Curriculum & Instruction, School of Education, College of William & Mary
Daily Lesson Plan Template for Classical & Modern Languages
Preliminary Notes:
Before reading the following lesson plan, please read the following paragraphs explaining the project
and the various modes by which students can complete it.
There are three modes of completing this Multimedia Project: 1. By creating a Roman Tombstone (this
will either be a craft project or a digitally modified photograph of an actual tombstone), the tombstone will
include an originally composed epitaph in the style of the Ancient Romans; Students completing the project by
this mode are called Tombstone-Makers. 2. By creating a concept for a question to be added to the Multimedia
Quiz that is part of the class’s website; these concepts consist of a Latin sentence that uses a relevant
grammatical construction and vocabulary that can be represented by culturally authentic images, and would be
humorous if mistranslated; the students completing the project by this mode are called Question-Writers. 3.
Students may interview their classmates in order to learn which grammatical concepts are most difficult for
their classmates, and suggest these concepts to Question-Writers; these students will make a presentation to me
on the findings of their interview process; they are referred to as Interviewers.
The lesson below comes during the unit that will lead to the creation of this multimedia project. The
students have already seen the models discussed once, and have already made a non-binding decision of which
mode they will use to complete the project.
Teacher: William Murphy
Class/level:
Latin 1
Subject: Latin
Period: First Block
Date: 30 November 2012
VA SOLs:n/a (there is no SOL in Latin.)
Mastery Objectives for the Unit: Students will master translating the dative case, and will
gain an increased understanding of Roman funerary customs.
Daily lesson objectives
Students will finalize their concepts and Latin sentences that will form the basis of their
various multimedia projects. They will receive targeted, individual feedback.
NOTE: Because there are several students completing this project by different routes,
there will be an extended lesson plan attached, enumerating the particular activities of
students in each mode-group.
Goals: include on lesson plan
1. Communications
2. Culture
3. Connections
4. Comparisons
5. Communities
Communicative Modes: include below
1.1 Interpersonal
1.2 Interpretive
1.3 Presentational
NOTE: in the event that the internet or the computer lab are inaccessible, the teacher has
a backup lesson plan involving pen-and-paper grammar exercises to cover similar
material.
ALSO NOTE: I taught a version of this lesson at Peninsula Catholic High School in
November 14, and submitted the lesson plan, as taught then, to the Methods Practicum in
Fall 2012. The lesson plan below reflects changes that I will implement when teaching this
unit next year; the “Further Reflections” section explains my motivation for these
changes.
My rationale for the use of technology is addressed in the first “Reflections” section.
Homework:
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Students will finalize their list of multimedia elements to include in the projects, and will
collect all necessary bibliographic information for their works cited in this regard.
Warm-up:
Students are asked to review the rubrics for the different modes of completing the multimedia
project, and consider why they chose what they chose. (These choices are not yet final.)
Time:
20
minutes
10
minutes
20
minutes.
20
minutes
10
minutes
Activity:
Phase 1 (the phases are numbered for easy
reference to the table attached below.): I represent models of completed projects;
students re-consider their choices and take
notes on the rubrics to ensure that they
complete the project they want and meet all
the requirements. LAT: Pre-Writing:
Choose Form/Genre
Phase 2: Full class discussion of the three
different modes and their requirements.
Interviewers take minutes of discussion to
use in their own presentations later. LAT –
Pre-writing: Brainstorming
Materials:
PowerPoint (or similar aid)
detailing models; include
special slides pointing out
rubric elements. Rubric
handouts (or rubrics displayed
on computer screen.)
Goals/Modes
Goal:
understand
the scope of
project.
Interpretive
mode.
Rubric handouts (or rubrics
displayed on computer
screen.)
Phase 3: Students break into small groups,
by mode, and discuss concepts. The students
prepare to draft their concepts. I circulate
between mode-groups to offer specific
assistance (I refer frequently to the rubric,
pasted at the end of this document). LAT –
During Writing: Drafting
Individual computer
workstations for each
student. Ideally, students are
logged in to Google Apps
accounts.
Phase 4: Students use computers (or
individual laptops/netbooks) to draft their
concepts for the project for the mode that
they have chosen to take in completing the
multimedia project. Interviewers circulate to
help Question-Writers create useful
questions. LAT: Pre-writing: research
Phase 5: Students resume individual work on
concepts. I continue circulating to ensure
that no student has final sentences or
epitaphs with grammatical errors. LAT:
Writing: Revising
Student-written draft
concepts (just created).
Computer workstations still
needed.
Goal: students
address
particular
issues
regarding
project.
Interpersonal
mode.
Goal: students
help one
another note
grammatical
and other
difficulties in
concepts and
draft
sentences.
Goal: students
draft usable
concepts.
Communicati
ons.
Individual workstations and
draft sentences and concepts,
as above.
Goal: ensure
that every
student has
workable
sentence and
concept.
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Done?
10
minutes
Phase 6: Students, having their final
sentences and concepts completed, begin
finding visual aids and other multimedia
content. LAT: Writing: Writing other
Forms of Text
Above; internet access now
absolutely required at
workstations; list of
suggested online resources.
Goal:
Students
begin making
progress on
multimedia
products
Closure:
Students are reminded of rubric, and the importance of finding authentic cultural material.
Differentiated Instruction / Adaptations:
The principal adaptation in this lesson plan is that students can choose from three modes of
completing the assignment, depending on their aptitude and inclination for these modes. The main
means of differentiation is the individual and group feedback given to students, as described in the
steps above.
Ongoing Informal Assessments:
Formal Assessments:
Teacher makes notes of student difficulties
Student submit final draft of their sentences,
drafting sentences; interviews my students
concepts, or interview results electronically to
conducting project by the interview mode
teacher.
provide further notes of grammar difficulties.
Reflections (detailed reflections on this lesson):
 What went well,
 What didn’t go well,
 What would you do differently
 Remarks on student engagement and student learning
See essay, “Further Reflections” below.
Lesson planning guiding questions to ask yourself before writing a lesson plan:
1. What will students know and be able to do at the end of class that they cannot do at the
beginning?
2. What do the students need from me to be able to show they know and can do it?
3. How am I going to organize /present /manage the lesson?
4. How will students practice what they need to know and do?
5. How will I know that they “got it”? (assessment)
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Reflections:
1. How do you address one or more UDL principles in the lesson to meet the needs of diverse
learners?
The main UDL accommodation in this multimedia project is simply that there are three different modes by
which the students may choose to complete the project, and the students are able to further adapt these modes
by the means through which they choose to complete them. Students who lack the equipment or expertise to
make a Roman tombstone in a physical medium, such as stone or papier-mâché, may be able to make a visually
compelling Roman tombstone.
2. How do you see the use of technology connecting with the content focus?
Students composing a multimedia question for the online quiz would not be able to use culturally relevant
materials without the technological aspects of this lesson. For example, a student who wishes to compose a
sentence about shopkeepers and Roman clothing can find and use images of an actual storefront in Pompeii, as
well as artists’ impressions or academic reconstructions of Roman dress. These visual aids would be
unavailable, or only available at the expenditure of great time and expense, without the technology.
3. How do you see the use of technology connecting with the pedagogical approach you’ve selected?
The technology allows me to use a pedagogical approach in which the students find their own cultural
materials and create their own review materials. This highly student-centered pedagogy is consistent with the
best practices that I have studied in my methods class.
4. How do the content, pedagogy and technology all “fit” together in the lesson?
The technology allows students to research and find cultural connections and review grammar in a studentcentered pedagogy. It all fits together because the students are creating materials for the students; they are using
culturally authentic materials to create a review product that benefits their peers.
5. What is the relative advantage of the technology(ies) used in the lesson?
The greatest benefit of the use of technology in this program is the ability for students to help one another.
Students in the “interviewer” mode will contribute suggestions to “question-writers,” and both “questionswriters” and “tombstone-makers” will have their work displayed, not only in the classroom, but as part of the
present class’s, and future classes’ review materials on our website. Students will find motivation and pride of
achievement in knowing that they improved not just their own class’s review materials, but those of future
classes.
6. What was your overall experience like designing this lesson using the Learning Activity Types
approach to technology integration planning? In other words, how did this process help you to
zero in on appropriate and effective technologies to approach the lesson and/or expected learning
outcomes?
The LAT-based approach helped me to understand the steps in this process from a student’s perspective. I
knew what I wanted the end product to look like, and I knew approximately what I wanted the students to do,
but the LAT-based approach helped me create and actual sequence of activities that would move students from
the beginning of the lesson to the end product I am looking for. Without such a valuable paradigm I would not
have been able to create such a student-centered lesson.
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Further Reflections: Changes from This Year
The multimedia project that I conducted with my students this year in Latin 1 grew from a combination
of two ideas: the idea to create a Roman tombstone as a class project, both for its cultural relevance and because
of the prominent use of the dative case in epitaphs, and the Multimedia Essay project I completed for my
TechDesigns class. In order to support the UDL compliance of this multimedia project, I combined those two
projects as optional ways of completing the same project in my class, and added another option: conducting
interviews with classmates to determine which grammatical concepts could be added to the online quiz, which
is an ongoing project and will travel with the students from year to year. (I also allowed one student to complete
this project by writing a mnemonic song to aid students in memorizing Latin noun forms, but this was an
exception and is not included specifically in the above lesson plan.
The difficulties that I had with the multimedia projects this year was that, though I modeled the three
modes of completing the project, I did not do a sufficiently thorough job of modeling everything that I needed
to. This had two principal negative effects on the way in which students completed the project: First, some
students completed the project by the Tombstone Mode without including the grammatical elements that I was
hoping for in their final product, and second, that there was very little variety in the questions produced by the
students in Question Writing Mode. To help alleviate these difficulties in future years, I have chosen to write
this detailed lesson plan on the lesson during which the modeling will take place; the discussions and groups
workshops for feedback are to ensure that students fully understand all the directions and elements of the rubric.
This is a complex assignment, and without that ensuring, this year’s students did not all complete the
assignment exactly as I had hoped.
In the improved modeling, I also wish to do a better job modeling digital citizenship. My students this
year did not do as much to document fair use or format their works cited pages correctly as I had hoped they
would, and I think that this was because I did not model this in as much detail as I needed to. The discussions
above will include direct help with elements of good digital citizenship: a good works cited page, and the
documentation of educational fair use of copyrighted materials.
The following table shows the particular activities of each mode-group of students during each of the six
phases of the lesson.
Phase
Teacher Does
Phase 1
Presents models
completed projects
in the different
modes
Phase 2
Teacher moderates
class discussion
Phase 3
Teacher circulates
to help individual
students; offers
targeted suggestions
at least once to each
TombstoneMakers Do
Take notes about
model and rubric,
especially focusing
on their own mode;
consider their
choice
Ask questions about
rubric and
projectors; answer
one another’s
questions, guided by
teacher.
Decide basic
biographical
information for the
fictional persons
whose epitaphs they
Question-Writers
Do
Take notes about
model and rubric,
especially focusing
on their own mode;
consider their
choice
Ask questions about
rubric and
projectors; answer
one another’s
questions, guided by
teacher.
Discuss
grammatical
concepts; decide
who will focus on
which concepts,
Interviewers Do
Take notes about
model and rubric,
especially focusing
on their own mode;
consider their
choice
Ask questions about
rubric and
projectors; answer
one another’s
questions, guided by
teacher.
Suggest good
question topics to
Question-Writers.
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group.
are writing.
Phase 4
Teacher circulates
to help groups of
students
Draft epitaph based
on teacher’s models
and grammar
requirements
Phase 5
Teacher circulates
to ensure no final
drafts contain
grammatical
problems.
Finalize draft of
epitaph
Phase 6
Teacher offers
suggestions to
students looking for
resources.
Look for images of
Roman tombstones.
with input from
Interviewers.
Draft proposal for
sentence and
humorous
mistranslation
concept based on
models and
grammar
requirements
Finalize draft of
sentence
Look for culturally
authentic visual aids
to use in their
sentences.
Work together to
decide how they
will present the
results of the
interviews, which
they have conducted
as part of previous
classwork.
Finalize sketch of
presentation (e.g.,
outline of
PowerPoint,
draft/sketch of
infographic).
Begin making their
presentation.
The Rubric, as published electronically to the students, is pasted here for convenience. Parts of this
rubric were submitted to my TechDesigns class earlier this semester, but the lesson plan above would be
incomplete without this rubric, so it is included for reference.
Types of Tasks
In the interest of UDL compliance and student motivation, I have included two paths for completing this assignment.
Creating a Roman Tombstone – “Tombstone-Makers”
In this task, students will create an image of a Roman-style tombstone and compose an original Latin epitaph to write on
the tombstone. The particular grammatical focus of this part of the project is the use of the “dative of reference,” a Latin
grammatical feature common in epitaphs.
After students compose their epitaphs and I approve them – this approval is to ensure students do not waste
effort by creating the final image with a grammatically incorrect epitaph – the students will create an image that
contains their inscription. The primary means of creating this image is by finding a photograph of an ancient Roman
tombstone and modifying it under Educational Fair Use; some students may complete this part of the assignment by
other means, such as a painting. One student even inscribed his epitaph in a stone.
Authenticity
5
points
Do the multimedia aids selected by the students accurately represent,
or plausibly derive from, actual Roman materials, customs, or
artifacts?
Documentation
5
points
Did the student accurately cite the multimedia aids? Did the student
choose an appropriate source? If the aid is copyrighted, did the student
justify its use thorough under “Fair Use”
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Creativity of Multimedia
Aids
5
points
Did the student select aids that are creative and memorable?
Grammatical Accuracy
and Relevance of Sentence
5
points
Does the sentence use the grammatical concept that I am trying to
teach in this unit or exercise? Does the sentence exhibit correct
grammar, both in this particular topic and in general?
Total
20
points
Contributing a Question or Questions – “Question-Writers”
In this task, students will be asked to compose a Latin sentence that has two features:
1. It uses the grammatical concept that I am trying to illustrate in the particular unit.
2. It would suggest an absurd, humorous, or impossible situation if its grammar were misinterpreted.
After students have composed their sentence, or sentences (the number and complexity of sentences is an opportunity
for inter- and intra-level differentiation), their assignment is to find multimedia elements – sounds, pictures, or video
files – that could be used to demonstrate both the sentence’s correct interpretation and its humorously erroneous
interpretation. The multimedia sources they suggest and their sentence composition will be graded on the following
criteria:
Authenticity
5 points
Documentation
5 points
Creativity of Multimedia Aids
5 points
Grammatical Accuracy and
Relevance of Sentence
5 points
Total
20 points
Do the multimedia aids
selected by the students
accurately represent, or
plausibly derive from, actual
Roman materials, customs, or
artifacts?
Did the student accurately cite
the multimedia aids? Did the
student choose an appropriate
source? If the aid is copyrighted,
did the student justify its use
thorough under “Fair Use”
Did the student select aids that
are creative and memorable?
Does the sentence use the
grammatical concept that I am
trying to teach in this unit or
exercise? Does the sentence
exhibit correct grammar, both in
this particular topic and in
general?
Scale: 5 – meets or exceeds criteria, is exceptionally creative, 4 – meets criteria for accuracy, but is not particularly
creative, or not entirely relevant, 3 – contains some errors in accuracy of documentation or grammar, 2 – contains
Developed in collaboration with W & M Foreign Language Education and WJCC World Languages
serious errors in accuracy of documentation or error, 1 – fails to make a real attempt to address the rubric criterion, 0 –
disregards this rubric criterion (e.g., omits Works Cited entirely, fails to include relevant grammatical structure at all.)
Contributing a Topic or Topics – “Interviewers”
Students who do not wish to make a direct multimedia contribution, or who feel that they could better make a written
contribution, have the option of writing or presenting orally a proposal for a topic that should be included in the
multimedia grammar aid. This alternative to a multimedia project is aimed at improving the Multimedia Grammar Aid’s
UDL compliance by providing students with other means of achieving the desired goal: contributing meaningfully to a
review aid that will benefit their classmates and future students.
Students who choose this route will complete the project in three stages. First, they will reflect on their own experiences
in the class, and evaluate their own performance on previous tests and translations, in order to identify potential topics
that may need review. Second, they interview classmates, by electronic correspondence, telephone, in person, or other
means, in order to determine which of the difficulties they listed were most prevalent in their classmates’ work. Third,
the students will create and present a proposal to me for the grammar topic that should be added to the online review
materials. Suggested modes of presentation are: a written proposal, an oral presentation with visual aids, or a standalone infographic. They will be graded as follows:
Thoroughness of Personal
Reflection
5 points
Thoroughness of Interview
Process
5 points
Thoroughness of
Presentation
5 points
Creativity and
Persuasiveness of
Presentation
5 points
Total
20 points
Did the student honestly reflect
on their own strengths and
weaknesses in the class? Do the
student’s findings show
evidence of re-examining
returned materials and reassessing their earlier
outcomes?
Did the student interview
enough classmates to get a
meaningful sample of other
students’ difficulties (exact
number TBD by class size)? Did
the student document the
interview process thoroughly?
Did the student present a
meaningful suggestion that was
clearly stated and wellsupported by his or her
reflections and interviews?
Was the presentation sufficiently
aesthetically pleasing and
creatively assembled that I found
it persuasive?
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Scale: 5 – meets or exceeds criteria, is exceptionally creative or thorough, 4 – meets criteria for thoroughness, but is not
well-document, or is well-documented but not very thorough; or is complete but not creative, 3 – contains some
deficiencies in both thoroughness and documentation, or very creative or persuasive, 2 – contains only a cursory
examination (i.e., no thoroughness) or badly inadequate documentation, 1 – fails to meet basic criterion requirements
(e.g., interview are not documented, no evidence of self-re-assessment), 0 – disregards this rubric criterion (e.g., fails to
self-reflect, fails to conduct interviews, fails to prepare presentation).
Use of Finished Product
This exercise is designed to further student motivation by giving them the opportunity to have a real, lasting impact on
the quality of my classes’ review materials. Therefore, I will describe how the two paths of completing the assignment
will be used.
1. Students who create tombstones will have their work displayed, either electronically on the class website or
physically in the classroom, and their work can be used as an example to help students remember how to
translate the dative of reference. At the end of the term, students may either reclaim their work or leave it
as a model for posterity.
2. Students who contribute a question or questions, with multimedia aids, will be providing raw materials to
me or to the school’s TV club (which I currently run) to perform the actual video processing and post the
resulting multimedia aids to the online quiz. (The actual video production is too technically demanding to
assign to every student.)
3. Students who contribute a topic will have their topics added to my list of topics for students who contribute
a question. The list of topics on which students can contribute a question will travel both travel up with
their Latin class to the next level, and will be used for next year’s class at their same level.
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