Dottie Akers-Pecht and Tracy Feerick

EDIS 4882
Lesson Plan / Formal Interaction 1
Monday, February 2nd
Context
Course name: Language Arts
Grade level: 8th grade
Length of lesson: 90 minutes
Description of setting, students, and curriculum and any other important contextual
characteristics: This writing lesson will be taught in an 8th grade language arts classroom in
preparation for the writing SOL test in March. It will primarily focus on descriptive language and
the skill of selecting specific vocabulary for the purpose of an audience.
Virginia SOL(s):
Writing 8.7 The student will write in a variety of forms, including narration, exposition,
persuasion, and informational.
e) Select specific vocabulary and information for audience and purpose.
Common Core Standard(s):
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.8.3.d
Use precise words and phrases, relevant descriptive details, and sensory language to
capture the action and convey experiences and events.

Objectives in KUD Format

Students will understand:
1) That descriptive writing creates vivid images in the readers head that makes ones writing more
interesting and engaging to read
Students will know:
2) The components of descriptive writing (as listed on the PowerPoint presentation that will be
shared and discussed with students)
3) How to use descriptive language for a specific purpose and audience
Students will be able to:
4) Use their knowledge of descriptive writing to edit more plain sentences
5) Create their own writing using descriptive and detailed language
6) Work effectively in groups to create descriptive language for a specific purpose

Assessments:
Diagnostic: Students will demonstrate what they already know about descriptive writing and its
uses and significance by
Participating in a class discussion about what is descriptive writing, its purpose, and components.
This assessment is aligned to CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.8.3.d, KUDs 1 and 2

Formative: Students will show their progress toward todays objectives by

Working in pairs to edit and add description to plain sentences
This assessment is aligned to VA SOL 8.7 (e), KUDs 4, 5, and 6
Working in groups to create a detailed description of a photograph using their knowledge of
descriptive language
This assessment is aligned to VA SOL 8.7e, CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.8.3.d, and KUDs 3, 5, and 6

Summative: Students will ultimately be assessed (in a future lesson) on these standards by
Writing descriptively on the essay topic during the 8th grade writing SOL in March
This assessment is aligned to VA SOL 8.7e, CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.8.3.d, and KUD 5

Materials:
projector and slide show presentation
paper and pencil
photos of 10 apples for students to describe
tape

Procedure
Beginning Room Arrangement: The students will initially sit in rows in their typical seats
while we introduce them to the days objectives. Students will be placed into groups of 3 or 4
during step 3 of instruction and reconvene in a whole class format at the end of step 4.
Tracy will serve as the initial lead teacher, up until the end of part 2 of the instructional steps.
I.

Welcome/Greeting ( 2 minutes)
As students arrive in the classroom, Tracy will pull up the PowerPoint presentation on
descriptive writing so that students are aware of what we will be talking about during this lesson.
Good morning class! I hope you all had a fun weekend! Today, we are going to work on some
descriptive writing. Its important to practice with this kind of writing because it allows your
reader to envision your words in his or her head. Additionally, during the second half of the
lesson when Dottie takes over, were going to be working on a challenge activity that will show
you how important it is to be specific when writing descriptions.

II. Hook/Bridge/Opening to Lesson (5 minutes)

First of all, what do you already know about descriptive writing? Provide wait time then call on
students for answers. Tracy records some student answers on the board and asks for students
opinions on one anothers replies so that students can come to a collective understanding about
what descriptive writing means.

1.

1.
2.

3.

Provide definition/purpose: The primary purpose of descriptive writing is to describe a person,

place or thing in such a way that a picture is formed in the reader's mind. Capturing an event
through descriptive writing involves paying close attention to the details by using all of your five
senses.
I will make sure the students know the following components of descriptive writing:
Good descriptive writing includes many vivid sensory details that paint a picture and appeals to
all of the reader's senses of sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste when appropriate. Descriptive
writing may also paint pictures of the feelings the person, place or thing invokes in the writer.
Good descriptive writing often makes use of figurative language such as analogies, similes and
metaphors to help paint the picture in the reader's mind.
Good descriptive writing uses precise language. General adjectives, nouns, and passive verbs do
not have a place in good descriptive writing. Use specific adjectives and nouns and strong action
verbs to give life to the picture you are painting in the reader's mind.
Good descriptive writing is organized. Some ways to organize descriptive writing include:
chronological (time), spatial (location), and order of importance. When describing a person, you
might begin with a physical description, followed by how that person thinks, feels and acts.

III. Instructional Steps (70 minutes)

Part 1: Providing samples (10 minutes)
You guys have read a variety of texts this semester and today we are going to look back at them,
and some other texts to examine good examples of descriptive writing. I am going to project
sample passages on the board and were going to discuss what makes these passages good.
Project sentences/passages on board. Foster a discussion about what makes the passages
descriptive, what senses are evoked, how it adds to meaning of the text. Make sure the students
point out which of the aspects of descriptive writing appear in the passage/sentence. As Tracy
provides the multiple sample passages and works through them on the PowerPoint slides, she
asks students many questions, including, What words stand out to you? Why do these stand
out? How do they make you feel? What do they tell you about whats going on in the passage?
Part 2: Practice (20 minutes)

Ok now that you all have seen some good examples and discussed their components I am going
to post some plain sentences on the board and I want you, in pairs, to add more description. Well
do the first one as a class for an example.
Project plain sentence on the board- ask students how they can improve the sentence. Ask
students to use more specific adjectives, nouns, and strong action verbs. Make sure the students
include language that creates an image in the readers mind.
Ok so here is your first few sentences, work with your elbow partner(s) and spice the sentences
up!
At this time teacher circles the room asking students how they are improving the sentences and
making sure they are using strong language. Teacher is constantly pushing students to add more
detail, or to rethink some of their word choice/description. After I notice most students have
completed the sentences I have students share their revised sentences. As a class we discuss if
anything could be added, if there is any extraneous information that actually takes away from
the sentence, and how makes the sentence effective in creating an image in the readers head.
* (2nd half of the lesson Dottie will now lead for the remainder of the formal interaction.)
Part 3: Modeling: Describing an Object (10 minutes)
Now that weve learned multiple ways to make our descriptions more detailed, were going to
take part in a little challenge. In a little bit, Im going to break you up into groups. These groups
will each consist of three to four students, depending upon the attendance for the day. Groups
were broken up based on proximity; the classroom is already broken up into desk groups of three
and four. In groups, youre going to be given a photo of an object. You will have to work
together to come up with a detailed description of your object. This will need to be specific
enough so that someone in another group will be able to pick out your object after reading your
description. Youll want to keep your pictures a secret from everyone so that they wont know
which photo your description goes with.
This may seem simple, but lets do one together as a sample. I project a photo of a cat. I show
students how to write descriptions of their objects using complete sentences and details. Okay,
thats all accurate so far, but what happens when I show you another picture of the same object?
I show students another cat that is very similar to the first image. Now you see where things get
complicated, because these two objects look a lot alike, dont they? How might I add even more
description so that no one could mix these two images up? We discuss more details and I will
add them to our written description so that students will be able to see a model of what they are
expected to write.

Part 4: Application of Descriptive Language in Group Activity (10 minutes)

Now Im going to split you up into groups of three or four. Try to pair up with people you are
sitting near. I will circle around and distribute photos of the same object. Together with your

group, try to come up with a description of the object that is so detailed, your classmates will not
have a hard time identifying it just by reading what youve written. I will pass out the photos,
all of which will be numbered, and record which group has received which number. During this
process, my partner and I will circulate the room to ensure that students are on task and to
provide assistance where needed, prompting students to think of more specific synonyms or
additional ways to describe the object. When the students have finished their descriptions, I will
request that they turn them in to me. This should take approximately ten minutes.
Step 5: Matching Descriptions to Photos (10 minutes)
Now Im going to trade you all for another groups description. All of the photos you used will
be displayed at the front of the classroom; you can return them to me and I will tape them up on
the dry erase board. After you read your groups description, write down the number of the photo
that you think it belongs to. Take about five minutes to do this, and well then see if you were
right! Students will take no more than five minutes to finish the task. In the meantime, my
partner and I will circulate the room and assist students when necessary.
Now I want this first group to read aloud the description they got. The first group will read
aloud their description and share what number photo they paired it with. Who wrote this
description? The group responsible for writing the description will raise their hands. Was this
groups guess correct? Did you all describe photo number six? We will go through this process
until all of the groups have shared. I will collect the descriptions that were successfully paired
with their matching photos.
Part 4: Review and Reflection (10 minutes)
Lets look at a couple of the examples that were successfully matched with their photos. Ill
project these on the overhead so that students can all see them. How did you all know which
photo these matched? What descriptive details and specific words let you know which photo was
the right one? We will analyze these descriptions as a class and compile a list of attributes of a
detailed and specific piece of writing. I will write these attributes on the board as students share
them with me. If there is no room left on the board, I will have Tracy help me to take down the
photos beforehand so the dry erase board is available.

IV: Closing (2 minutes)

Please record these attributes of descriptive writing that we came up with together in your
journals. They may help you in the future while you respond to practice essay prompts. Thank
you for a great class today, and I hope you all enjoy the rest of your week!

Attention to Individual Student Needs: (Differentiation): Detail specific actions/materials

you will use to differentiate instruction in this lesson for at least one of your three case
study students.
For Evan, our profile student for Teaching English who is an English language learner,
we can supply a thesaurus or allow him to use a mobile device to search for synonyms while
completing the tasks of finding more specific descriptive words. The modeling processes where
we think aloud our methods of using more descriptive language will likely help Evan and other
English language learners to follow along with how to amplify a sentence by adding more
interesting and creative details.
For Chris and other struggling readers, this lesson will provide samples of text that we
will read together as a class and then collaborate on to improve with more descriptive language.
Following along with this process and hearing us speak aloud words as we record them on the
overhead projector or dry erase board will likely help Chris to match spellings of words up with
their pronunciations and to follow along with the lesson.
Jessica and other students identified as gifted will likely find this lesson sufficiently
challenging, as it involves a lot of creative thought in forming a description as well as critical
thinking to match another groups description to the appropriate photograph. By grouping
students heterogeneously based on readiness levels for descriptive writing, we might allow
Jessica to work with other students to teach them new vocabulary and new synonyms for
previously known words.
Additionally, for students like Karen with behavioral problems, we could review norms
for working collaboratively and having a respectful discussion in a classwide format before
breaking into groups. We could also provide Karen with some useful stem starters for
conversation that would help her monitor things like responding respectfully to others and
waiting for others to speak before she jumps in or interrupts them. This opportunity for Karen to
work with groups will likely help her to work on some of the behavioral issues that contributed
to her being held back a grade.
Technology Use: Detail specific technology being used in the lesson with explanation for
why it is being used.
For this lesson, we will be using an overhead projector and PowerPoint presentation so that
students can visually follow along with our examples of detailed descriptions. Additionally, these
tools will allow us to model descriptive writing for students as we use think aloud techniques
while simultaneously giving them a visual for our thought processes. The PowerPoint
presentation will also display important points of the lesson, including the methods for writing
descriptive language.

How this lesson incorporates specific insights from course readings and/or class discussion:
This lesson incorporates mostly what we talked about in class today, 1/28. Though we do not
plan to teach grammar as a part of this lesson, the zoom and layer idea is pretty much what we

plan to implement in the class. Like we did today, the students will examine each word/phrase
thoroughly and see where they can add more description and/or add stronger verbs, nouns, or
adjectives. The second activity comes from an article we read last semester in Teaching English
Methods I.

Materials Appendix:
Our PowerPoint presentation is attached to this document. Similarly, the photos of the apples for
the challenge activity are shown within the last several pages of this Word document. We will
print and distribute these photos to students on the day of the lesson.

In Reflection
I think that todays lesson went pretty well overall; students seemed interested in the idea of
creating their own descriptive writing, both in Tracys first half of the lesson where students
improved boring or plain sentences and in my half where they applied what they had learned in
the apple photo activity. I could tell that students were invested in what was happening because
they were excited to share their improvements on the boring sentences; when Tracy asked for
volunteers, many students hands were raised. Additionally, several students asked to use
thesauruses throughout the lesson to help them in finding more advanced or detailed synonyms.
During the group activity, the students who previously were not as engaged with the lesson
seemed to become motivated by the challenge of matching a description to a photo and by
working in groups in order to accomplish this task.
Previously in my placement logs last semester, I recorded some difficulties with classroom
management. Our class is not unruly, but the students are very lively and talkative; they clearly
like to have a lot of fun while they are learning. While I transitioned between steps of the lesson,
students began to become a little louder than I expect them to be. However, I was able to refocus
their attention more quickly than I did during my formal interactions last semester, as I learned
one of the signals the middle school uses to quiet students down simply raising my hand and a
quick, Okay, guys, I need your eyes up here worked faster than other strategies I tried last
semester. This is really one of the only things that I thought didnt go well during the lesson, and
I would like to list ways that I can counteract this kind of behavior, or prevent it proactively,
before my next formal interaction. Some of the strategies were learning in Curriculum and
Management will likely be very helpful for me; before my next lesson, Id like to go over my
notes from this class and give myself tips for next time.
I think that students learned the importance of using descriptive language in having to pair
descriptions up with the right photos of apples. They seemed to pay close attention during our
scaffolded sections of the lesson because they were able to use many descriptive and specific

adjectives in their descriptions of the apples. Students additionally were able to work
cooperatively in small groups, and I never observed a student who was being alienated from the
conversation. However, I did prompt a couple of students to speak up if they seemed quiet during
the discussion of the apple photos. Afterwards though, they seemed to be more willing to share
their thoughts or ideas of what else they could describe about apples (stems, shiny spots, leaves,
etc.). For next time, I might consider different ways to group students based on readiness,
interests, learning profiles, or other factors to better differentiate instruction for them and really
help students with what it is they need. Overall though, I think that students enjoyed the activity
and seemed to get something important out of it by meeting all of our objectives for the day.