ELA Lesson, 11.13.12

Grade Level and Unit: Grade 4, ELA

Session Description of Lesson Tasks:  Prepositions/prepositional phrases Students identify and explore parts of speech, with a focus on the use and function of prepositions and prepositional phrases.

Materials Needs: ¨ White board ¨ Pencils & paper

Grouping Decisions: Whole group introduction > individual exploration/individual extension > whole group follow up

Learning Goal(s) & Essential Question(s) How can we improve our writing? Objectives 1.     All students will be able to identify prepositions and prepositional phrases. 2.    All students will be able to determine the purpose and appropriate use of prepositional phrases. 3.    All students will be able to form and use prepositional phrases in and out of context (i.e. random sentences, in the context of narrative writing).

Language Objectives These words should be prior knowledge: ¨ article ¨ noun ¨ verb These words will be learned: ¨ preposition ¨ prepositional phrases

MA Frameworks: Language Standards Pre-K-5 Grade 4 Students: Conventions of Standard English 1. Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English grammar and usage when writing or speaking. e. Form and use prepositional phrases.

Connect and Anticipate: From seats on the rug, students are asked to describe the environment around them in order to develop a list of common prepositional words and phrases. Yesterday we learned about transitional words.  Today we are going to learn about a different part of speech.  Let’s start by describing things in our classroom.  Can someone please make a statement about: -child A’s math book (His book is inside the desk.) -Mrs. M’s chair (The teacher’s chair is next to her desk.) -etc. As students form sentences, the prepositions used are written in a list under the heading, “Prepositions”.

Implementation Focus Questions/Hook/Launch: Prepositions are words that show the relationship between two objects.  It usually answers the question where?; or when?, telling a person where a noun’s location is.  Often prepositions describe direction, like these examples: on, in, beneath, etc.  Sometimes they describe time, like after and before. Explore: Now that we have this list of some pretty common prepositions that you have used in describing objects around the classroom, we are going to practice identifying prepositional phrases in sentences that already exist and sentences that we create. What is a prepositional phrase? If a preposition is the word that pulls other words behind it, a prepositional phrase is the whole train.  To practice noticing this in writing, you will each be given a list of book titles.  Circle the preposition, and then underline the words it pulls along.  If you are ever unsure, take a look at the list we generated on the board to double check.  Let’s take a look at the first book title. Summary: (practice of objective 3) About the B’Nai Bagels What word do we circle and what words do we underline? Everyone is going to receive a table that has a column for different parts of speech.  Let’s take a look at the first example I filled in for you.  It says: Article  Noun   Verb     Prepositional Phrase The       swan    swam   across the lake. There is a brief review of each column, where if prior knowledge was not there, they had a chance to experience these words.

Evidence: Summary assessment

Differentiated Instruction ELL Preview of words that needs to be known for activity (article, noun, verb). IEP/modification/accommodation Preview of words that needs to be known for activity (article, noun, verb). Extension Students are given an opportunity to continue practicing application of this skill via quizzes that ask them choose the part of a sentence that .

Notes and Reflections Prior to the lesson, I was a little nervous that I hadn’t planned enough differentiation.  Ultimately I was surprised at the IEP students’ ability to complete the assignment with almost no accommodations.  I previewed and reviewed some of the words with different children individually, but other than that they, like the gen. ed. students, were autonomous and successful in the assignment. I think the time of day the lesson took place also helped, since they were able to work individually with relative ease at the early time.  Normally writing takes place right before or after lunch, and I taught this lesson way before lunch – at the time when math usually is taught.  I’m beginning to think that there are different times during the day when children work best independently, and times during the day when they need more action and more collaboration.