Student Designed Lesson Plan
Northwestern College
Lesson Title/#: Scansion Day 1
Teacher Candidate: Theresa Larrabee
Grade Level: Junior/Seniors
Date: 3/13/15
Central Focus
Students will have to know what a syllable is and how to hear syllables
 If they do not, I will go through a few practice words and show the
Domain 1c
Describe the central focus/
class how to clap with each syllable
purpose/ essential questions/ big
Students will need to be able to hear the stresses in words and be able to
idea for the content you will teach.
identify the stressed and unstressed syllables
 If students cannot hear the stresses when they say it to themselves,
Prior Academic
they can use their computers to look up an online audio of the
Knowledge/Misconceptions
word
1.What must your student already
know to be successful with this
lesson?
2.What errors or misunderstandings
related to the central focus of this
lesson could your student make?
3.What is your plan to explore or
address them?
Content Standard
Domain 1c
Include the standards (National?
common core?)
Learning
Goals/Objective(s)
Domain 1c
1. Include the learning objectives.
(Remember:
1.lesson activities and assessment
should match this objective.
2. In a learning segment (multiple
lesson plans), the objectives should
build/develop.
Language Objective(s)
2. What is/are the language
objective(s) for your lesson? (Ex:
analyze, interpret, argue, predict,
categorize, question,
compare/contrast, retell, describe,
summarize, explain)
(Remember:
1.lesson activities and assessment
should match this objective.)
2. In a learning segment (multiple
lesson plans) the same language
objective should build/develop.)
Objectives
1. To familiarize students with the way words should be broken up
into syllables in order to properly scan a work of poetry
2. To explain what a iamb and trochee is so that in the second day of
this lesson set students will be able to apply these skills to a deeper
form of scansion
a. Once they are able to scan poetry on a deeper level, they
will be able to more easily find the poets meaning and
understand the poems better
Students will be able to…
 Analyze a word or line of poetry and break it into syllables
 Identify if a syllable is stressed or unstressed and what the word’s
rhythm is
 Categorize words as iambs, trochees, spondees, or pyrrhus
 Explain the process of breaking a word up into syllables
 Retell the meaning of a spondee and pyrrhus and give examples
Student Designed Lesson Plan
Materials
Domain 1d
What materials does the teacher
need for this lesson?
What materials does the student
need for this lesson?
Northwestern College
Teacher will need:
 Powerpoint with the examples to work on in class
Students will need:
 Computer
 Pencils/pens
Both the teacher and students will need:
 “Scansion: syllables and stresses” handout
 “Syllable and Stresses exercises” handout
Instructional Strategies and Learning Tasks
Description of what the teacher (you) will be doing and/or what the students will be doing.
Launch/Engage/Anticipatory Review:
Set
 What does it mean if a syllable is stressed or unstressed
Domain 3c
 What is iambic pentameter?
How will your lesson introduction
engage and motivate your students in
learning?
Instruction and Structured
Practice / Explore-ExplainExtend
Domain 1e
Is your instruction organized and
parallel?
How will you give your students an
opportunity to practice so you can
provide feedback?
How will your students apply what
they have learned?
Domain 3c
How will you engage your students to
help them understand the concepts?
What will your students do? Activities?
Domain 3b
What will you say and do? What
questions will you ask?
(Also consider modeling, transitions,
learning styles, variety)
How are you supporting the language
objective(s) for your lesson? (Ex:
analyze, interpret, argue, predict,
categorize, question, compare/contrast,
retell, describe, summarize, explain)
Slide 1:
 Say: words are broken up into syllables AFTER a vowel and BEFORE
a consonant or between two CONSECUITIVE CONSONANTS
 Show where “paper” is split up
 Ask for a volunteer to come up to the board and mark where each
word gets split.
o If someone gets it wrong, ask if anyone can see a different
way of breaking the word up
 Answers are:
o
o
o
o
o
o
Pa|per
Huff|le|puff
Hun|ger
Runn|er
Pte|ro|dac|tyl
Tran|syl|va|nia
Slide 2:
 Say: each monosyllabic word is stressed based on context, but
words with more than one syllable have natural stresses built in.
You usually cannot find these by looking at the word, but rather
have to hear it.
 Say: for the homework, you will have to mark the stresses in words.
Sometimes when we say words too many times it makes it hard to
actually hear how it sounds. Online dictionaries are good resources
because you can hear a recorded person saying the words.
 Show where the stresses in “Hufflepuff” are
 Have volunteers come up and mark the stresses
o If someone gets it wrong, ask if anyone can see a different
way of stressing the word
 Answers are:
o HUFF|le|puff
o HUN|ger
o RU|nner
Student Designed Lesson Plan
Northwestern College
o Pte|ro|DAC|tyl
o Tran|syl|VA|nia
o PA|per
Closure
Domain 3c
How will your lesson closure engage
and motivate your students to learn
more?
Slide 3:
 Say: There are different rhythms that describe the pattern of
stressed and unstressed syllables in a word or line of poetry
 Explain that:
o Iambic is unstressed-stressed
o Trochaic is stressed-unstressed
o Anapestic is unstressed-unstressed-stressed
o Dactylic is stressed-unstressed-unstressed
 Have each table take a word and decide which rhythm it has. One
person from each table will then go to the board and scan the word
and connect the word to the rhythm it follows.
 Answers:
o Pittsburgh: Trochaic
o Carefully: Dactylic
o Understand: Anapestic
o Behold: Iambic
Slide 4:
 Explain that a spondee is a word or foot where both of the syllables
are stressed
Slide 5:
 Explain that a Pyrrhus is a set of consecutive words in a foot that are
not stressed
 Hand out the homework that is due Monday
 Give an example of an answer for the final exercise (come up with a
line of spondees)
o Doorbell! Rainbow sunbeam outside, baseball?
o Goof-off, baseball eyebrow stitches
 Have the class pair up and break their partner’s first, middle, and
last names up into syllables and stresses.
Other Considerations
Assessment/Evaluation
Domain 3d 1f
Show summative and/or formative
assessment
How will you determine if your
students are meeting the intended
learning objectives?
[edTPA]How will your planned
formal and informal assessments
provide evidence that your students
can use the literacy strategy and
skills?
Students will have a homework that reviews the concepts they saw in
class and will give them a chance to apply scansion on their own. In this
assignment they will also have to come up with their own sentence
using only spondees, which is one of the things we will cover.
 The goals will be met if students are either able to properly break
a word down into syllables, stresses, as rhythm or explain the
process that led them to their answer
 Scansion is a very inexact exercise, so it is more important that
students can explain why they made a decision rather than
whether or not their answer looks exactly like mine
Student Designed Lesson Plan
Academic Language
[edTPA]
Domain 3a
1. Which language function is
addressed throughout your learning
segment? (Ex: analyze, interpret,
argue, predict, categorize, question,
compare/contrast, retell, describe,
summarize, explain) Explain how you
used that language function.
2. How will students use language/
vocabulary to demonstrate
conceptual
understanding/proficiency on skills
you are trying to teach? (Symbols)
3. What language demands/
vocabulary are you going to explicitly
"teach" your students?
Northwestern College

Analyze a word or line of poetry:
o Students will break each word down into syllables by
using the guidelines given to them
 Identify if a syllable is stressed or unstressed and what the
word’s rhythm is
o Students will have to listen to how they say words or how
another person says something and be able to identify
which part of the word contains the stress
 Categorize words as iambs, trochees, spondees, or Pyrrhus
o By combining the last two functions, students will creat a
rhythm
o Using the information about rhythms, students will be
able to classify which rhythm a word or phrase has
 Students will be taught the words Iambic, Trochaic, Anapestic,
Dactylic, Spondee, and Pyrrhus
4. What age-appropriate academic
language should be considered for
this lesson in instruction, guided
practice, and independent practice?
Modifications
Domain 1b
If you have identified specific learning
needs, what modifications will you
use?
How might you modify for specific
students/learning groups in your
class? (Ex: an ELL student, a
struggling reader, and/or an
advanced student?)
What language supports are you
using to meet the needs of students
with different levels of language
learning?
Note: Address the needs of students
you listed in your “context for
learning”)
Theoretical Principles
and/or Research–Based
Best Practices
Domain 1a
Why did you make the
instructional decisions that you
did? (Cite the research, and state
the reasons. )
If a student struggles with scansion or has to go very slowly in order to
do it right, I will only assign them half of each homework exercise.
 If they still struggle when they come to class the next day, they
can ask questions about where they had problems. I will also give
them an altered homework assignment instead of the more
difficult assignment the rest of the class will be doing.
Advanced students do not need a modified assignment because:
 This isn’t supposed to challenge the students, but rather ease
them into scansion and make it accessible
 Everyone is starting at the same place because no one has used
scansion before. Even students who are usually advanced should
starting at the same level.