Lesson Plan Template
Lesson Date and Time: 10-24-11 – 10-27-11
Number of Students: 7
Room Number: 1203
Class Name: 2nd Level Four Block
Teacher’s Name: Gloria Taylor (Lindsey Sunderhaus – Student Teacher)
What is the lesson objective? By the end of the week...
1. Students will be able to make predictions and check them for accuracy.
2. Students will be able to retell the events of the story, including characters and setting.
3. Students will be able to engage in some character analysis, describing how characters feel
during different parts of the story.
4. Students will be able to read a passage from the story, demonstrating fluency.
Standards addressed and expectations of students:
- RL.2.1 Ask and answer such questions as who, what, where, when, why, and how to
demonstrate understanding of key details in a text.
- RL.2.2 Recount stories, including fables and folktales from diverse cultures, and determine
their central message, lesson, or moral.
- RL.2.3 Describe how characters in a story respond to major events and challenges.
- RL.2.4 Describe how words and phrases (e.g., regular beats, alliteration, rhymes, repeated
lines) supply rhythm and meaning in a story, poem, or song.
- RL.2.7 Use information gained from the illustrations and words in a print or digital text to
demonstrate understanding of its characters, setting, or plot.
- RL.2.10 By the end of the year, read and comprehend literature, including stories and poetry,
in the grades 2–3 text complexity band proficiently, with scaffolding as needed at the high end
of the range.
- RF.2.3 Know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words.
- W.2.1 Write opinion pieces in which they introduce the topic or book they are writing about,
state an opinion, supply reasons that support the opinion, use linking words (e.g., because, and,
also) to connect opinion and reasons, and provide a concluding statement or section.
Materials & References for Lesson:
 Day One—Book, Making Predictions Worksheet
 Day Two—Book, Character Description Worksheet
 Day Three—Book, Moral of the Story Worksheet
 Day Four—Book
Anticipatory Set:
 Each day, I want the children to take turns sharing stories about kindness. This will either be
stories of kind things they have done for others, kind things they heard about, or kindness that
has been shown to them by others.
Lesson Plan Template
Teaching Instructional Process: Study of Miss Twiggley’s Tree by Dorothea Warren Fox
 Day One
o Making Predictions—I will read the story to the students, stopping periodically to allow
them to make predictions on their worksheet.
o Checking Our Predictions—After reading the entire story, I will ask them to look over
their worksheets. How many of their predictions came true? If they did not come true,
what happened instead of what they predicted? They will fill that in on the designated
place on the worksheet.
 Day Two
o Character Analysis—We will discuss the characters in some more detail. I will help the
students to use the illustrations and text to figure out more about a character’s feelings
and personality.
o Character Description—I will introduce the worksheet to describe the characters.
 Day Three
o Moral of the Story—We will discuss the moral of the story again. This time, I want them
to write about what they learned from this story. I will give them a worksheet on which
they can write their response.
 Day Four
o Moral of the Story—I will invite the students to share what they wrote about the story.
I think it is important for them to hear writing from their peers as well as to share their
own writing with peers.
o Story Recap/Fluency Check—I will recap the story briefly with the group then engage in
some short fluency checks. I will do this by calling over one student at a time and asking
them to read a selected page or two from the story. Anyone who does not have a
chance to read to me today will have a chance to read to me tomorrow (Friday).
Guided practice and monitoring:
 I will be guiding the students throughout our discussions and as we delve into new concepts of
character analysis.
Independent practice:
 During each discussion, the students will have a chance to share their own input and ideas.
They will also be completing all worksheets on their own.
Assessment:
 I will monitoring throughout each lesson discussion and collecting all worksheets at the end of
the week.
Closure:
 Before ending each lesson, I will answer all questions about the story or any work that has been
assigned.
Lesson Plan Template
Reflection:
This was absolutely the best week I have had so far in my reading groups! We studied
Miss Twiggley’s Tree by Dorothea Warren Fox. This story is so old that none of the children had
ever heard of it, but it is an incredible piece of children’s literature. My grandmother used to
read this to my father when he was little and my mother read it to me and my sister. I was
ecstatic to be able to share this story with my students.
To begin the week, I had the students complete a worksheet about making predictions.
I stopped a few times during the story to give them time to write about what they thought
would happen next, and they all did this very well. Then, at the end of the lesson, we checked
their predictions. They were each able to tell me if their predictions came true or not. At the
bottom of the worksheet, they were supposed to independently tell me if their prediction came
true and, if not, what really happened. Unfortunately, only two of the seven students
completed the independent portion of the worksheet by the end of the week.
We were able to talk about character analysis because there were several characters in
the story that we, as readers, got to know quite well. We were even able to talk about how the
events of the story led some characters to change quite a bit. The most convenient part of this
story was that it tied in beautifully with the current science material. Mrs. Taylor had done a
mini-lesson about weather and the Beaufort Wind Scale. In the story, there is a wild hurricane
that floods the whole town. There is an illustration that shows the trees and waters all blowing
in the same direction. I used this to tie in the science lesson, which also tied into the secondgrade field trip.