Grade: 10        Unit: Six Traits            How Long: 90 mins
Class: English        Lesson: #5                Date: N/A

I.    Essential Question: What are factors I should look at when it comes to word choice?

II.    State Core: 2.3a: Evaluate for word choice

III.    Technology: 

IV.    Rationale: The concept of word choice can involve looking at several other factors in writing like purpose, audience and genre. Understanding how to look at the many factors in word choice will help students know how to write in different situations.

V.    Objective: Students will show their ability to alter word choice according to purpose and audience by writing a updated copy of their 5-paragraph essay that is written to a different audience and purpose.

VI.    Pre-Requisite Learning: This lesson will be based on the assumption that students have written papers previously.

VII.    Preparation:
    a.    Teacher: Make sure students have their 5-Paragraph essays returned and corrected
    b.    Student: Come to class prepared with an article and the Developing ideas worksheet

VIII.    Materials: 

IX.    Instructional Process
    a.    Cue Set: Ask students to get to get out a piece of paper as well as the article they brought for the Developing Ideas worksheet. Ask them to answer several questions including
        i.    Who is the author writing to?
        ii.    How do you know?
        iii.    What is probably the youngest age of someone who would read this article?
        iv.    What is the oldest age?
        v.    Why did the author write this article?
        vi.    What does the author expect out of the reader?
    b.    Instructional Process
        i.    Ask the students to summarize their articles to their partners and tell partners the answers to the cue set questions.

            1.    Ask students to vote by standing or sitting.
            2.    Who has articles written for people under 20 years old?
            3.    Older than 20 years old? Older than 40? 60?
            4.    Who has an article that is written to people who have to know about or have an interest in a certain subject first?
            5.    Who has an article where the author wants the reader to do something?
            6.    Who has one where the author wants the reader to understand something new?
        ii.    These questions we have looked at are all questions an author thinks about when he/she is determining word choice, one of the Six Traits
        iii.    Why should we think about the words we use?
        iv.    Is it always appropriate to use the same type of words or language? Think about how you speak to your grandma, friends, cashier at the store, someone you are trying to convince, etc. We choose our words according to what we are talking about, who we are speaking to and what is appropriate in that situation.
        v.    Who we are talking to is called our audience.
            1.    What are examples of different audiences? (teenager, people who like something, Democrats, people who don’t know something, etc.)
            2.    Why do we have to write to our audience?
            3.    What happens if we don’t write to our audience?
            4.    Look at your 5-paragraph essay
                a.    On another piece of paper, write down your chosen audience for your paper.
                    i.    Think to yourself if you really wrote to your audience? If yes, did you know what was what you were doing?
                    ii.    Quickly write a new audience for the introduction and re-write the paragraph (be brief) to that new audience.
                    iii.    Whose paragraph is really different? What decisions did you make according to word choice? Whose didn’t change much?
                    vi.    Now let’s look at why we write the things/the way we do. This is called purpose.
                        1.    What could different purposes of a paper be (to entertain, inform, call to action, persuade, explore, present new options, etc)
                        2.    In general, what was the purpose of your 5-Paragraph essay (to persuade)
                        3.    How would your essay change if the purpose was to call others to action?
                            a.    Would the thesis stay the same?
                            b.    Would you use the same arguments?
                            c.    Would your audience stay the same?
                        4.    On your paper, write down the purpose of your essay.
                            a.    Choose a new purpose and write it down
                            b.    Quickly/briefly re-write the second paragraph to meet your new purpose
                            c.    Who would like to share their new purpose and paragraph
                            d.    What decisions did you have to make on word choice because of your new purpose?
                        5.    Finally, lets look at genre
                            a.    What is genre?
                            b.    What are examples of genre? (narrative, persuasion, essay, story, etc)
                            c.    How do we write to our genre?
                            d.    How can genre change our writing?
                            e.    How would your writing seem if you wrote toward the wrong genre?
                            f.    How do we chose our genre (it needs to meet the needs of the audience and purpose…if all three don’t match, the reader will struggle)
                            g.    Write down the genre of your 5-paragraph essay. Write a new genre and quickly re-write the third paragraph to meet the new genre.
                            h.    How did your paragraph change?
                            i.    Is the genre you chose better or worse for your audience and purpose?
        vii.    What are other reasons we should look at word choice? (length, using words that best fit your meaning, description, etc). Go through your essay and write down two instances where you could change a word according to the original audience, purpose and genre.
            c.    Closure: Word choice is so important in the process of writing. Choosing your words correctly can make or break the feel you want out of your paper. Before you write you paper determine your audience, purpose and genre. Your ideas will be more directed and you will be more capable of making your work more specific.
            d.    Independent Practice: Students will be expected to write down the purpose, audience and genre of all their future papers

X.    Evaluation: Students will turn in their rewritten 5-paragraph essays. This will be a check off assignment, but feedback will be given so both teacher and student can evaluate where the student is at.

XI.    Enrichment: I want students to remember the importance of directing their writing to meet the specific needs of their paper. I want them to continue to ask themselves what the audience, purpose and genre of their papers are well into the future.

XII.    Diversity: This lesson uses visuals to help visual learners and ELL students as well as using partner work to help students participation