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Asa Clark Middle School Lesson Plan 1

On March 2, 2015, I taught a suburban 8th grade Language Arts


lesson on poetry. I demonstrated the following two of the Wisconsin
Teacher Standards for Licensure and Development: Teachers know the
subject they are teaching and Teachers know how to teach. I had
studied the concepts of poetry and, specifically, the themes and
analysis of word choice in the poems in order to instruct the lesson. I
dissected the poems in order to fully understand the meaning as well
as studied the historical context of the two poems. I used a PowerPoint
(which served as both a visual and verbal presentation), partnered
discussions, and an overall small group discussion to instruct the
lesson. For day two of the workshop, we are writing our own poems on
our individual classroom blogs and analyzing peer poems. We will also
be sharing our poems in our small group to discuss their themes.
Two of the Alverno Graduate Advanced Education Abilities that I
demonstrated in my lesson are Conceptualization and
Communication. I was able to demonstrate conceptualization by
integrating my knowledge of poetry and Language Arts in order to
instruct a lesson on poetry. If it werent for my background in English, I
would not have been able to effectively communicate the ideas of
theme or metaphor, or even be able to analyze a poem based on word
choice. I used communication by providing a PowerPoint, which was
both an oral and visual (written) presentation. In addition, by
constructing our own blogs with our own poetry, we are utilizing a form
of media that allows us to read and comment on each others poems.
I believe that I successfully demonstrated at least five of the
Common Core Standards. Literacy.RL.8.2 states that an individual be
able to determine a theme/central idea of a text, which was the main
point of the literary analysis of the two poems. Literacy.RL.8.5 asks
that students be able to compare and contrast the structure of two or
more texts and analyze how the different structure of each text
contributes to its meaning and style. We looked at two poems and
were able to analyze the similarities and differences, not just in the
physical representation of the text, but in terms of their meaning and
word choice. Literacy.RL.8.4 states that students be able to determine
the meaning of words/phrases as they are used in text/analyze the
impact of rhymes/other repetitions of sounds on a specific verse/stanza
of a poem. Although we didnt analyze the rhymes in the poems, Walt
Whitmans I Hear America Singing uses a lot of repetition, which we
argued stresses the point of his poem. We also used the words to
determine what the overarching theme was. Literacry.RI.8.4 is very
similar, as students are able to determine the meaning of words and
phrases as they are used in a text. And finally, Literacy.SL.8.6 was
utilized in asking the students to read the poems aloud. Poetry is a

whole different way of reading and writing, which many people are not
adept to.
My lesson fit into the curriculum for the term, which is the Lucy
Calkins readers workshop framework. Mrs. Reagless 8th grade class is
focusing on conducting important mini lessons (10-15 minutes long)
and spending the rest of class doing individual writing based on
student goals. My poetry lesson was a brief 10-15 minute instructional
lesson followed by a writing workshop. By making the lesson optional,
we were personalizing the instruction, and I was able to tackle several
of the Common Core Standards.

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