Sample Lesson Plans

The following unit summaries and lesson plans provide a glimpse of the type of differentiated, multi-faceted lessons and units that I bring to the inclusive elementary classroom. My students are predominantly English Language Learners and all lessons and units incorporate each of the four domains: Speaking, Reading, Writing and Listening to support their language acquisition as well as learning content area material. These scaffolded and differentiated lessons help make grade level content accessible to my diverse learners.

Animal behavior and Animal Defenses

This unit plan was adapted from Expeditionary Learning's Interdisciplinary Animal Behavior Unit. The unit was modified to accommodate the different learning styles and readiness of my students. In the first part of the of the unit, students built background knowledge about animals and what behaviors and body structures they use to survive. In the second portion, they learned how writers use research to inform their readers and wrote their own multi-paragraph essay that introduced their animal and explained two of their defense mechanisms. Finally, in the last part of the unit, students learned how writers can use different media to entertain their reader. Students created original storyboards using "Storyboard That," to create a narrative about their animal and how it was able to use a defense mechanism to escape a predator.

Understanding Fractions by Making paper pizzas

Understanding fractions is sometimes challenging for students. Being able to visualize the problems using concrete manipulatives made it much easier for students to conceptualize equivalence, mixed numbers and improper fractions. Connect that to a real world problem that many students were familiar with...how many pizzas to order for our class pizza party, and we had a class full of excited and engaged students!

Take a stand: american revolution

This lesson asked students to apply the content area knowledge