becoming a teacher: 4th grade- teaching plot Crazy Hair Day by Barney Saltzberg

Name: Emma Swartz

Lesson 1 of 1

Grade: 4^th grade

Topic: plot

Purpose:

Teacher Purpose: The Michigan GLCEs for fourth grade require that teachers present their students with a variety of pre-writing strategies to help their students be successful in their writing. The Michigan GLCEs also require fourth grade teachers to help their students come to an understanding of plot, conflict, and resolution work in a narrative text. Using these skills will help students be successful while analyzing and creating narrative texts.

Student Benefit: During their educational careers, students will be called upon to analyze and respond to narrative texts as well as produce works of writing of their own. Having an understanding of plot and seeing how a story progresses from exposition and the initial conflict through the rising action and climax to the resolution will help students to better understand and analyze these stories. In addition, coupled with a variety of effective prewriting strategies, this understanding will help students organize and create narrative texts of their own.

Objectives:

· After reading Crazy Hair Day by Barney Saltzberg, students will be able to make a timeline using at least eight events from the story.

· Students will be able to label their timeline according to exposition, conflict, rising action, climax, and resolution.

· Students will be able to use events from their timeline to make a diary about Stanley’s crazy hair day.

· Students will be able to orally describe at least one of their journal entries to the class.

Lesson Allignment

Michigan Grade Level Content Expectations:

R.NT. 04.03 – analyze character’s thoughts and motication through dialogue, various character roles, and functions including hero, anit-hero, or narrator; know first person point of view and identify conflict and resolution.

W.PR.04.02 – apply a variety of pre-writing strategies for both narrative and informational writing (e.g. graphic organizers) in order to generate, sequence, and structure ideas (e.g. plot, conflict/ resolutions, or chronological sequence).

Culturally Responisve Instruction:

Special Needs: Accommodations and Modifications for students with special needs can be found in the “Special Needs” section of this lesson plan.

Grading Plan: Rubric and grading scale for this lesson can be found in the “Teacher Grading Plan” section of this lesson plan.

Bloom’s Taxonomy Level Achieved: Synthesis

Content Focus: g. Content focus allows all students to develop skills related to inquiry (i.e. developing quality questions, procession information, conducting investigations, problem solving, and/or location information through the use of technology.)

Materials: c. Materials are chosen to accommodate and develop a wide variety of approaches to learning (visual, auditory, tactile, musical, verbal, spatial, etc.)

Vocabulary:

· exposition- the part at the beginning of the story that introduces the reader to the character(s), setting(s), and conflict

· conflict- the main problem or dilemma in the story that the main character(s) have to figure out how to deal with

· rising action- the part of the story between the exposition and climax where the character(s) are trying to solve their problem, or conflict

· climax- the most intense part of a story when the character(s) is/are facing a turning point

· resolution- the point at the end of the story when the character(s) have figured out how to solve their problem

· diary- a place where people write down their thoughts and feelings about things that are happening to them

· first person point of view – a way of telling a story where the narrator is one of the characters and tells about how they see and think and feel about the events in the story

Materials Needed:

· Crazy Hair Day by Barney Saltzberg

· copy of image showing a plot line (Freytag Pyramid)

· notebook paper

· white printer paper

· stapler

· crayons

· markers

· colored pencils

· copies of filler activity

Teacher Preparation:

· find/make and print copy of dramatic plot line

· write and print directions for diary activity

· make filler activity coloring sheet

· print enough filler activities for the class

· make enough diaries for the students by taking 6 sheets of white printer paper, folding it in half horizontally, and stapling down the middle

· gather crayons, markers, pencils, etc. for students to use when making their diaries

Anticipatory Set:

When students come in, I will be wearing a multicolored clown wig. When they laugh or ask me questions about it, I will ask them why it is funny and ask them why I shouldn’t wear this kind of wig. We will have a brief discussion about what they expect their teacher’s or classmates’ hair to look like and why they have these expectations. We will talk about why teachers and students are expected to look a certain way. Finally, we will discuss when would be an appropriate time to have a silly hairdo and briefly reflect on past crazy hair days.

Lesson Body:

1. Read Crazy Hair Day by Barney Saltzberg aloud to the class.

2. After reading the story, have students get out a blank piece of notebook paper, turn it to the horizontal layout, and draw a timeline across the page as I draw a timeline on the board.

3. Ask students to raise their hand if they can tell me an event from the story.

4. After each event is stated, students will mark that event on their timeline as I mark it on the timeline on the board.

5. After all or most of the events (10-12) from the story are on the timeline, I will tell the students that we are going to classify these events according to whether they happen during the exposition, conflict, rising action, climax, or resolution.

6. Define conflict and give an example from a familiar story or movie.

7. Ask students to raise their hands if they think they know which event(s) would fall under the conflict.

8. After students have identified the correct event, I will have them mark it on their timeline as I mark it on the board by place a vertical line on either side of the event(s) and writing “CONFLICT” between the two lines.

9. I will follow steps 6-8 for resolution, exposition, climax, and rising action.

10. After the timelines have been filled out and labeled, I will tell the students that we are going to use the events on the timeline to make a diary for Stanley Birdbaum.

11. Define diary.

12. Give directions for Stanley’s diary: “We are going to make a diary for Stanley the day he accidentally came to school with crazy hair on picture day. Now, most people only write in their diary once a day, but we are going to pretend that Stanley wrote in his diary several times on his crazy hair day.

a. So, you are going to need more than one entry. You will need at least 8 entries in your journal. One entry will take place during the exposition. One entry will be from the time of the conflict. You will need four entries that take place during the rising action. One diary entry will need to describe the climax. Finally, there will need to be one diary entry for the resolution.

b. Each diary entry should be at least 3-4 sentences long and describe what Stanley is thinking and feeling.

c. Just like a normal diary, these events should be in the diary in the order that they occurred in the book. (It might be helpful for you to brain storm first on a separate sheet to choose your events and put them in order.)

d. Remember, you are supposed to be writing this diary as though you are Stanley, so it should be written in the first person point of view

i. Define first person point of view.

e. Also, Stanley has a very active imagination and likes to draw and make up songs, so your diary entries need to be creative. At least three diary entries need to have a picture or drawing. One entry needs to be written like a poem or a song set to a familiar tune. Finally one diary entry should be written like a letter to another character in the book which asks them questions about how they reacted and tells them how he would have like them to react.

13. Ask students if they have any questions.

14. Tell students they will have about 20 minutes to work on their diary and give them 10 minute, 5 minute, and 1 minute warnings.

15. Tell students they can work on the filler activity if they finish early.

16. When there is about 10 minutes left in the period, ask students to stop working and ask for volunteers to share one of their journal entries.

17. Tell students that if they did not finish their diary, they will need to complete it for homework at home or during free time.

Filler:

If students finish their diary early, they can complete a coloring page that has them design a crazy hairdo. Students will have the option of designing a hair do for a boy or for a girl. (See attached coloring sheets.)

Closure

After several students have shared an entry from their diary, we will do a quick review of the lesson. I will ask students to raise their hands if they can define and give an example of each of the terms relating to the plot and which order they go in. I will tell students that we did this activity to show how stories progress so they can better understand how events can cause or lead to each other. Explain that knowing this will also help them write their own stories, just like it helped them write the diary, in the future.

Teacher Grading Plan:

Grading Rubric:

Student’s Name:	Excellent: 3 points	Good: 2 points	Needs Work: 1 point
Timeline: includes at least 10 events from the story	Timeline contains 10+ events from the story listed in class	Timeline contains 7-9 events from the story that we listed in class	Timeline contains 6 or fewer events from the story that we listed in class
Timeline: events are in order and labeled according to place in plot (conflict, climax, resolution, etc.)	All 10 events are in the order that they appeared in the book and labeled correctly	7-9 events are in order and labeled correctly	6 or fewer events are labeled correctly and in the order they appeared in the book
Diary: contains at least 8 entries that are 3-4 sentences long	Contains all 8 entries of 3-4 sentences in length	Contains only 5-7 entries that are the correct length	Contains 4 or fewer diary entries that are 3-4 sentences in length
Diary: entries appear in the order that they appeared in the book and are labeled by climax, exposition, etc.	No entries are out of order	1-3 entries are out of order	4 or more entries are out of order
Diary: followed directions regarding 3 pictures, poem/ song, and letter	Completed all 5 of this directions	Completed 3 or 4 of these directions	Completed 1 or 2 of these directions
Diary: entries are written from the first person point of view	All 8 entries are written from first person point of view	5-7 entries are written from the first person point of view	4 or fewer entries are written in the first person point of view

18-17 points = A

15-16 points = B

13-14 points = C

11-12 points = D

9 -10 points = F

Special Needs Accommodations and Modifications:

Jimmy: During the timeline activity, I will frequently look over at Jimmy and prompt him to make sure he is filling out his timeline. As students work on their diaries, I will walk around the room, occasionally walking by Jimmy to make sure he is on task. I will occasionally ask him to explain to me what he is doing in the diary to help him focus on the task. Like the rest of the students, he will have a copy of the directions so he can make sure he is completing everything he needs to, and I will help him go through and check off as he completes the tasks. I will show him an example diary so he can make sure his is set up correctly. I will allow Jimmy to stand up and stretch if he is feeling antsy or needs to refocus. Several warnings will be given before switching to the next activity.

Sarah: Sarah will only be required to have 6 of the 10 events on her timeline and will only be required to complete 5 journal entries. Her journal entries will only have to be 1-2 sentences. She will only be required to do 2 drawings and one letter rather than three drawings, a poem/ song, and a letter. After giving directions to the whole class, I will come and reread them individually with Sarah and make sure she is not confused. She will not have to classify her diary entries, but they should be in order. Send note home to parents/guardians informing them of the assignment and how to help Sarah complete it. Encourage Sarah to ask the teacher or another student for help.

-filler activities-

Crazy Hair Day!

Help Susie by styling her hair for crazy hair day. The crazier the better!