that shows what each student learned overtime.
MATERIALS
Smartboard
Article
Websites: http://mrnussbaum.com/explorers/magellan/ and
http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/el-nino
Paper
Pencil
Pre test
Post test
EXTENDED ACTIVITIES
If Student Finishes Early: have them check over their work on their quiz
If Lesson Finishes Early: ask the activity questions and do as a group; if this finishes early, have students
answer and write a brief explanation about the poll summary: It is important to never give up, no matter
what.
If Technology Fails: explain everything the videos have to offer.
POST-TEACHING
Reflections and Data Based Decision Making

Assessment Report
Decision about Who, What and How to tutor/teach and How to assess: Mrs. Krigbaum and I
decided that teaching in the English classroom would be the best idea for this placement. Ms.
Smith was the best teacher to work with out of all the teachers that Mrs. Krigbaum co-teaches
with. We decided that I would teach both of the inclusion classes that Ms. Smith has, instead of
just one of them. Since I was only teaching one lesson, one day, we decided to go with a pretest
at the beginning of the lesson and a post-test at the end of the lesson to see the growth of what
they learned. My lesson was from Achieve3000, which is the inclusion class reading

supplement. Since we only had fifty minutes to do the class work, we decided that I would give
the pre-test, teach the eleventh grade article called Did Weather Change History to the seventh
grade English inclusion class, and then do a post-test on how much vocabulary the students
actually learned during my lesson.
Tutoring Lesson/Unit and Assessment Description: I taught an eleventh grade article off of
Achieve3000 to the seventh grade inclusion class. This article was called Did Weather Change
History? and was about Ferdinand Magellan and his trip around the world and whether El Nio
was the reason of his survival across the Pacific Ocean. My main reason for teaching this article
was to teach the vocabulary of the article, and to teach who Ferdinand Magellan was. Mrs.
Krigbaum and I decided that I would post the article on the Smartboard and that the student
volunteers would read aloud. Before they could read the article, the students had to take the
pretest which was focused on the vocabulary words from the text, and Magellan. The students
had to fill in the blank with a word from the word box that went with each definition or each
sentence. I thought that this was a good way for students to learn how to use the words in a
sentence. After the pre-test I had a little video about Ferdinand Magellan to bring in back ground
information the article didnt cover and to engage all students. I also had a video on El Nio so
that the students could visualize exactly what it can cause, and what it is. I thought that this
would help the inclusion students with MI, as well as ALL students in this class. As the students
and I read the article aloud, I asked the students what the vocabulary words were out of the
article, and if they did not know, I told them what each word meant. I also added some
interesting facts to each of the article from my research on this topic. After my lesson, the
students took the post-test, which was the same as the pre-test, to see how much vocabulary the

students learned from my lesson.

Link To Standards: One standard I used was: ELA.7.L.C17.1: determine or clarify the
meaning of unknown and multiple-meaning words and phrases based on grade 7 reading and
content, choosing flexibly from a range of strategies. I did this in my pre and post-test as well as
in my lesson and in my activities. The students had to determine the meaning of the word to use
it in the sentence or to complete the definition in both the pre and post-test. I clarified the
meaning of the words in my lesson while the students read the article, and the videos helped to
reinforce these vocabulary words.
Another standard I used was: ELA.7.L.C17.1a: use context (e.g., the overall meaning of a
sentence or paragraph; a words position or function in a sentence as a clue to the meaning of a
word or phrase.) During the pre-test, the students had to use context clues to figure out which
word best fit in each sentence. While reading the text, I showed them how to use the context
clues from the paragraph the vocabulary word was in to try to figure out what the word meant
before I defined the word for the students. The activities reinforced this. The students should
have been able to use the context of the sentences better during the post-test to figure out the
correct word for each blank.
Results of Assessments:

Mrs.Krigbaum, Mrs. Smith, and I decided that the aim line of the inclusion students for the pre-

test should be a 40% since the material was actually on the eleventh grade level. We then
decided that the regular students aim line for the pre-test should be a 50% because of the 11th
grade work. We set these percentages also, so that they would take me seriously. We then
decided that the inclusion students should aim to reach the score of 70% for the Post-test since
the test is given in the same day, same time period. We decided that the regular students should
reach a goal of 80%.
From this data, it seems as though period two trended toward, or past the aim line in both the pre
and post-test. Period three drifted away from the aim line in both the pre and post-test.

Reflections and Data-Based Decision Making: I think that the students found the pre-test
intimidating because their comments to me were I cannot take this test because I have never
heard of these words or this person or this test is in Spanish. I tried to reassure to them that all
they had to do was try their hardest, pay attention to the test because they may see something
similar to it later, and participate in the following activity. The students who did the best were
the inclusion students from second period!
In my opinion, the second period class went worse than third period class while I was teaching
the lesson. It was very hard to control second period, but third period was much smoother. I had
way more class participation in third period, than in second periodbut these test results do not
show this.
When we read the article in second period, it was hard to go over things because the class was
hard to control, but in third period, we went over everything that needed to be definedagain,

the test results do not show this.

These results show that the second period inclusion students maybe care more than what the
other students do. This is what Mrs. Krigbaum and Mrs. Smith said. The regular students are
apathetic. Some of the regular students did very well, but most did not.
So in conclusion, if I did this lesson again, I would change the assessment. The students in third
period really knew what they were talking about when we discussed it during classbut their
scores do not show it. I would either make this a verbal assessment, or make the assessment
multiple choices instead of fill in the blank. I also think that this would help the students in
second period. Another assessment I could use is a creative writing or drawing activity. The
students could tell me what they think might have happened if there was no El Nio that year, or
a drawing of what happened in the story. I have seen these students level of creativity, and it is
truly amazing for both the inclusion students and the regular class! They really enjoy hands on
activities like that anyway, so if this were my own classroom, I would have allowed them to do
that instead of a formal assessment.