TWS Part Three
Essential Element Lesson Plan
Name: Dylan Matousek
Date: Day/Lesson Plan #4
Materials and Resources: completed prereading questions, teacher device with
internet access to project author video,
whiteboard, paper, writing utensils
Lesson Title: Pre-read Questions and Author
biography
Curriculum Standards
W.11-12.10
SL.11-12.1
L.11-12.2
Grade Level: 12
Time Frame: 1 Hour
Focus Question/Big Idea/Goal
Rationale/Theoretical Reasoning
Introduce themes of the novel without
expressly doing so, and introduce students to
the author of F451 in order to further build
prior knowledge before reading the novel.
This lesson is designed to activate students’
prior knowledge from previous lessons and
study in other courses (purpose of books,
correct grammar/spelling, First Amendment).
Furthermore, it is designed to expand and
build new prior knowledge that will assist
students’ understanding of themes in the
novel F451 (issues of censorship, nature of
critical thinking, authorial information).
Gunning notes the importance of activating
prior knowledge and building upon prior
knowledge on pages 96-97 and 286-288,
respectively, in his text Building Literacy in
Secondary Content Area Classrooms.
Lesson Objective: objectives must be measurable TWS will…(learning behavior from
Bloom’s verbs, DOK)
Rationale/Theoretical Reasoning
TSW build upon and activate prior knowledge through the collaborative discussion of their
previously completed pre-reading questions.
TSW infer author’s responses to pre-read questions using the short biographical video to
inform their thinking.
Academic Language: What is the key language demanded? What academic language will
you teach or develop? What is the key vocabulary and or symbols? What opportunities will
you provide for student to practice content language/ vocabulary and develop fluency?
N/A
Assessment /Evaluation:
Formative: How will student demonstrate understanding of lesson objective(s)? How will
you monitor and or give feedback? How will feedback promote student understanding?
Preread questions and classroom discussion will inform my assessment of student
learning/engagement. I will be looking for an honest attempt from the students to
engage with the questions and participate in discussion. I will also be looking to gauge
students’ incorporation of information from the video once we reach that point in the
discussion.
Summative: What evidence will you collect, and how will it document student
learning/mastery of lesson objective(s)?
Working in a group of 3, students will select a facet of their society and twist, hyperbolize,
or remove it altogether, as a dystopian text would. Following this, they will create a
societal mind-map detailing the conditions of this new dystopian society they have
created. Students will then each select a facet of their group-developed society and write
a 1 page explanation of how their chosen distortion forms the cause of that facet’s
condition.
Instruction:
Set Motivation/Anticipatory Set:
Students will come to class having completed their set of pre-reading questions. I will
explain that today we will be discussing their responses to the questions and then
watching a film about the author of the novel we’ve been working toward reading.
– 5 Minutes
Instructional Procedures/Learning Tasks: Provide specific details of lesson content and
delivery based on student’s prior knowledge, strengths, and weakness.
First, students will come to the board and write the title of the book they chose to save in
question 4 of the pre-reading questions. We will then discuss the reasons for their
selections. – 10 Minutes
Next, we will consider student responses to question 3 from the pre-reading questions.
We will consider the merits and faults of each method of questioning. – 10 Minutes
We will then watch the short version of the video of Ray Bradbury describing his life found
here: http://www.neabigread.org/books/fahrenheit451/media/
-- 8 Minutes
Following this, students will have 2 minutes to consider how Bradbury would have
answered questions 1 and 2 from the pre-reading questions. We will pay specific
attention to Bradbury’s claims regarding the necessity of reading as it relates to informed
voting and participation in civilization. We will compare these inferred responses to
student responses to the questions. – 22 Minutes
Questions and/or activities for higher order thinking: These cannot be answered by yes
or no.
1. See questions
2.
3.
Closure: Verbalize or demonstrate learning or skill one more time. May state future
learning.
I will close the lesson by collecting students’ pre-reading questions and explaining that
they’ll be returned with feedback. Furthermore, I’ll let students know that a link to the
longer version of the video about Bradbury will be made available on the course Moodle
page. I will then explain the reason for doing these pre-reading questions and watching
the authorial video: to build prior knowledge and gain a greater understanding of the
person behind the book they’ll be reading because, as Bradbury said, books are people. –
5 Minutes
Adaptations to meet individual needs: How will you adapt the instruction to meet the
needs of individual students?
The use of the video should help those students who more easily engage with
visual/audio stimulation get engaged in the activity. As always, the collaborative nature
of the discussion will hopefully help students build off of each other’s responses and allow
them to augment their responses by drawing upon classmates’ work.
Management/Safety Issues: Are there any management and/or safety issues that need to
be considered when teaching this lesson?
N/A
Reflection/Future Modifications: To what extend did the class learn what you intended
them to learn? What will be your next steps instructionally? What did you learn about
your student as learners? What have you learned about yourself as a teacher?
A very large part of my teaching practice centers around open, collaborative discussion of
material (we teach like we’re taught), so I’ll need to develop a strong grasp of successful
discussion techniques. I feel like right now I have a pretty good grasp of what kinds of
questions to ask students to allow for multiple interpretations and open responses. What
I need to work on, though, is incorporating effective assessment strategies. I also need to
learn how to effectively explain my assessment process, and perhaps further clarify what I
mean when I say that the class will “discuss” things. It can be difficult to clearly explain
what is meant by “discuss,” though, because of the responsive nature of discussion. I
could teach this lesson to 4 different classes and have 4 different discussions in each one.