Spring 2016

Sem I-ECED372

LESSON PLAN OUTLINE

JMU Elementary Education Program
Brianna Carroll
Teacher: Mrs. Truslow
Grade: Kindergarten
School: Clymore elementary school
Date lesson is presented: 3/23/2016
Date of lesson plan submission: 3/16/2016
TITLE OF LESSON If I had a magic seed
CONTEXT OF LESSON

Why is this activity appropriate for your children at this time? This activity is appropriate for the
children at this time because they are learning how to write from left to write and learning how
to write proper sentences. The students will also be learning sentence structure, i.e. capital
letters, punctuation, spacing, etc.
What have you observed that indicates your childrens readiness, interest, or need for this
activity? After observing the classroom, the children have been practicing writing on their own
and reading from left to right, which gives me an indication that they are ready for this activity.
How does this lesson fit in the curriculum sequence? This lesson fits the curriculum sequence
because the children are currently learning about plants and seeds, which is the theme of this
lesson while also including a literacy lesson.
OBJECTIVES AND ASSESSMENT
Developmental Objectives
1. The students will start their sentence
with a capital, use correct spacing, and
end their sentence with a period.

Assessment
I will first give the students time to write their sentences. I
will then go around and read each of the childrens
sentences while they are coloring. I will ask, What did you
write about the magic seed? and if I see there are errors,
then I will correct the student and ask them to try again. I
will give the students a reminder, such as Remember to
start your sentence with a capital and end with a period!
and see if the can do this on their own as well.

2. The students will write on the paper

from left to right.

I will first give the students a reminder to write form left to right, such as
Remember, when we write sentences we write form left to right Since
the students are still young and learning how to write properly. I will then
observe the children as they write, making sure they are starting on the
left side of the paper and writing all the way to the right. I will record this
onto my data collection instrument.
Page
1

Spring 2016
Sem I-ECED372

3. The students will sound out the words

on their own

I will observe the children writing out the words on their own, and if I see
some of them struggling with a word I will help them sound out the
words on their own. I will note the students who are using sight words
and are able to write complete sentences.

COLLECTION OF ASSESSMENT DATA

Students name

Objective #1: The

students will start
their sentence with
a capital letter, use
correct spacing, and
end their sentence
with a period. (In
this column, just
put a check if the
student completed
the task.)

Objective #2: The

students will write
on the paper from
left to right. (In this
column just make a
check whether the
students were able
to write form left to
write on the paper)

Capital letter:__

Yes:__

Correct spacing:__

No:__

Gracelynn

Period:__

Raymie
Capital letter:__

Yes:__

Correct spacing:__

No:__

Period:__

Kinley
Capital letter:__

Yes:__

Correct spacing:__

No:__
Page
2

Objective #3: The

students will sound
out the words on
their own. (In this
column, write down
any words the
student has sounded
out on their own).

Behavioral
indicators

Spring 2016
Sem I-ECED372

Period:__

Gabe
Capital letter:__

Yes:__

Correct spacing:__

No:__

Period:__

Evie
Capital letter:__

Yes:__

Correct spacing:__

No:__

Period:__

Isaiah
Capital letter:__

Yes:__

Correct spacing:__

No:__

Period:__

Madison
Capital letter:__

Yes:__

Correct spacing:__

No:__

Period:__
Page
3

Spring 2016
Sem I-ECED372

Gaven
Capital letter:__

Yes:__

Correct spacing:__

No:__

Period:__
Lennon
Capital letter:__

Yes:__

Correct spacing:__

No:__

Period:__

Dougie
Capital letter:__

Yes:__

Correct spacing:__

No:__

Period:__

Bo
Capital letter:__

Yes:__

Correct spacing:__

No:__

Period:__
Kelsey
Capital letter:__

Yes:__
Page
4

Spring 2016
Sem I-ECED372

Correct spacing:__

No:__

Period:__
Trevor
Capital letter:__

Yes:__

Correct spacing:__

No:__

Period:__
Brenna
Capital letter:__

Yes:__

Correct spacing:__

No:__

Period:__

Michael
Capital letter:__

Yes:__

Correct spacing:__

No:__

Period:__

Tessa
Capital letter:__

Yes:__

Correct spacing:__

No:__

Period:__
Page
5

Spring 2016
Sem I-ECED372

Bethany
Capital letter:__

Yes:__

Correct spacing:__

No:__

Period:__
Carter
Capital letter:__

Yes:__

Correct spacing:__

No:__

Period:__

Faith
Capital letter:__

Yes:__

Correct spacing:__

No:__

Period:__

RELATED VIRGINIA STANDARDS OF LEARNING (K & 1) OR FOUNDATION BLOCKS (Preschool)

K.11 The student will print in manuscript.

11.
1.

a) Print uppercase and lowercase letters of the alphabet independently.

12. K.12 The student will write to communicate ideas for a variety of purposes.
1.

b) Draw pictures and/or use letters and phonetically spelled words to write about experiences.
Page
6

Spring 2016
Sem I-ECED372
2.

c) Use letters and beginning consonant sounds to spell phonetically words to describe pictures
or write about experiences.

3.

d) Write left to right and top to bottom.

MATERIALS NEEDED
Paper- I plan to make copies of the paper in the school
Pencil- I plan to use the pencils in the school
Crayons- I plan to use the crayons in the school
Instruction cards- I will be bringing the instruction cards
Phone/camera- I will be using my phone to take pictures
PROCEDURE

Preparation of learning environment- I will set up the activity by having the papers
laid out in front of the students at each chairs and then having pencils next to the paper as well. There will be a
separate stack of plain papers and crayons next to me for the students when they are finished writing their
sentence. I will have cards laid out giving directions of what to do, which will include making up ideas of what
to do with the magic seed, writing it down on paper, and then if there is time color a picture of what you came up
with.
Engagement and introduction of the lesson- First I will start out with introducing my
name, I will then ask the students what seeds are and what they grow, such as I know you all have been learning
about plants and seeds, can anyone raise their hand and tell me what you do with a seed? What kinds of things
grow out of a seed? I will then pick a couple students to tell me a few things about seeds. I plan on having the
children raise their hands for each question, that way I can hear each students thoughts clearly without children
talking over one another. Then, I will ask what they think a magic seed will grow; such as If you had a magic
seed, what do you think would grow? Where would you plant this magic seed?
Implementation of the lesson- After the discussion on the magic seeds, I will have the
students write down their thoughts on the magic seeds. I will say, I have heard many great ideas about what you
all would do with a magic seed! Now, I want everyone to take their great ideas and write down what they came
up with on the sheet of paper in front of you. You can write one sentence, or a few words about what would grow
on the sheet of paper. Remember, when writing on paper we must write from the left side of the paper, to the
right! Or something of the sort.
Closure- To transition to the next activity, I will use the transition the students are most
familiar with, which is the Class Class! Yes Yes! transition. I will ask each student to share what he or she
came up with either in their drawing or their written sentence. I will make comments on each of the childs
drawings, pointing out certain words they used or their sentence structure and creativity. For example, I love
how this student used the new sight word! And this student did a great job on sounding out this word! etc.
Clean-up I will say the transition, then tell the students to hand in their work and put
their drawings in their cubbies if they wanted to, and then move on to the next station.
DIFFERENTIATION

Page
7

Spring 2016
Sem I-ECED372

The students are split up into five different reading level groups. For levels 1 and 2, I will have them write
only one sentence. Making sure that they write using the proper format. For level 3, I will have them write
1-2 sentences. So, if they can write another sentence then they can, but they can also only write one and it
will be acceptable. For groups 4 and 5, I will have them write 2 or more sentences, and will push them
more to write higher level sight words, such as colors.
WHAT COULD GO WRONG WITH THIS LESSON AND WHAT WILL YOU DO ABOUT IT?
Students could possibly not have any ideas of their own of what the seed could grow, so I would tell the
students they could write down some of the ideas we discussed as a group or come up with a new one on
their own. Also, the students could start writing on the paper before I tell them to, which is why I will
remind them before I start the activity to not touch the paper until I tell them. Student may not be able to
spell certain words, so I will tell the children if they need help with anything then to just ask me and I will
help them sound out any word they need help with. There could be children who speak out of turn, and I
will just remind them to raise their hand before speaking such as Is your hand raised? just so that the
students are not talking over top of each other.

Lesson Plan Reflection

The lesson differed from my actual plans because a lot of the students seemed to be unsure of what to
write about. I found myself giving examples to a lot of the children or they copied what someone else said. Also,
I planned on having the children in the upper levels write two or more sentences, though only a couple could
Page
8

Spring 2016
Sem I-ECED372

write more than two which made me believe this was too difficult for this age group. I also planned to tell the
students to write with a capital at the beginning, space their letters, and to put a period at the end. Though, I
decided not to do that and see if the children could do it on their own, and if they forgot then I would ask them
whether what they wrote was a capital letter or not, what goes at the end of a sentence, etc. Once I asked them,
then they would know to correct it. The changes I made to the lesson plan was the objectives, because they were
easy to determine in this time of year. My old objective was can the student think of their own ideas? and I
changed it to can the student sound out words on their own. I change the objective to this because I know
every student in the class is working on sounding out sight words and spelling. This objective seemed more age
appropriate for the children than my original one. Also, I used different paper than what I originally planned. I
used the paper that the children use in class, because they are used to it and I did not want to confuse them or
have them be mixed up with different paper than usual. Everything else went as planned for this lesson plan.
From my data, I can see that students were able to do most of the objectives, even at the lowest reading
level. From my data sheet, I can see that most of the children in the lower reading level had forgotten to put a
period or forgot to put a capital letter and did not sound out as many words as the highest reading level.
Forgetting periods and capital letters began to happen around reading level 3, unless I helped them to correct it.
One particular student needed help from the teacher for spacing and putting a period, which was in the lowest
reading level. Also, I can see that many of the children sounded out seed when writing out their sentences. They
also tried to sound out magic, which is a difficult word for this age group so they did a good job at sounding this
word out themselves. Another difficult letter most of them tried to sound out was bean stalk which they tried
their best to sound out. I did not stress on the students getting these words correct when writing sentences, for
these are hard words for kindergarten. One student said to me what does uh say? Though, I do find it good
that they were sounding out words that they have never spelled before, and it gave them an opportunity to
practice their spelling. Some students were very vocal when sounding out their words, while others were very
quiet which made it hard to determine whether they were sounding them out correctly. All of the students were
Page
9

Spring 2016
Sem I-ECED372

able to complete the write from left to right on paper, which makes me believe that this objective may have been
too easy for the students. Although, the children did seem on task for this activity and they all knew to complete
their sentence before they could draw their picture. For most of the activity, if the children were having trouble
or completing a task wrong I would ask them what they thought. For example, a girl asked me what sound a
certain letter made, and I asked her what word she was trying to spell instead of giving her the answer and she
instantly knew how to spell it.
If I were to do this lesson again with a different class, I would give the students certain sight words to
use in their sentence. Most of the students tried to use words that they were not able to spell because it was too
hard and they had not learned how to spell them yet, such as bean stalk or person. Although, most of the
students did a good job with trying to spell the words that they had not tried to spell before. I would vary the
words depending on the group. For example, I know that the higher-level group knows how to spell colors so I
would tell them to include at least one color in their sentence. I also believe this would help the students think of
more ideas to write about, since some of them struggled to think of what to spell or write in their sentence.
Giving them a little bit of guidance for this activity could be beneficial to their learning. I would praise the
students more when they try to spell and sound out certain words that we had not gone over in class, rather than
telling them they spelled the word wrong.
For the follow up experience, I would talk about what each student wrote about. I would say many
students wrote about a beanstalk, and go over how to spell that word. I would also go over what goes at the
beginning and end of a sentence, since many of them did not complete that task. I would then have the students
write another sentence, but using certain words in their sentence so they can have ideas to write and they can
write words that they know how to sound out correctly.
Something I learned about the children in the classroom is that the levels can vary through the class.
There was certainly a distinct difference between each of the groups, for some of the students were able to write
full sentence and other could only write down a couple words. As mentioned in chapter 11 in the Morrison
Page
10

Spring 2016
Sem I-ECED372

textbook, to create a challenging learning environment for children a teacher must use diverse and appropriate
teaching approaches to provide meaningful learning opportunities for each child and be knowledgeable of
childrens academic, social, and cultural backgrounds. I feel that because I did not know these students or any of
their backgrounds, it was hard to determine exactly how they work and how to help or challenge each individual
student. I believe knowing each child and their background can be extremely beneficial when it comes to
teaching.
Something I learned about teaching is that organization and planning is an essential aspect. The lesson
plan and activity took a lot of thought, time, and thinking to come up with. There are many things to consider
when planning a lesson that one would not think of, such as objectives for the students, thinking about what is
developmentally appropriate, differentiate for each child, what could go wrong with the activity, etc. Also, I also
learned that the objectives need to be developmentally appropriate, not too easy and not too hard. They need to
be able to determine where each child should be at the time of year in the school year in order to get good data. I
will apply this new knowledge through my future lesson plans not only as a practicum student, but as a teacher.
Also, differentiation is an important aspect of planning a lesson, for not every student learns the same. It was
very evident form the start that each student learned exceptionally different than one another. Some students
were very vocal in how they were sounding out words, while others were more reserved. For future lessons, I
think I need to be more considerate of the students who are more quiet, so I can see where they are
developmentally and help them with spelling words and other work in the classroom. Also, I learned that
teachers need to prepare for the worst. If there is a student who is breaking down, knowing how to handle that
student in a certain situation is important. Not only does it distract the other students, but it hinders the students
learning as well. For future opportunities, I will work on figuring out how to handle situations as such.
Something I learned about myself is that I need to learn how to deal with a child who is having a melt
down. I had one student who melted down during my activity because he did not know how to spell a certain
word. I tried to help him spell the word, but he just kept saying that he could not do it. I was unsure of what to do
Page
11

Spring 2016
Sem I-ECED372

in the situation, which makes me feel that I need more experience in working with children while they have a
melt down. Also, I learned that I need to make sure to give each and every student the same attention, and not
just the out going students. At the beginning of the activity, there were two girls sitting in front of me and one
boy sitting to the side who I had not paid much attention to, though towards then end I made sure to go around to
each student and ask how their work was going. I feel that through experience, I will learn to give each student
the same amount of attention as one another.

Page
12