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last.updated 12.2.07

Presentation 5–Abstracts

Denise

My presentation is intended for 9th grade students. The goal of this lesson is to familiarize my students with one of the elements of the short story in more depth by looking at it separately from the other elements. By presenting this assignment my students will understand how and why plot is so important to a story. The activity I am doing is to have my students read a short story and follow the directions of the writing assignment on the worksheet I will hand out to them in class dealing with plot. The assignment asks for my students to summarize in 200 words or less what happened in a specific story. After writing that they are to write another paragraph of the same length explaining if they missed any details. This lesson works with my entire unit so that when my students begin to compose their own short story they will pay particular attention to those simple details. I want my students to understand that no matter what a person is writing they are trying to get some type of point across to their audience. I want them to be able to put that point on paper and to make it real.

Heather

Writing in Creative and Visual Genres
The twelfth-grade students of Mrs. Floyd find themselves in Week 3, Day 6 of a unit in which they are learning how to create a Multi-Vocal Argument as their final project for the class. The class has already received lectures on audience, as well as lessons on academic and public genres, along with activities in writing in these genres. Today, students are learning how to compose in creative and visual genres. Because students will be required to write one piece from each genre to support their position on an issue or problem, students will also be taught how to unify their genres for the purposes of their project in today's class. This will be done by grasping the idea of one genre and converting it into another genre. Categorizing genres will help the students understand how different types of writing have different conventions and create different expectations for the reader.

The class will be divided into 4 groups, and I will distribute among them 2 poems and 2 menus which represent creative and the visual genres, respectively. After a discussion of audience, conventions, and expectations, I will instruct each group to take the main ideas and words from the poem or menu and use them to create writing in the form of a menu or poem. The students will share examples with the class.

By the end of the class, students will have practice working in groups to determine the main ideas in different types of genres, practice writing in another genre, and practice bringing the idea of one genre into another genre to make a point.

James

Three Types of Appeals in Persuasive Media

The following lesson is intended to be part of a unit on persuasive writing for 11 th grade English students. This lesson will take place as students are beginning to learn about persuasive media. In this lesson students will be learning about the three types of appeals (logos: logical; ethos: ethical; and pathos: emotional) used in persuasive media. By the end of the unit students will apply what they learn about persuasive media to a persuasive essay and a persuasive visual of their own creation.

After the instructor explains the three types of appeals, students will break into small groups to examine different varieties of persuasive media and identify what type of appeal is employed. The groups will designate one person to be writer, and will be responsible for writing down their group’s ideas. Another person will be designated presenter, and will present the groups findings at the end of the lesson. Students will consider whether the appeal used is the most appropriate and effective, or if another type of appeal would work better. At the end of the lesson groups will describe the media they analyzed and present their thoughts on it to the class.

Eileen

For my Pedagogical Presentation I will be teaching students about subject verb agreement. The lesson plan is intended for a ninth grade English class with ESL students integrated into the classroom. The particular part of the lesson I will be teaching is intended to act as a warmup, giving students a chance to review, ask questions, and practice subject verb agreement. This lesson plan will actually take place on the second day of the third week of the unit plan of writing a research paper. On this particular day students will be peer reviewing their rough drafts of the research paper, but before they begin peer review I will lecture on the topic of subject verb agreement because students seem to be having difficulties with the topic. Before the lecture I will provide students with a handout listing the key concepts about subject verb agreement to refer to during the lecture, peer review, and the future. After I have lectured on the topic of subject verb agreement, students will be given the opportunity to ask questions and then be given a worksheet that has students working on subject verb agreement. After students have completed the worksheet I will ask students to share there answers and go over the worksheet, explain why the answers are what they are when students are confused. After the warm up students will begin the peer review session.