Content Behavioral Objective Lesson Plan



Content Behavioral Objective Lesson Plan

Students in the middle grades undergo physical, social, emotional, and intellectual changes that affect their daily learning experiences. Individuals progress from preadolescence to adolescence at vastly different rates. With a great deal of sensitivity to the perceptions of peers, they are beginning to assert their independence when dealing with adults. This process, however, is neither sequential nor predictable and often includes periods of fluctuation between adolescence and preadolescence. As middle school students move from concrete thinking to abstract concepts, they begin to question others' messages and points of view while learning to better express and justify their own (Wong, 1998).

Like students in earlier grades, middle school students exhibit the full range of learning styles and require both differentiated instruction and assessment opportunities to reach their unique potential as learners. Reading strategies applied to comprehension of texts in all content areas are essential and powerful tools. A broader literacy repertoire, advanced literary elements, and extended vocabularies and communication skills lead to increased critical-thinking abilities. Similarly, strengthened writing skills provide a means for expressing their knowledge and opinions to a variety of audiences. Many opportunities are provided for students to develop questioning and research strategies that assist them in organizing and presenting information in oral, visual, and written formats. With both literature and informational text, students cite textual evidence to support their analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the texts. Among other expectations, students must analyze how a particular sentence, paragraph, chapter, section, or scene fits into the overall structure and contributes to the development of ideas.

They write arguments to support claims, explanatory texts to examine a topic and convey ideas, and narratives to develop real or imagined experiences. Particular attention is given to establishing a formal style, developing organizational structure, and using helpful transition words. In these middle years, students use their speaking and listening skills to engage in a range of collaborative discussions, follow rules for collegial discussions, interpret presented information, and delineate a speaker's claims and evidence (Serdyukov, 2008). High expectations are held for students' language acquisition and use in speaking and writing experiences, including extending the simple subject-verb agreement concepts learned in the elementary grades, ensuring that pronouns are in the proper case, punctuating nonrestrictive and parenthetical elements, and maintaining consistency in style and tone. As in earlier grades, students acquire and use grade-appropriate general academic and domain-specific vocabulary. They also learn to vary sentence structure for reader and listener interest and understand figurative language and nuances in word meanings.

Activity Day 1

Reading Standards for Literature

Key Ideas and Details

Cite textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.

Determine a theme or central idea of a text and how it is conveyed through particular details; provide a summary of the text distinct from personal opinions or judgments.

Describe how a particular story's or drama's plot unfolds in a series of episodes as ...