DIXIE STATE COLLEGE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

LESSON PLAN -SECONDARY

Teacher Candidate: Jordan Loo
Grade Level: 12 Subject/Content: English Lit.
Title: Sentence Diagramming and Parts of Speech Intro. Lesson
CONTEXTUAL FACTORS (e.g. ethnicity, gender, exceptionalities, ELL, GATE, etc.) which need
differentiation in instruction and assessment.

My class has 22 students in it and 18 of them are Caucasian. Of the remaining 4 students, I
have 2 Native American students, and 2 Hispanic students.
There are 12 females and 9 males in the class.
There are no ESL or exceptionality students in this particular class.

WALK-AWAY (what do I want students to know, understand, and be able to do?)

Common Core Standard:

Language Standard 4
Determine or clarify the meaning of unknown and multiple-meaning words and phrases based on
grades 1112 reading and content, choosing flexibly from a range of strategies.
b.
Identify and correctly use patterns of word changes that indicate different meanings or parts of
speech (e.g., conceive, conception, conceivable).
Content, Reading/Language Walk-Away:
Walk-Away:

Students will analyze the structure of a sentence (basic parts of speech, nouns, pronouns,
adjectives, etc).
Students will dissect sentences to understand the essential parts of a complete sentence and how
modifiers add to a sentence.

ASSESSMENT EVIDENCE (formative/summative checks for

learning) (Match the Content Walk-Away)

-Students will take a written pre-test asking them to identify

Modifications/Accommodations

(ELL, IEP, GATE, etc.)

parts of speech with their appropriate definition and they will

also be asked to diagram three basic sentences.
-Formative assessment: students will each take part in class
discussions and small group activities. (participation)
-Summative assessment: post-test will be given identical to the
pre-test to check for students understanding of the material.

-Instead of a written pretest I

could take aside students who
need extra help and have a mini
discussion to find out what they
know about parts of speech.

ACTIVE LEARNING PLAN

Modifications/
Accommodations
(ELL, IEP, GATE, etc.)

Activate Prior Knowledge/Experiences

Most students will have a hard time understanding sentence
diagramming at first glance. I will ask them to imagine something with
layers for example a hamburger. I will ask what are the essential parts of
a hamburger? (bun & meat). And then talk about how everything else are
just add-ons or modifiers. I will then introduce the horizontal diagram
with the vertical line. The left side represents the bun and the right side
represents the meat. Everything extra branches off of these two parts.
Understanding basic sentences will help students improve their writing
and grammar usage. Parts of speech need to be determined to understand
which words modify which (for example adverbs and verbs- adjectives
and nouns) throughout the lesson mini lessons or reminders should take
place to help students remember parts of speech that they already should
have learned.
Focus Lesson (I do it)
-I will present to the class a PowerPoint presentation about sentence
diagramming. There is a YouTube video that breaks down sentence
diagramming so that students can understand in a more relatable manner.
Then I will write 2-3 sentences on the board and diagram them alone,
explaining each step taken.

Guided Instruction (We do it)

-In a whole class setting we will pick a few more sentences to diagram
on the board. I will ask collective questions of where to put each work on
the diagram.
Collaborative/Cooperative (You do it together)
-The class will break into groups of two and write in their journals any
three sentences they want. (Because it is October I had the students use a
Halloween themed) Sentence one must have 3-4 words, sentence two
must have 4-5 words, and sentence three must have 5 or more words. I
then ask one member of each group to write one of their sentences on the

-I will insert myself into

as many small groups as I
can but focus on those
students who may need a
jump start to get going.
-Depending on the
severity of the students
needs I can have them
draw or help them write a
story.

board.
Independent (You do it alone)
-Each student will begin to write 3 more sentences in their journals on
their own. I changed the theme to Superheroes so that it would be
different than the group exercise.

Summarization/Closure
- Class discussion on Sentence diagramming. We will go over each of the
sentences on the board and decide whether any corrections need to be
made. Because this unit consists of the relationship between themes and
syntax I will go over the importance of understanding appropriate
sentence structure and how writers have mastered the art to appeal to
emotion. I will ask questions such as How does regionalism play a part
in the realism of the piece? Why is that important? I will then pass out
the post-test after answering any more questions.
NOTES TO TEACHER
What do I need to remember to do?
- Gather worksheets and materials.
- Review Power Point slides.
- Prepare modifications for possible ELL and IEP students in class.
Materials to have ready?
- Worksheets
- PowerPoint/ You Tube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqHPqdmljwM)
Approximate time needed for lesson?
- 1 class period
Reflection:
I think that this lesson was a good eye-opener to what parts of speech need to be re-taught. While
there were a handful of students who got all seven parts of speech definitions correct, the majority of
the students did not. Understanding parts of speech is a basic skill of being a fluent English speaker.
Students who plan to attend college need to know the difference between a pronoun and an adjective
while they may not need to know how to diagram the first sentence to the Constitution. I think that a
future lesson for this class would be to go into parts of speech in more detail and possibly assign
group presentations or something to get these seniors in high school ready for college.