Writing Lesson Plan Template

CAEP K-6 Standards

LESSON RATIONALE
This lesson is important because it allows students to be creative and find their own value in their
writing. Many times, writing becomes more about grammar and spelling and less about the
individual who is writing and what they can create in a story. The students will be focusing on
writing a character for a short story and what word choice they can use to help enhance that
character. The hope with this lesson is that it broadens their vocabulary while also encouraging
them to use self-expression in their writing.

READINESS
I. Goals/Objectives/Standard(s)
a. Goal: For the students to understand why word choice is so important in writing
and show the difference between a good word choice sentence and a bad one.
b. Objective:
i. Through the read aloud and modeling process, students will be able to
point out good, descriptive word choice of verbs and adjectives.
ii. In their characters, students will demonstrate their capabilities of using
good word choice.
c. Standards: 1.W.3.3 – Develop topics for stories or poems using precise words to
describe characters and actions and temporal words to signal event order, with
ideas organized into beginning, middle, and ending.
II. Management Plan:
a. Time: 1 hour and 30 minutes
i. Anticipatory set – 5 minutes
ii. Introduction – 5 minutes
iii. Read Aloud – 15 minutes
iv. Modeling and Practice – 25 minutes
v. Writing – 25 minutes
vi. Sharing/Understanding/Closure – 15 minutes
b. Space:
i. The front carpet
ii. Back table by teacher
iii. Their desks
c. Materials:
i. 4 jars with stuff in them
ii. Lilly’s Purple, Plastic, Purse by Kevin Henkes
iii. Writing pad
iv. White board markers
v. Paper and pencils
vi. List of good verbs with picture explanations
vii. List of good adjectives with picture explanations
viii. My character’s paragraph

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 d. Behavior
i. The students will be expected to listen and pay attention during the
learning, read aloud, and modeling time. I will be moving them from their
seats where they were during the anticipatory set so that should help.
ii. During the practice and writing time, I do not mind a little talking amongst
peers, but I do not want that to be hindering them writing. The talking
should be at a minimum and only if help is needed.
iii. During the writing conferences, I expect cooperation with me and patience
when I am talking to someone else in the group. I will have my light on
which means anyone who is not in the group is allowed to come up and
talk to me.
iv. For the last part, the students should be at least willing to share some
about their character and I will be walking around to make sure they do.

PLAN FOR INSTRUCTION

Adaptation to Individual Differences and Diverse Learners:
o I have a student that struggles heavily with writing and is at a kindergarten level in
that area. I make myself as available as I can so I can help him with his writing.
During the conference time I will put him in the last group and hold him back during
the extra five minutes so he can tell me what he wants to write about his character,
and I can help him write it.
o I have a student with ADHD in the classroom and I know how much he struggles
with moving around and talking. I try to have the students up and moving places as
much as I can. I will have him be one of my students who gets to put their hand in my
jars, and I allow minimal talking so that he can process things fluently for his writing
and not feel restricted in that way.

I. Lesson Presentation (Input/Output)

o Minilesson (Whole Group)
 Anticipatory Set
 I will set four different jars on a table in the front of the room.
They are painted black so the students cannot see what is inside
and I have the lids on them. I will let them look at the with
curiosity for a second. Hmm… what do you think are in the jars? I
expect raised hands, but you can have as many guesses as you like
until I say otherwise. I will give them about a minute or two to
randomly guess what could possibly be in my mystery jars. Man,
you all had so many great guesses, but I not going to tell you what
is in the jars, I’m going to have you classmates tell you. Here is
how this is going to work. I am going to call on two different
people to pick two of the jars to open. They will get to look in the
jar and then stick their hand in the jar. But they have to get you
guys to guess what is in the jar, they ARE NOT allowed to just tell
you. They will have to be wise about what words they use and how
they describe it because they only get thirty seconds to describe
before the other students need to guess what’s inside. I will explain

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 it a little further if it is still a little confusing to them and then I will
choose a student to come up to the front. The contents of each jar
will be cotton balls, gummy worms, honey, and rocks. Once the
guessing games is over, I will ask the students who came up if it
was hard to describe what they were looking at and feeling. Then I
will ask the rest of the students if they thought their descriptions
were good. Sometimes it is really hard to find the right words for
what we want to express and that can be frustrating at times,
especially when speaking or writing. We want to be able to give
others a great visual of what we could be talking about.
 Purpose Statement
 Today, we will be focusing on word choice! Great word choice
allows us to give fun and exciting experiences to others through
writing. These experiences are important and valuable and being
able to share that with others and see them enjoy what we write is
why word choice is so important.
 Introduce Trait
 Word Choice is the process of finding and having words that, in
writing, create a lifelike picture, of the story, to the reader. It is
like you are able to watch a movie in your head because the words
are so descriptive and clear.
 Books, stories, and poems do an amazing job at painting the story
or characters for us just from the words they use. They are able to
put you into the story.
 Share Examples (Short Text/Read Aloud)
 Lilly’s Purple, Plastic, Purse by Kevin Henkes (read on the carpet)
o In this book the author uses many different words to help
us understand his main character Lilly and the story she is
a part of. I will read the book out loud to the students and
point out phrases with amazing word choice.
 “And she loves the way her boots went clickety-
clickety-click down the long shiny hallways.”
 “And he always provided the most tasty snacks –
things that were curly and crunchy and cheesy”
 “When all the students were buttoned and zipped
and snapped and tied and ready to go home, Mr.
Slinger strolled over to Lilly”
o When pointing out these sentences and many more to the
students I will say things like: Isn’t this much better than
saying “and she loves the way her boots sounded in the
hallway”. I want them to see how much more exciting it is
to read the first way rather than the other way I showed.
 Other Example books:
o A Bad Case of Stripes by David Shannon
o Food Fight! By Carol Diggory Shields

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  Provide Information (Modeling still at the carpet)
 To help us find these strong words to use in our writing I like to
use FAAVS. FAAVS is the short way of saying I like to use
figurative language, Adjectives that sparkle, adverbs that shine,
verbs that strengthen, and sense words that sizzle. Today though
we will only focus on adjectives that sparkle and verbs that
strengthen since we know these well already. Let’s start with
adjectives that sparkle. I will write down a sentence that is very
simple. “Juliette walked down the street.” Now we know that an
adjective helps make a noun more exciting so I think I will help out
the noun “street” to help make the sentence sparkle. I add creepy
in front of the word street. Now my sentence says, “Juliette walked
down the creepy street.” Doesn’t that already sound better? Okay!
Now I will find a verb that strengthens. I know that verbs are the
actions of the sentence so I have to use “walked” and I think for it
to fit well with a creepy street Juliette should probably be
“sprinting” down the creepy street. So now my sentence has
turned from “Juliette walked down the street” to “Juliette sprinted
down the creepy street.”
 Now it is your turn to do it with me. Here is the new sentence:
“Mom is cooking dinner.” I will have the students help me find an
adjective that sparkles and a verb that strengthens so we can have
better word choice in that sentence as well. Once we have done
that together I will have them practice a sentence by themselves.
 Supervise Practice
 I will have the students sit back down at their desks for the last
practice and I will have the sentence I want them to change on the
whiteboard. The sentence will be “She opened the door.” I want
you all to practice finding a better word choice for words in this
sentence. You will be working on your own, not with a partner. I
want you each to create your own sentence that you are proud of.
While they are working, I will be walking around to help and make
sure they are doing it correctly.
 When they have finished the sentence, if they finished early, I will
have them write another one following the same guidelines. They
can make the sentence as creative and descriptive as they want.
Then when everyone is done with at least the first sentence, I will
have a few students share and then have them all hand their
sentences in to me.
o Writing
 Now we are going to be creating characters for aback to school story.
Your character can be however you want them to be. They can be a good
swimmer, they could love to dance or play basketball, but I need to see
good word choice in your adjectives and verbs. I want to know what your
character is like and how they act. I need to be able to picture them in my
head like we talked about. Today we are just working on creating the

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 characters and using our good adjectives and verbs to do so. Tomorrow
we will expand on the characters you created.
 I will read them the small paragraph I wrote about the character I created
and tell them why I chose the words that I did and how it helped my
character come to life. Once I have done that, I will hand out the papers
they will write their characters on. I will have adjective and verb ideas on
the board for students to use if they wish to. In about 5 minutes I will start
calling you back to my corner by your rows to help with creating your
characters and making sure that everything is making sense to you. I will
start with the front left row and work my way around to each row.
 I will meet with students in groups of six combining their table rows to see
where they are in their writing and to ease any frustrations that come with
it. The students sit in rows of two or three desks. I would have to meet
with three different groups, but I will meet with each for at least 5 minutes
on the first day of this assignment just to make sure that everything is
understood and to make sure they start the assignment correctly. Once I
have gone through everyone, I will give 5 more minutes of work time then
have them stop.
o Sharing (Table rows)
 These character paragraphs will be turned into a back to school story, so I
do not want the students to think that they are behind if they hadn’t
finished on their character.
 I will have the students focus on me at the front again and say that we
have a little bit of time to share. I do not want everybody to hear about
everyone else’s characters, so I will have the students share within their
rows. Then I will have them put their paragraphs in their writing folders.

II. Check for understanding.

a. I will call the class back together and ask them a few questions about the topic for
today. Now that we have had practice making exciting and engaging sentences
can anyone tell me what we used to help us do so? Please raise your hand if you
think you know. The teacher will allow time for students to think and answer. Now
can anyone tell me why these are so important? Talk to each other first if you
need help. The teacher will allow time for collaboration on the answer and time
for someone to answer for the whole class.
VIII. Review learning outcomes / Closure
This is a weeklong assignment so the students will pull out their paragraphs to strengthen them
later on in the week and they will be adding on to the paragraph when we talk more about the
topic of the story the character is in.
You all did a great job today getting started on creating such amazing characters. Throughout
the week we will continue to pull out that paragraph to make it better and to add the story onto
it. By the end of the week we will have a fun story that all your characters are in and I am going
to make it into a book. We will get to see just how great and fun our word choice really was.

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PLAN FOR ASSESSMENT
Formative: The teacher will be watching how the students work and use their adjectives and
verbs both when they are working with the teacher and when they are working on their own. The
teacher will be walking around observing the students and making sure they are working on what
they should be doing. The teacher will also use the conferences to have a more individualized
understanding of where each student is and what they need help on.
Summative: There is no specific summative assessment in this lesson. The student will be
creating fun stories out of the characters they make later on in the week and that will be turned
into a fun book for the class. That overall end project would be the summative assessment.

REFLECTION AND POST-LESSON ANALYSIS

1. How many students achieved the lesson objective(s)? For those who did not, why not?
2. What were my strengths and weaknesses?
3. How should I alter this lesson?
4. How would I pace it differently?
5. Were all students actively participating? If not, why not?
6. What adjustments did I make to reach varied learning styles and ability levels?
7. How affective was the read aloud? Did the students seem to understand the difference
between the good word choice sentence and the not so good word choice sentence I
gave?
8. What did I learn from the writing conferences? Would I continue them and do them the
same way I did for this lesson?