Design for Instruction

Students completed a personal narrative that served as a pre-assessment. Students

were told that these would not be graded and that they were being used just to show the
teachers where students would need instruction. Students were told that although there would
not be a grade that they still needed to try their best so we could get accurate information on
their learning needs. Students were also informed that their stories didnt need to be perfect
because this would be the first time theyve had to write a narrative.

Pre-assessment Narratives
Student Focus Organization Voice Word Sentence Grammar, Final
and Choice structure Mechanics, Grade
Details spelling

A.A. 2 1 1 1 2 2 1.5

Ke. B. 2 2 2 1 2 2 2

Ka. B. 1 1 2 1 2 2 1.5

M.B. 2 2 2 2 2 2 2

G.D. 2 2 2 1 2 2 2

S.F. 2 2 2 1 2 2 2

J.G. 2 2 1 1 2 2 2

A.G. 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

B.J. 1 1 1 1 2 2 1

M.M. 3 3 2 2 2 3 2.5

T.M. 2 2 1 1 1 2 1.5

E.O. 2 2 2 1 2 2 2

B.P 2 2 3 1 2 2 2

C.P. 1 2 1 1 2 2 1.5

S.P 2 2 2 1 2 2 2

Ma.R. 2 2 2 1 2 2 2

Me.R. 1 2 2 1 2 2 2

M.S. 2 2 3 2 3 3 2.5
 B.S. 2 2 2 1 2 2 2

M.T. 2 2 2 2 3 3 2.5

S.W. 2 1 2 1 2 2 2

E.K. 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

LG 1: After reading through students pre-assessment results, it was clear that work needed to be done
with their organization. This is why the goal for the first lesson centered on making a story map to help
with the organization of their stories. Many students lacked having a clear sequence of events, they had
little to no action, dialogue, thoughts, feelings, or description. In fact, many students did not have more
than one paragraph, it was one big paragraph.

LG 2: Prior to the unit my mentor told me that all of the students were more than likely going to need to
be taught how to write a beginning, middle, and end. After reading through students pre-assessment
results, many of them failed to create a beginning that grasped the reader attention. Many of them
started their stories with a sentence or two that simply introduced where and when the story was taking
place. There were a few students who completely skipped a beginning paragraph and jumped right into
the story. While reading their stories, I also noticed that students were not using an action, dialogue,
and thoughts/feelings. Because of this, I found that a lesson on good beginnings needed to happen to
introduce good techniques and to discuss the need of using strong adjectives. I also knew that simply
showing them good beginnings wouldnt be enough and that they would need some practice before
applying it to their spooky stories.

LG 3: Because students were being graded on supporting and related details, I read through their pre-
assessment narratives and found that many students had only introduced the character and/or setting
and did not provide any elaborative details. This is where my most used comment, which was, Show
me dont tell me. came from. I also found that students used very weak adjectives and that within the
lesson for elaborative details a discussion on using a thesaurus needed to take place. Practicing
describing settings and characters was definitely needed.

LG 4: I was a little surprised when I found that only three students had a clear main event in their
narratives. Many students did not have the understanding that a short story should only have one big
main event that is led up to with an effective beginning and concluded with a strong ending. Because of
this, many of their stories were dry and hard to follow. They either had several main events or had a
short paragraph that simply told the reader what happened without providing any elaborative details.
After discovering this, my mentor and I decided that a lesson on how to make an exciting main event
was imperative. Although students lacked an effective main event, this was one area that I was
confident the students would make drastic improvements in because they would already have had the
lesson on how to describe the setting and characters and they could apply that newly acquired skill to
this section as well.

LG 5: A strong conclusion was probably the most commonly lacked element in all of the students pre-
assessment stories. Almost every single one ended with one sentence either saying the end or a few
short sentences the ended the story unnaturally. Students needed instruction to teach them how to
summarize the story and describe what the character learned from the experience. Students also
needed to form an understanding that by lacking a strong conclusion, the reader will finish the story
feeling let down or that they simply did not get enough information to form their own conclusions.

CFA

My CFA really helped me a lot throughout this unit. Because of my CFA, I knew that I had eight
students with low writing NWEA scores. Keeping this in mind throughout the unit, I made sure that I
provided as many forms of instruction as possible. I also decided that with these students I needed to
really keep track of their progress on their stories and give specific feedback for the sections that they
needed to improve. I also found that S.F., J.G., A.G., B.J., B.P., and S.P. all stated that writing is their least
favorite subject. For these students, I knew that I needed to bring excitement to each lesson to really get
them motivated to write their stories. This didnt pose as much of an issue as I thought it might going
into the unit because the students really seemed to love writing their spooky stories. Because the
narrative was on something they found exciting, their effort was really quite amazing. I also knew that I
had one student, M.R., who really needs extra motivation throughout the day. For this student, I made
sure to drop by every day that students were working on their stories and check in. I knew that
conversing about the students story and showing how interested I was in his would show give him a
little extra motivation to do his best work. For students who received RTI (found in CFA) or had band and
were going to miss many of the lessons, I knew that I would have to reteach each lesson that they
missed.

Technology

Technology was integrated into every lesson except for the first one on story mapping. By
having students write their stories on Google Documents I was able to read the changes in their stories
after each lesson. This was a great tool because it allowed me to see how effective each lesson was
based on the improvements or lack thereof in their stories. It also gave me the ability to provide
individualized feedback to each student. I was able to highlight elements of their stories and comment
with how they could improve it or sometimes I simply highlighted a section to tell them how great of a
job they did.

The use of Google Documents also gave students the opportunity to share good beginnings from
novels with each other. This lesson required students to go to the class library and find an example of a
well written beginning. Students were also responsible for finding which beginning technique the author
used. By sharing their findings on Google Documents it allowed students to really further their own
learning and each others learning. An exit ticket on Google Forms was created at the end of the unit.
This allowed me to get feedback on my teaching and it also provided me with a summative assessment
by having students apply some of their newly learned writing techniques within answers.