Writing clarifies thinking!

Name of Lesson: Pros and Cons of Self-Driving Cars

Your Name: Koumei Tsunoda Date of Lesson: 06/12/18 Time, including duration: 45 minutes
Topic: Writing Argumentative Piece
Focus for MT/FI Observations:
(personal goal)
 Activating students’ prior knowledge
 Addressing today’s learning objective
 Modeling for students how they’re going to achieve this.

Context: Students will only experience the launch session of this lesson.
Resource(s): Newsela Article, Pro/Con: Self-Driving cars could take over the road in the near future, graphic organizer
Common Core State Standards: Learning Goals: Assessments:
What, specifically, will students know and be able How will you know if students met the learning goal and
to do at the end of this lesson? how will you evaluate the quality of students’ performance?
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.5.1 Students will be able to (Swbat): Student: (end-of-activity check):
Quote accurately from a
text when explaining what Swbat collect three or more pieces of evidence -Students will have the chance to share their stance and
the text says explicitly and from the text. what evidence they have to support their argument. The
when drawing inferences listener will then provide a feedback for which piece of
from the text. Swbat use the information they’ve collected from evidence helped made the argument stronger.
the text to write and share their stance.
Teacher: (how you will collect, evaluate and process
evidence of students’ learning)

-Listen as students are sharing their work with one another,

pick a student to share his work with the class. Have paper
manager collect all the students’ work and evaluate.
Vocabulary:
Materials: - 15 copies of the article. – 14 copies of graphic organizers.

Attending to the Learners

Anticipating student ideas: It would be important to first assess if every student understands what a self-driving car is.
At the beginning of the lesson, I may want to quickly assess students understanding on self-driving cars.
In addition, there are few keywords within this article that ELLs may not know, such as suburbs, commuting and
passenger.

Adapted from Lesson Design template created by Katrin Oddleifson Robertson and Shannon Kurtz McGrath, 2010
 Writing clarifies thinking!

Making the content Go over these keywords with the students before engaging the article.
accessible to all students: -suburbs
-commuting
-passenger

Teaching Sequence:
Time/Task Instructional Moves (Include key questions you want to ask. Considerations
(Things you want to remember/attend to:
e.g., differentiation, transitions)
Launch
1. Hello 5th graders, it is so nice to meet all you. I’ve been looking forward to
teaching all of you since last week. My name is Mr. Tsunoda, I will be teaching
you briefly today in class.
2. Today, we’ll be forming our argument based on an article that we’re reading
 Paper manager passes out both
today. I have copies for each of you. Could I have the paper manager come up
the articles and the graphic
pass these out?
organizers.
3. In today’s article we’ll be discussing about self-driving cars. Who hears know
about self-driving cars? [Call on a student] What’s your name?
4. Yeah, self-driving cars are cars that drive on its own. I forgot to mention, when
we’re having a discussion, we’re going to make sure that our eyes and ears are
on the speaker, that means we’ll be facing toward the person who is talking. In
addition, when we’re sharing our ideas, just like ________ did, we’re going to
raise our hands.
5. There are three words that I would like to go over with the class.
10 minutes [Have students describe them]  Have the students describe these
three keywords
-Suburbs
-Commuting
-Passenger
6. Knowing these three words will help you better understand the both sides of the
argument.
7. We’re going to take a look at an article called Pro/Con: Self-Driving cars could
take over the road in the near future. Today’s reading objective is “I can use the
information in the text to form my stance.” We’re going to be using information
within this article to form our argument based on the essential question: Should
our society move toward self-driving cars?
8. Now, when we’re forming our argument, there are no right or wrong answers.
However, we do want to have some evidence when we’re sharing our ideas.
Adapted from Lesson Design template created by Katrin Oddleifson Robertson and Shannon Kurtz McGrath, 2010
 Writing clarifies thinking!

Why do you think it’s important for us to have evidence when we’re sharing our
ideas?
[Choose two students and ask their names.]
Like you both said, we want to provide evidence because it makes our argument  Restate what students said to
stronger. highlight the importance of
9. I’m going to model you how we’re going to find evidence based on my stance. evidence.

Lesson Sequence (I do)

10. We’ll also be using our graphic organizers to collect our evidence. I’m going to
look at the pro side and see what information I can pull out.
11. Before I read it, the headings in the pro side already shows me what kind of  Remember to go over the
information is going to be in it. headings first before reading.
12. Here, in this paragraph it says, “people will no longer have to spend thousands of
dollars on a new car. If they need to travel somewhere, they can simply call for a
driverless taxi.” That’s one pro that we’ve identified so far. I’m going to write
10 minutes that down on my graphic organizer. It’s also important that we take account the
other side’s argument as well.
13. Con: “Driver-less cars rely on computers. If the information on the road is not
constantly updated to the computers, they would not obey to a new stop sign.”
That information is certainly helpful so I’m going to write it on the con side.
14. Just like that, we’re going to collect both pros and cons from this article. We
want to hit the magic number of having three pieces of evidence for both sides,
but if you can find more that’s great. After you have your three pieces of
evidence for both sides, you’re going to then write a little statement of your
stance. You circle either, “I believe our society should or I believe our society
should not…” and use your evidence to support your statement. You’ll use the
pros if you’re in favor for the self-driving cars and you’ll use cons if you’re against
it.
15. Any questions before we move on to our independent work?
[Answer and clarify any questions.]
16. We’re going to work on this for about 20 minutes.  Set timer to 20 minutes.
If you finish early, you can revise your work. When revising your work, read
20 minutes outload your work to see if it makes sense.
(You do)
17. Students independently work on their own.
Have the lower achieving group of students come work at my table.

Adapted from Lesson Design template created by Katrin Oddleifson Robertson and Shannon Kurtz McGrath, 2010
 Writing clarifies thinking!

18. Go around the room to check how the class is doing.

Closure
19. If you’re not quite down, that’s certainly fine. What we’re going to do next is
5 minutes we’re going to share our work with our partner. When you’re listening to your
partner’s statement, you want to identify what piece of evidence really helped
your partner’s argument.
20. Let’s have my teacher’s assistant and I show you how that looks like.  Model for students for how the
21. Now it’s your turn. Student’s get up and find a partner to share their work. Find a sharing should sound like.
partner that has the same color that you’re wearing and share your statement.  Formative assessment: Listening
[Pick a group and listen to what they’re sharing, ask one of them if he could to what students wrote for their
come up and share his work with his class. stance.
22. Have the student come and up share his work. Tell the class that again, you want
to identify a piece of evidence that made his argument strong.
23. Call on two students to identify which piece of evidence they’ve find supported
the speaker’s argument.
24. Thank you for sharing your work.
Today, we explored the essential question, should our society move toward
self-driving cars? We used the article to collect important information from the
text to form our argument. We were able to accomplish reaching today’s
objective, “I can use the information in the text to form my stance.”
25. The next time you form an argument, you can use the same strategy of collecting
information to form your argument.
26. Have the paper manager collect everyone’s work and hand it to me.

Adapted from Lesson Design template created by Katrin Oddleifson Robertson and Shannon Kurtz McGrath, 2010