Since we are currently studying the Civil War in social studies, I wanted to get on board with the Marzano lesson plan assignment! The following lesson/unit plan demonstrates several of the strategies and procedures that are mentioned in our assigned text, Classrooom Instruction that Works. I have underlined key words and phrases that are directly connected to concepts in the book. Sorry this posting is so long....I don’t know how to attach a word document in a blog. So...I’ll be the guinea pig with the mile-long post, and if someone knows how to do attach a document, maybe they can share for future reference.
Lesson Plan- Freedom Crossing Unit Outline
Background:
We are currently learning about slavery and its impact on the start of the Civil War. During this unit, we are learning about what life was like as a slave and about people who were influential in fighting against slavery. This topic is one that is fairly easy to connect to other content areas. For example, I included words such as “abolitionist” and “Underground Railroad” on our spelling list, we are writing an eyewitness account about life as a slave, and for social studies we are making foldables (graphic organizers made out of construction paper) that highlight the contributions of Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, and Abraham Lincoln to the ending of slavery. For this lesson plan, I am focusing on the cross-curricular connection to literature, specifically to the book Freedom Crossing by Margaret Goff Clark. Since this book obviously is not read in its entirety in one day, I am summarizing the strategies and procedures that we engage in throughout the unit.
Objectives:
Students will be able to visualize what life was like as a runaway slave and as a person who helped slaves on the Underground Railroad.
- Students will be able to identify key people who were influential in the fight against slavery (i.e., Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass).
- Students will demonstrate reading/content comprehension as they complete daily assignments in their literature response journals.
Materials:
- One copy of Freedom Crossing for each student
- Reading response journal for each student
Procedures:
- Provide a pacing guide for the book Freedom Crossing so that students are reading approximately 15-20 pages per day.
- At the beginning of the unit, introduce the book to the class. Make predictions based on the cover picture, and review background knowledge about what we have been discussing in social studies.
- With each day’s reading assignment, determine if the section will be read as a class, independently, with partners, or in small groups.
- At the conclusion of each day’s reading, students are assigned to complete an entry in their literature journals. Entries vary each day and include the following:
- Illustration: Students draw a picture about what they visualized in their minds during the day’s reading. The picture includes enough detail that another person can recognize which part of the story it is. This is a form of nonlinguistic representation that encourages comprehension.
- Passage Picker: Students identify two passages that they thought were important to the selection. They cite the page number, copy the passage into their journals, and provide reasoning as to why they chose those passages.
- Connections: Students connect the text to either their own experiences (text-to-self), another story (text-to-text), or to events in the world (text-to-world). In doing so, they are required to internalize the information and identify similarities between the book and applications beyond the book.
- Questioning: Students write four questions based on the day’s reading. Two of the questions are lower level questions that would assess basic comprehension, and answers are included. The other two questions are higher-level questions that require students to analyze their own thoughts and feelings about events in the text. These are used in group discussions.
- Summarizing: Students summarize what they read that day and include important information such as character names and key events.
- Discussions: Students are put into groups to discuss and share the tasks above that they have completed in their literature journals. This is a form or cooperative learning. Students rotate being the “discussion director,” and each student has a chance to share his or her work.
- At the conclusion of the book, students rate the book based on a scale of 1-10. They also discuss this score in their final discussion session and provide justification for their score.
Evaluation:
- Upon completion of the text, students hand in their literature journals. It is fairly easy to look through these to determine whether or not a student comprehends the text. In addition, I roam and listen in on the discussion groups. This allows me to assess the students’ depth of knowledge and whether or not they are getting the message of the text.
Reflection:
One thing that I like about Marzano’s strategies is that they seem to place the emphasis on getting students to internalize their learning so that it isn’t just surface-level regurgitation of facts. During my literature unit, this is one thing that I also have tried to accomplish. I want the students to visualize what they are reading and to respond to the text in meaningful and memorable ways. Although I have a pretty structured way of leading them through the reading material, the goal is that when they meet in their discussion groups, or when we discuss as a class, they will have a good idea of the overall picture of what is happening in the story. In this case, I hope that they would be able to feel sympathy for Martin Paige, a runaway slave boy, and to get a sense of what risks people had to take as members of the Underground Railroad.
