Taylor Fasseel

Prof. Tigchelaar
LLT 307
4 April 2016
Rationale
For my lesson, the students are drawing a character from the novel, The Catcher in the
Rye, and describing their characteristics, and interactions with other characters that move the plot
forward. When coming up with this lesson, I looked at the objectives for English Language Arts
for 9-12 graders because I plan to teach high school English classes in the future, and I thought it
would be interesting to talk about the constructions of characters in certain novels. The activities
that I picked for the lesson are creative and hands-on, which were the main reasons that I picked
these activities, and they also connect to the real-world through the journal prompt in the
beginning of the lesson. I also decided these would be productive activities because it gives the
students a chance to speak, listen, and write with each other. It also gives them an opportunity to
work with groups and then individually, which is important for language development (SIOP).
This allows for students to be able to work with students that have greater skill abilities than
them, which they can benefit from to grow their own skills. The group work allows for students
to have many different forms of input from different students, the novel itself, and then myself.
When they are talking to their peers, the input is comprehensible because for the most part these
students are on the same level or close to it, and it is meaningful because I have created the
assignment so that it relates to their own lives and how to use a novel to understand society better
(Lee & VanPatten 2003).

For this lesson, the activities order from classroom discussion to table discussion to
individual work, and I chose to start with a brainstorming class discussion because I felt that it
would be the best way to include ESL students and get them thinking about characteristics like
stated in the article by Barbra Kroll. I thought it would be too overwhelming for students to just
jump from the novel to representing characters, and I thought that the students would benefit
from generating multiple ideas before picking what to represent on their character (Kroll 2001).
A lot of the activities include the students being social with one another, because it involves a lot
of group work, which could be very beneficial to the students in the learning styles of social
(Oxford 2009). The final activity can be good for introverted learners as well though because
they are able to complete the project individually without working in a group (Oxford 2009). Im
hoping by offering a wide range of learning styles, and environments that the students will feel
comfortable and better able to learn the information.
If I continued this lesson in a unit it would lead to writing a paper on the topic of
characters in this particular novel, and it seems like the final project of todays lesson would
really help the students to be able to easily construct an essay off of this visual. I grouped
students for the activities by their tables, which combine students of weaker skill set with
students that are stronger to help balance when working on group projects. Im able to assess the
student learning by collecting the worksheets the the groups complete, and then seeing the final
piece. This allows me the chance to compare to see where they have made improvements, and
see student learning happening. I can also circulate and join in the group discussions to
contribute to understanding the students progress. I created this lesson because I thought it
would be interactive, and fun, which is what always helped me as a language learner to be
interested in learning. Overall, my reasoning for doing this lesson is it allows for students to be

creative and hands-on while including all the different important aspects of language learning
such as speaking, listening, and writing with various helping strategies like working with
students of higher levels.