Lesson Plans

On this page you will see a lesson plan I have designed for general education, special education, Talented and Gifted (TAG) students and English Language Learners (ELL). All of these lessons are able to be modified and used with the diverse students in a classroom.

Special Education

Subject: Reading

Grade: 3rd-5th

Classroom: Resource Center

Students are learning to become active reader when we take time to teach them how to think about text before, during, and after reading. With my current lesson plans, my students enter my classroom where I start the lesson with me modeling how to decode different letter sounds, blends, and/or word families. After my modeling, students break into different pre-planned groups, and complete 1 of 3 task. The first center, students complete "Word Reading" activities, where they work with their team to record themselves using an iPad, decoding different letter sounds and blends that were taught during the daily model. The second center, students complete "Word Building" activities, where they practice identifying different word families, contractions, or compound words that were taught during the daily model. The third center, students individually complete their "Sight Words" activity, where students are individually called to recite a level of Dolch Sight Words. Each level of sight words is complied upon the grade level with additional nouns. Students have to read 60 words in a minute before they can move up a level. Once all the students complete all of the centers, we meet back at our reading tables, where we use our retell rope to discuss what we have read, and what parts of the story we can identify. I then introduce the comprehension questions that we will work on answering. We then begin reading our books, where students might reading using round robin, partner reading, or independent reading. After we have all read the selected pages, students return to where we started in the book, and listen and track while I reread the selected pages. As a class, we look at the comprehension questions we can answer and discuss them. Students then complete their answer for the questions using a pre-made foldable graphic organizer, and place it into their reading journals, which is their comprehension portfolio. Students complete an exit ticket of writing a word they decoded or built in centers, and reading a fluency sentence that has them use their sight words and decoding strategies.

Subject: Writing

Grade: 3rd-5th

Classroom: Resource Center

Students are learning to become stronger writers using the 6+ Traits of writing. Through this lesson students experience a modeling of using proper grammar and punctuation. After the modeling, students get to bring their ideas to the table on a common topic, where they will write a descriptive, expository, informative, and persuasive paper using different graphic organizers to help them become more independent writers. Students will use a web graphic organizer to help them generate ideas. They will then take their ideas and use their paragraph organizer to write a topic sentence, supporting sentences, and a conclusion sentence as they complete their writing task. Then, they will use the computer to type their writing task, and work on word choice and sentence fluency. The finally part to their writing will be to present their work in a way for others to enjoy and learn from what they did. The entire lesson is scaffolded and tailored to the students' needs of support. Students' exit ticket will being using their "Writing Checklist," to see what they have completed and designed a plan for the next day.

Subject: Math

Grade: 3rd-5th

Classroom: Resource Center

Students are working to improve their number sense abilities when it comes to math. Each lesson encompasses a number sense game students use to build their understanding of number value, place value, adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing, along with grouping and using numbers in different operations. The lesson continues with a focus topic the uses a hands on activity with manipulatives. Students will see a math task modeled and solved using manipulatives and watching the materials be used to answer and show the work. Students will then have the opportunity to use the manipulatives and show their work as group and then independently. Students' exit ticket will be to find a way to connect what they did in class to something they can use in a real-world situation, or to answer math task flash cards that use the topic taught that day.

Subject: Reading

Grade: 5th

Classroom: Resource Center

Unit: Story Mapping and Cause and Effect

Book: Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days by Jeff Kinney

Description: I designed this unit for a set of students with learning disabilities and goals to improve their reading comprehension. By combining the cause and effect strategy with the use of a graphic story map and reading material chosen by the students, I constructed lessons to help these student improve their reading comprehension. Throughout each lesson, I would make each part of what I taught as visual as possible. For each vocabulary word picked from the text, I used pictures to illustrate their meanings, and had students use inferences from the picture and what they read to define each word. Next the students used pictures of different events they read about in the story to identify the order in which they occur and deciding which was the cause and which was the effect. At the end of each lesson, after we read, the students would work in their their workbook books that I designed to go along with the story that asked comprehension questions targeted towards text to self and text to world questions. At the end of the unit, the students felt so confident about reading, they couldn't wait to get home and finish reading the rest of the book. Their assessment scores also showed and major improvement in their comprehension skills.

Reflection: Although the scores showed improvement, for these particular students, I would have redesigned the assessment to match the style in which I taught each lesson. For future use of this unit, I would construct a visual assessment that would have visual picture of the vocabulary where the students would identify which word the picture is showing or use the word in a sentence; visual pictures of events the students would put in chronological order, as well as visual pictures the students would have to identify as the cause or the effect of the event. As the students' competence built, I would then start to transition them to using the standard assessments, but this time they would have high self-efficacy to complete the assessment.

I would also continue working on the workbook to reflect more of the instruction of the unit as well. Instead of just basic comprehension questions, I would write the questions to where the students would have to answer the question with the cause or the effect of the event.

General Education

Subject: Science/Math

Grade: Kindergarten

Classroom: General Education

Unit: Dinosaurs/Addition/Subtraction

*Under Classroom Observations you can see a video clip of me teaching Dino-Bingo

Description: I designed this unit for kindergartners to have fun learning about dinosaurs, and then using the dinosaurs to make math more exciting and appealing. Using puppets to introduce or review concepts like addition and subtractions gave the students an experience to keep with them as they continue practicing these skills. I used songs to learn about the dinosaur and how to pronounce their names. I constructed a Dinosaur Detective Journal that the students used every time we learned about a new dinosaur. After we entered the information, I would take out a piece of rope the same length as the dinosaur and we would see how big the dinosaur really was. However, the most exhilarating piece to this unit was the lesson on excavations. For this piece, the students learned about paleontologist and what they do when they are on an excavation. We read a book that talked about the different people and the jobs they do to make the excavations a success. Then, the students were grouped and each group was give a rock that had a plastic dinosaur skeleton puzzle in it. The students got to try all of the jobs and dig up the dinosaurs. Then they had to present their finding to the class and tell the name the dinosaur, identify some of its characteristics, and say whether it was a herbivore or a carnivore. The students were so excited about dinosaurs, when it was time to teach math, they couldn't wait to meet the new dinosaur friend who was going to teach them a new math game.

Reflection: Each lesson was fun and productive. Working with kindergarten, however, if a lesson was boring or the students weren't understanding, then I needed to be quick to rethink my strategy or change the lesson before I lost their focus. Yet, I knew the unit was a success, even before I completed the final assessment because the students were using the language they had learned in our daily discussions. They could identify each of the dinosaurs we learned and tell you whether it was a herbivore or carnivore, lived in a herd or alone, what kind of habitat it preferred (marsh lands, desert, tropics, forest). They grasped the main ideas and more, when they could tell you what a paleontologist is and what happens on an excavation. I made sure to incorporate every style of learning into each of the lessons, so that the students experience the knowledge visually, orally, with movement, music, in nature, etc.

When I use this unit in the future, I will continue to work on the games and activities I used to make them easier to use without the need of assistance. The idea was to provide extra practice with numbers, addition and subtraction, but some of my games were to abstract for the students, and I would like to make them more concrete so they useful.

Subject: Math

Grade: 4th

Classroom: General Education with TAG students

Unit: Measurement/Number and Operations and Algebra

Description: Business math was designed for 2 students identified as TAG in my general education 4th grade math class. They were having a very difficult time controlling themselves during class instruction. As I understood their frustration with the work material being to easy or to boring, I took the initiative to create a unit focused on making them think in terms of using what was being taught in a simulated real life experience. I covered the state standards and created business math for these students. It was a self-directed unit in which the students were give a packet each week to complete. For the first packet, the students had to identify what business they wanted to run, how much the initial start up fees would be, figure out where they wanted to be located and apply for a load. The students decided on the business of their choice and then went to work. The packet had all the pricing information for building for rent, utilities, and any other information required, along with a loan application that need to be filled out and present to the bank (the teacher) to be granted.

Reflection: Not only did I no longer have behavior issues with these students, but the students (who were barely acquaintances) came up to me and asked if they could rent a building together and combine their businesses to save on expenses. The students were so passionate about this assignment, they didn't even want to watch the open math movies I played with the rest of the class during the start of the math classes. Every day the students came to class on time, asked for their business math packets and went right to work. The only problem I had was at the end of the unit when I told them there wasn't going to be anymore business math and they begged me to do one more packet.

Some changes I would of made for this unit would have focused around the business choices. The students still would be able to choose any business they wanted, but I would have had them focus on selling one thing. The first student wanted to start a restaurant and the other student wanted to start a sports store. As great as the ideas were, the concepts for inventory and pricing and spacing got to be to intense and made some of the math problems to difficult. What I would want to do next time is have them focus on selling one thing to the point that if they showed enough initiative, they could set up a small business in the classroom or school and see if they could make their business a success.

Subject: Reading

Grade: 5th

Classroom: General Education with ESL students

Unit: Biographies/ASL

Book: Who Was Helen Keller by Gare Thompson

Description: This unit was designed for my 5th graders I worked with during my student teaching. We had just finished reading a story in the scripted curriculum about codes. I had introduced American Sign Language to the students and explained how it was used as a code back in the day during the wars. The student were so fascinated by the language they wanted to learn more. I took this opportunity and designed a unit around Helen Keller and American Sign Language. During this reading class, I had several ESL students and wanted them to be as much part of the lessons as their peers. I gave them the choice to read the English or the Spanish version of the Helen Keller story, in which they chose the Spanish version. I also had the comprehension workbook I designed translated for them so that they could participate in all the assignments, but have more success by completing them in their own language. This proved to be a huge success, as the ESL students participated more in class, were excited about the daily assignments, and everyone took part in learning a new language. For each assessment, the students would use ear plugs so they could simulate what it was like to be deaf, and for the final assessment half the class was deaf while the other half was blind and deaf. They would then switch, but every student got to experience a small piece of the difficulties Helen Keller went through her entire life. The students had a huge part in creating this unit, which is why I believe it was so successful. If changes needed to be made, the class and I would discuss our thoughts are produce a solution. The unit went beyond just learning about the Deaf community, but to supporting it as the students asked to write a letter to the school for the blind and the deaf when it was being shut down.

Talented and Gifted Students (TAG)

English as a Second Language (ESL)

Reflection: This unit was more successful then I had predicted. The students motivation to learn about Helen Keller and American Sign Language prevent any behaviors from disrupting the class, along with provoking further thought into the Deaf community. In the future, I might have tried to look up and add Spanish Sign Language. The ESL students had a lot of success during this unit, but I feel I could have added more into the lessons to further support their learning.