Sophia Schneider

Ms. Baldwin Clymore Elementary School

Lesson taught 10/4/16
Submitted 9/27/16

LESSON PLAN OUTLINE

JMU Elementary Education Program

A. TITLE/TYPE OF LESSON
Homophone Heads Up!

B. CONTEXT OF LESSON

Through observation of language arts lessons and reading student written assignments I have
determined a need for homophone review. Students appear to understand that homophones are spelled
differently to indicate meaning, but are confusing the spelling of different words. In many cases
students are using a spelling elements from both words. From this information, I have determined that
students are using but confusing homophones which places this lesson at their zone of proximal
development. Their zone of proximal development is the best place to acquire new knowledge.

C. LEARNING INTENTIONS and SUCCESS CRITERIA

Understand students will be able to Know students will know specific Do students will be able to identify
understand that homophones are homophones along with their homophones by applying knowledge
words with the same pronunciation, meanings and spellings. of synonyms, antonyms, and
but different meanings indicated by adjectives.
different spellings.
I understand I know I can

D. ASSESSING LEARNING
Sophia Schneider
Ms. Baldwin Clymore Elementary School
Lesson taught 10/4/16
Submitted 9/27/16

Student: Students will be able to Students will know specific Students will be able to
understand that homophones along with identify homophones by
homophones are words their meanings and applying knowledge of
with the same spellings. synonyms, antonyms, and
pronunciation, but different adjectives.
meanings indicated by
different spellings.
Student 1
* * *

Student 2
* * *

Student 3
* * *

Student 4
* * *

Student 5 Student was able to read

* homophones, but struggled *
to correctly match some
spellings to the appropriate
definition.
Student 6 Student struggled to explain
* * the definitions of
vocabulary words.
Student 7
* * *

Student 8
* * *

Student 9
* * *

Student 10
* * *

Student 11 Student mainly used hand

* * gestures to explain
definitions.
Student 12
* * *

Student 13
* * *

Student 14
* * *
Sophia Schneider
Ms. Baldwin Clymore Elementary School
Lesson taught 10/4/16
Submitted 9/27/16

Student 15 Student used the wrong

* definition for one of the *
homophones.
Student 16
* * *

Student 17
* * *

Student 18 Student could not identify

* one of the homophones. *

E. RELATED VIRGINIA STANDARDS OF LEARNING

This activity relates to Virginia Standard of Learning 5.4 a) The student will expand vocabulary when
reading by using knowledge of roots, affixes, synonyms, antonyms and homophones.

F. MATERIALS NEEDED
For this lesson I will need notecards, strips of paper, pens, post-it notes, and glue. I will be responsible
for sourcing these materials myself.

G. PROCEDURE
I will begin the lesson by passing out one notecard to each student that has a homophone written on it.
For each card, there is another card with a matching homophone that will be given to a student ex:
night and knight or mousse and moose. These cards are intended to create partners of two with
students.

I will state We are playing the game heads up. In this game, you will hold your notecard to your
forehead without looking at what is written on it and ask a classmate to describe it to you. When you
think you know what your card says, you will take a guess and continue until you have figured it out.

I will then instruct After you correctly guess your card, find your partner based on your card. I
purposefully will not disclose what makes the students partners. I will allow them to find partners in
the hopes that they will realize that their partner is their matching homophone.

After partners have been found, I will ask how did you each decide who your partner is? This will
spur a discussion about homophones. Each student will share their homophone and its meaning to
expose others to more vocabulary words.

I will ask students What do you know about homophones? and we will discuss their prior
knowledge, ensuring that they understand the success criteria mentioned above.

I will then move the conversation by asking what strategies did you find helpful in figuring out your
word? I ask this with the intention of highlighting synonyms, antonyms, and adjectives used for
identifying homophones.
Sophia Schneider
Ms. Baldwin Clymore Elementary School
Lesson taught 10/4/16
Submitted 9/27/16

Once that is understood, we will move into a different game. In this game, the students will be given
four notecards as a pair group. These have matching homophones written on them with a picture of the
word meaning on the back that is covered with a post-it note. As a pair group, they will try to guess all
of the words as quickly as they can and will check their accuracy by revealing the picture once a guess
has been made. If they described the wrong meaning of the homophone, they will have to start over.
Student pairs will be racing to get through their notecards first.

Once this activity is completed, I will ask for any remaining questions about homophones that students
may have. After those are addressed, we will wrap everything up by reviewing all of the information
that students began with, and the information that we added.

As a formative assessment, each individual student will be given a strip of paper illustrating a fill-in-
the-blank sentence that uses a pair of homophones. They will need to use their context clues to place
one pair of their notecards accurately in the sentence strip.

At the end of the lesson, students will be given the option to keep their notecards to reference later on
when they get stuck on spelling.

H. DIFFERENTIATION
To differentiate learning by level, I will hand out homophone pairs intentionally. I can place students
who have a lower level of understanding with those who seem to have more prior knowledge. Students
wont know that I have done this because passing out notecards would appear random so no child will
be singled out as needing extra help. I will scaffold wherever necessary if any student faces challenges
meeting objectives. If students are having difficulty finding their partner or coming up with strategies
for guessing their homophone, I will offer a hint or ask a question that steers them in the right
direction. By teaching with games, I am reaching more students at lower interest levels. The pictures
on the backs of the notecards will be helpful for English language learners who may struggle with the
vocabulary associated with the lesson. To accommodate a student in the class with dyslexia, the words
written on notecards with be bold and large. To accommodate students in the class who have Attention
Deficit Disorder (and those who just like to move around), there will be opportunity in the lesson to
move around or stand.

I. WHAT COULD GO WRONG WITH THIS LESSON AND WHAT WILL YOU DO ABOUT IT?
When I think about what could go wrong in a lesson, I think about behavior management and time
management. To tackle behavior management, I will explain the rules to each game and clearly
explain my behavior expectations. If I notice that some students are not able to behave appropriately
together, I will give them a new partner. If behavior challenges persist, I will draw from the
schoolwide positive behavior plan and give cardinal dollars to students who are participating within
the outlined behavior expectations. Because the majority of the lesson focuses on games, time can be
adjusted fairly easily. If I find that games are moving too quickly, we will switch cards and play more
rounds. This would even be a benefit because it exposes students to even more vocabulary. If students
are playing at a slower pace than anticipated, I will ask more leading questions to help come to
answers more quickly or eliminate the number of words that students go through in their speed game.
Sophia Schneider
Ms. Baldwin Clymore Elementary School
Lesson taught 10/4/16
Submitted 9/27/16

Lesson Implementation Reflection

I. How did your actual teaching of the lesson differ from your plans? Describe the changes and explain why you
made them.
a. Firstly, I decided that it was not necessary for every student to share their homophone. After having
about five students volunteer to share, I noticed that I was losing student engagement so I decided to
move on. I dont believe that skipping the rest of this activity hindered students in any way because a
lack of engagement often indicates that they are not being challenged enough, or that they would not
have absorbed the information anyways. I decided to extend the partner heads up game by allowing
partner groups to switch cards three times. I chose to do this because students seemed more engaged in
this activity and it gave them an opportunity to be exposed to more vocabulary since the
aforementioned shortened activity was intended to accomplish the same thing. Lastly, I decided to give
students fill-in-the-blank sentences as groups rather than individually. They were working very well in
groups and I was able to gather individual data pretty well during the other activities.

II. Based on the assessment you created, what can you conclude about your impact on student learning? Did they
learn? Who learned? What did they learn? What evidence can you offer that your conclusions are valid?
a. I believe that I was able to reinforce the definition of a homophone. All students seemed to have been
exposed to this concept prior to my lesson, and had a more solidified definition confirmed. Many of
the students already knew this concept quite well, in fact, one student knew that partners were made
using homophones right away and could clearly define the term. Some students were exposed to new
vocabulary. Some clearly knew the words already. Those that had a strong prior knowledge did not
gain much new vocabulary. I could tell that many students knew the vocabulary already because they
were able to describe it in the game very quickly. A couple of students who struggled with the
vocabulary (including one ELL student) did learn new spellings as they checked their word definition
under the sticky note and were incorrect. They then had the opportunity to right this mistake.

III. Describe at least one way you could incorporate developmentally appropriate practice in a better or more
thorough way if you were to teach this lesson again.
a. I think that if I were to improve my developmentally appropriate practice for this lesson, I would have
included a portion in which students were asked to produce their own homophones. This would have
given me a better indication of their level of understanding, as well as their ability to spell the words
from memory rather than just identifying them.

IV. Based on the assessment data you collected, what would you do/teach next if you were the classroom teacher?
a. I believe that students gained a strong knowledge of homophones in this lesson, or had their prior
knowledge reinforced. Next, I would have the students produce their own homophones and use them
in sentences. I may even have them write a paragraph or short paper that included a certain number of
homophones in it. After this, students would really be experts on the concept so we could move on to
other parts of their vocabulary to focus on.

V. As a result of planning and teaching this lesson, what have you learned or had reinforced about young children
as learners?
a. It was reinforced to me that young children learn best when they are engaged, and are most engaged
when they can be active participants in their learning. During whole group explanations, students
seemed to lose interest at a certain point, but remained engaged for all of the game activities. They
seemed to recall information that they learned through the games better than that presented by me.

VI. As a result of planning and teaching this lesson, what have you learned or had reinforced about teaching?
Sophia Schneider
Ms. Baldwin Clymore Elementary School
Lesson taught 10/4/16
Submitted 9/27/16

a. I have reinforced the idea for myself that teaching needs to be clear and concise. Whole group
instruction should be broken into smaller parts and should involve students as much as possible. I also
learned that it is important for teachers to be flexible in their planning and need to read the students
energy in order to determine how to proceed in the lesson.

VII. As a result of planning and teaching this lesson, what have you learned or had reinforced about yourself?
a. I have learned that I am more flexible than I realized previously, but need to be better at adjusting my
verbal instruction to make my explanations more clear. When my plans get thrown off, I tend to panic
because the scripted instruction I had planned no longer applies, and I have to make up something new
on the spot.