Lesson Plan

Ashford University

For this particular assignment, we have been approached by a teacher that is wanting to try something new with her students. She has requested that I construct a lesson that incorporates the following: twenty-first (21st) century skills, information literacy, and technology. The goal is to be able to enhance her students’ learning experiences while leaving them wanting more. Having been given the request, I am now set to create a lesson plan that will work within the confines of said request while keeping the interests of the students within this particular teachers’ classroom.

First and foremost, we need to look at who this lesson plan is going to be directed toward. We already know that we will have the teacher and possibly a fellow teacher working on the instruction collaboratively. We also know for this lesson plan, it will be used within a second-grade classroom, so it will be within the elementary classroom level. Because of the age of the students in question, the approach I will be taking is the Direct Instruction model. For the purposes of this assignment, the teachers will be named Mrs. Baker and Mrs. Hunt. They work with a second grade classroom and want to be able to incorporate the above request in a plan that will help students maintain an interest in reading.

For this lesson we are going to incorporate ‘Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs’ by Judi Barrett with learning about the weather. This lesson is going to be able to incorporate all of the things that Mrs. Baker and Mrs. Hunt want their students to be able to utilize in the classroom while adhering to the Common Core Standards of being: Research and Evidence Based; being clear, understandable, and consistent; being based on rigorous content and the application of knowledge through higher-order thinking skills.

In this classroom, the children will first be introduced to the book, “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.” Mrs. Baker and Mrs. Hunt will then read the book to the class during their daily ‘Circle Time’. Once the two have read the book, the students will then be able to put their new knowledge to use through interpreting the book’s parody on weather with learning about actual weather.

We will first focus the learner on being able to take concepts from the book and then apply them to their real life. In the book, the children learned that the weather took form of different foods falling from the sky. In real life, we also have different types of weather, that are not foods. For this lesson we are going to look at the local weather and compare and contrast with our reading. Mrs. Baker will show the students the local weather for the past week and the students will then with the assistance of Mrs. Hunt decide what food weather from the book would be closest to the real life weather. (i.e. Rain might equal spaghetti and meatballs).

In this regard, the AASL concepts of being able to draw conclusions, make informed decisions, applying knowledge to new situations, and create new knowledge will have been achieved. The students then will take what they have compared and contrasted in the discussion to the computers in the library to research an element of weather that they found interesting through reading the book and then the subsequent discussion. The students will be able to look into the types of weather with the assistance of Mrs. Baker and Mrs. Hunt and once they have chosen the type of weather they like best for this assignment?

They will then be able to showcase their research with a small project that is centered on the weather they chose. The students will have a large sheet of construction paper and on one side, they will draw the weather they liked best. (i.e. If they choose snow, they can create a snowy yard with a snowman, or they might draw a tornado). On the other side, they will then draw the weather they chose if it was in the book, “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.” (i.e. if they drew the tornado, they might make it be represented by an ice cream cone!) Each student will be able to explain what they learned during their research with their teachers and tell their peers about the type of weather they chose! They then will be able to explain why they chose the food they did to represent the weather in the book world, effectively tying in the book to the real world and allowing the students to flex their creative muscles while learning more about the world around them.

What will follow is a short quiz on the book and some of the types of weather that the students were exposed to/learned about.

Place an Order

Plagiarism Free!

Scroll to Top