Lesson Plan Format
Each of my classroom lessons follows the same format. You may choose any of the activities outlined in my strategies and plug them in the appropriate section of the lesson. This enables you to tailor you lessons according to what is appropriate for your individual classroom setting. All parts of the plan are included in each of the three sections of my unit as outlined in the strategies.
| 1. | Warm-Up: this is the focus: it gets the students on task as they enter the room and sets the learning objective for the day, so choose any of the warm-ups suggested under "strategies," according to what section you are working on at that time. Your warm-up section should take ten minutes. Here you would use a quotation or poem excerpt and have the students explain the quotation or excerpt using the concept of question stems. Allow for discussion. |
| 2. | Teacher Input: this is the specific instructional portion of the lesson: this is only ten to fifteen minutes of your class, or according to how quickly the student comprehends the concept, so choose your activity here according to the section of the unit you are working on. Teacher input can be overhead work, note work, examples of the concept or finding the concept in the poetry books. If you were using the poem "Oranges," you would read the poem at least two times to the class, asking them to focus on the language while you were reading. After reading, you would ask them to write in their journal what the poem means to them. These ideas would be discussed, paying attention to the strategies on reading poetry and understanding poetry as outlined in the "strategies" section of this unit. |
| 3. | Guided Practice: this portion of the lesson has you, the teacher, taking the students through the activity that will be learned. This reinforces the concept taught in the teacher input part of the lesson. You are walking them through the activity, modeling what they are to do, checking for questions and checking for comprehension concerning the activity, so choose any one of the student activities from the strategy section and model what the task is for student understanding. This should take ten to fifteen minutes of your class. You may want to ask the students questions based on question stems strategies to check for comprehension. If you were in the writing section of the unit, you would use the poem that you had analyzed as a model for the student writing. Understanding the poem helps when the student is using that poem as a model. |
| 4. | Independent Practice: students are working on their own or with a partner on the assigned task. The teacher circulates, monitoring activity as well as behavior and is available to answer questions or give extra help. This section should take twenty to twenty five minutes of your class. This practice is a continuation of the guided practice, with the student working on their own using the question stem strategies to develop questions and answers to check for comprehension. If your class is in the writing section of the unit, you would monitor while the students continue their writing. |
| 5. | Assessment: this can be done in a variety of ways according to what section of the unit the class is working on. Assessments can be teacher observation, quiz on figurative language, quiz on forms of poetry, quiz on rhyme and rhyme scheme, their poetry journal, their contributions to the poetry classroom, read alouds and their final project. Time varies according to assessment |
| 6. | Closure: review, restate and reteach the concept of the day while also reviewing the activity of the day. This is a good time to randomly ask questions concerning the lesson of the day and lasts approximately ten minutes. You may want to share some of the questions and answers the students developed or have them read some of their writing. |
The time frame for each part of the lesson is adjustable, as are the activities of each part of the lesson. If you follow the format and plug in the activities outlined in the previous section you should have a very successful custom lesson for your classroom. Good luck with poetry!
Additional Suggested Poems for the Middle School Student
Angelou, Maya: "And Still I Rise", "Phenomenal Woman"
Blake, William: "The Tyger"
Bourdillon, Francis: "The Night has a Thousand Eyes"
Bradstreet, Anne: "To My Dear and Loving Husband"
Brooks, Gwendolyn: "We Real Cool", "The Bean Eaters"
Browning, Elizabeth B.: "How Do I Love Thee?"
Bunner, Henry: "The Heart of a Tree"
Carroll, Lewis: "Jabberwocky", "Father William"
Cooke, Edmund: "How Did You Die?"
De La Mare, Walter: "Me"
Dickinson, Emily: "I'm Nobody"
Foss, Sam: "The House by the Side of the Road"
Frost, Robert: "Now Close the Window", "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening", "Acquainted with the Night", "Nothing Gold Can Stay"
Gluck, Louise: "Snowdrops", "The Butterfly"
Guest, Edgar: "Sermons We See"
Hayden, Robert: "Those Winter Sundays"
Hughes, Langston: "Mother to Son"
Jonson, Ben: "On My First Son"
Larcon, Lucy: "Plant a Tree"
Lawrence, D.H.: "Nothing to Save", "Trees in the Garden"
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth: "A Psalm of Life"
Poe, Edgar Allan: "A Dream Within a Dream", "The Raven", "Annabel Lee"
Sandburg, Carl: "Grass"
Stevenson, Robert Louis: "My Shadow", "The Land of Counterpane"
Thomas, Dylan: "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night"
Wilcox, Ella W.: "Solitude"
Wordsworth, William: "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" (The Daffodils)
York, Eva Rose: "I Shall Not Pass This Way Again"
Also, any one of the following authors and their poems is very middle school friendly!
Eloise Greenfield
Bruce Lansky
Shel Silverstein
Roald Dahl (his comic verse)
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