English 10

SAGE Boot Camp Unit Plan

Unit Rationale

10th Grade Time Frame: February 26th March 21st

Materials:
! 1.1 SAGE Boot Camp Powerpoint ! 1.2 SAGE Practice Test ! Language Books ! 2.1-2.2 - SAGE Boot Camp Prompt Response Worksheet ! Cindis Expectation Powerpoint

This unit was created in a tad bit of desperation. We found out that the SAGE Writing Test was moved up an entire month. So, we needed to make sure the students felt confident about their writing techniques before they were tested on it. I started this unit trying to assess where their writing was at. We started with the basics, with answering a textbased question and expanded the same reading and writing strategies to prewriting and writing an entire essay. Background We have been working with text-based questions in our A Quilt of a Country unit, so making this bridge was fairly easy and the transition was smooth. The students should be able to carry over the skills fairly easily. The students have also worked before on non-fiction writing with their Argumentative papers last quarter. They should be in a good place when it comes to working on this unit.

Key Terms and Concepts:

! ! ! ! ! ! ! Informational Texts Reading Strategies Writing Strategies Prewriting Thesis Statement Outlining SAGE Testing Expectations

Topics & Goals

! Informational Texts 1) Students will read informational texts to gain background knowledge about the groups they are presenting about while working on reading strategies for the SAGE test and future reading assignments. Reading Strategies 1) We will be discussing and finding out which reading strategies are most helpful for a given reading assignment. Students will work in groups to present and share their favorite reading strategies. Writing Strategies 1) Students will break down the writing process into simple, easy to remember steps. We will discuss the importance of answering the question that the prompt discusses as well as why it is so important to pre-write. We will then work together to write several short essays.

Essential Questions
1) 2) 3) 4) 5) What are the most effective reading strategies for any given reading assignment? How do they help us to better comprehend the text? What is prewriting and outlining before we write important? What are some of the things we can do to prepare ourselves for the large amount of testing? What is a thesis statement? Why is it so crucial? What are the basic steps we take while we write an essay?

SAGE Boot Camp Unit Plan

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Content Outline - Activities & Skills - Differentiation

! Content Into - What is the SAGE Test? 1) Journals - Have students respond in journals some of the things about the SAGE test they would like to know are that they are worried about. Talk about them as a class. Skills a) Self-reflection and evaluation 2) Practice Test - Instant Experts - Students will be broken up into groups. These groups will focus on becoming experts on different reading strategies. They will read about these strategies and then present their strategy to the class. Skills a) Reading Informational Writing b) Understanding Reading Strategies c) Presenting d) Collaboration ! Through - Reading Strategies 1) Reading Strategies- The students will then choose their favorite reading strategy and read through the article. They will write down evidence that they get from reading that will best help them to answer the question in the writing prompt on the practice test. Skills a) Reading Informational Text b) Using Writing Strategies c) Gathering evidence d) Answering text-based questions 2) Reading about Writing - Have students read about writing strategies and what they should be doing every time they write a paper in their Language books. Students will take notes on the writing strategies to help cement the information. Skills a) Writing Strategies 1) Writing Strategy - Students will now use their writing strategies to begin their pre-writing for their practice tests. Walk them through each step of answering a writing prompt with their worksheets. Have them be able to explain what a hook, a thesis, and an argument outline is. Give them time, in class, to write their essays. Skills a) Writing Strategies b) Writing informational essays c) Outlining and prewriting With the ESL class, take each prewriting step slower, have them fill out their outlines as you go, give more examples. Give them the weekend to write their Day essays. 3 Time Differentiation/ Adaption - By asking students to reflect on what they know about the SAGE test, it gets them thinking about what they need to do for themselves in order to be successful during testing.

- Instant experts will help Day students be able to explain their 1 strategies in ways that I might not be able to, they can help their peers to understand the strategies. We can cover more in less time.

- The 2.1 and 2.2 worksheets are ways for students to see the steps for answering a textbased question, step by step. - I have also taken steps to scaffold the information well. Day 2

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1) Thesis Statement and Prewriting Strategies - We will focus on creating thesis statements that answer the writing prompt. We will break down the process into easy to answer steps and provide practice by choosing between examples and nonexamples of thesis statements. We will then practice by writing our own examples. Skills a) Analyzing Writing Prompts Day b) Writing Thesis Statements 4 2) Prewriting Strategies - We will have an activity that will help us to cement the prewriting strategies. We will complete the process ing groups by going from example to example. Skills a) Writing Thesis Statements b) Outlining and prewriting 9) Testing Expectations - Students will take the writing test next class period. Cindi is creating a powerpoint for them that explains testing expectations and what they should be doing for the test. Skills a) Test Preparedness

Day 5

Assessment Plans
! Formative Journals Students will be asked to write journals about how they understand and relate to the materials. Some journals are going to ask them to directly respond to the materials we are using and others are going to require them to take a deeper look at their own identities and beliefs to relate the content to their own lives. I can look at these journals to see if students are engaging with the material at an appropriate level and if they are understanding the materials. Journals Journal #1 - Reading Strategies Journal #2 - Writing Assessment Journal #3 - Writing Thesis Statements ! Formative Portfolio Assignments There are several written and visual assignments/journals that are much broader and require more critical thinking skills. The students will be keeping working on a large multi genre paper for the end of this quarter. They will get to choose what they would like to include in that multi genre paper (within certain guidelines). The students will have the choice to use one of the assignments in this unit to keep and rework for their final multi genre paper. This will show me how well the students have grasped their writing skills we have covered. ! Summative State Testing Scores We will be grading students based on test scored and effort applied to the writing. This helps keeps students attentive and accountable for the work they do during state testing.
Assessment Adaptions - Students have been using their journals for a while now. They should have a good understanding of what is expected of them. - The questions posed in the journals are open ended, they do not have a correct or incorrect answer. More, I want to strengthen the students critical thinking skills. Students will be graded on completeness. - The students will be given a rubric for what will be required of these assignments in the final multi genre paper. The students will be given time to rework these assignments during the next unit. They will be required to edit them in some way and make them work with the theme of the multi genre paper.

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Interdisciplinary Connections
Writing strategies, Reading strategies, and Testing Expectations will be useful across all core content areas.

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Plans for integrating diversity/social justice/multicultural themes and objectives

For most of out writing and informational text reading we will be integrating cultural themes as the students begin their research projects for the Quilt of a Country unit, which we are doing concurrently with this unit plan.

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Plans for Involving Students Families

I want to send an email or letter to the parents the weekend before testing begins, letting them know we will be taking these state tests and giving them a bit of information about the tests and how the scores affect their students and the school. I will also ask them to help their students prepare and be ready for the test by asking them to make sure they get to bed at a decent hour and eat breakfast that morning.

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Resources
sageportal.org Language Books

SAGE Boot Camp Unit Plan

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