Lesson Plan Format

School of Education
The College of New Jersey

1. Reading Comprehension: Story Elements

2. Lesson Essential Question(s): What are the major elements that make up a story?

3. Common Core Standards (PYP Standards):

Reading Expectations for Grade 2:
● Reads and demonstrates comprehension of texts by:
○ Identifying major elements of a story

4.
Learning Objectives Assessments
SWBAT identify the elements of a story-- Analyzing student group work from
setting, characters, problem, solution completion of elements charts

5. Materials:
● Stone Soup
● Large poster paper for groups and whole group lesson
● Markers
● Short Stories
● Post-Its
● iPad

6 . Pre-lesson assignments and/or prior knowledge: “Who can tell me some things that we see in lots
of stories?”--> We will brainstorm some stories that we know of and talk about the common things
we see from story to story

7. Lesson Beginning: Will show students the story elements chart that I have created and explain
each of the different story elements that we will be focusing on

8. Instructional Plan
● Will show students the story elements chart that I have created and explain each of the
different story elements that we will be focusing on
● Read Aloud→ Stone Soup
● As we read, we will fill out the chart together
● I will stop reading slightly over halfway through the book (before the solution) and tell students
that we are going to pause from this story so that they can read through and identify story
elements in their own stories!
● Students will be split up into groups:
○ Monty and Anna→ Gingerbread Man; Table 1
○ Beto and Norah→ Little Red Hen; Table 1
○ Shion and Magnus→ Martina and the Cockroach
 ○ Kalliopi and Dylan→ 3 Billy Goats
○ Polina and Matile→ Nightingale
○ June and Aryan→The Elves and the Shoemaker
○ Ksusha and Chaewon→ The Spider and the Beehive

● Each group will receive a story to read and a large piece of paper to make a poster of their story
elements. They will be able to organize their poster however they’d like as long as they include:
Setting, characters, problem, and solution and the title of the story. They can choose to write
the elements out or draw pictures of the elements.

o Differentiation:
▪ Groups were intentionally created to pair students of similar levels
▪ Early Finishers→ groups that finish early can partner with each other and tell
the other groups about the elements in their stories
▪ Story is read in partners so that struggling readers have assistance
▪ Posters can/should include visuals for learners who benefit from images more
than text
o Questions:
▪ What are story elements?
▪ Why are they important to include in a story?
▪ How can be active readers and identify story elements?

o Classroom Management:
▪ echo clapping
▪ “volcano” hand symbol
▪ students called to carpet/dismissed from by table number/carpet row color
▪ Flat tire
▪ Hands on top--everybody stop

o Transitions:
▪ Come in from lunch and go right to spot on carpet
▪ From read aloud to partner work→ dismissed by partners and told to find a two-
person working spot
▪ To come back as whole class→ Hands on Top method
▪ Dismissed from carpet by row color

9. Closure: When there is 10 minutes left and/or when groups are starting to finish, I will call the
students back to the carpet to finish Stone Soup and find out how the solution is reached in that story.

10. Reflection:
As you’ll see when watching this lesson, I got to use Swivl technology to film! I know TCNJ has

this for us to use for EdTPA so I was really excited to have the opportunity to test it out at ISA. My lesson

will also be shown at their 3rd annual iPad Conference to show all that can be done with the ipads in the
classroom. This was the first time I got to teach reading comprehension here and I really enjoyed it. I’ve

read Stone Soup to other classes and its always a favorite which made me happy I used it again to get

the students engaged and interested in this lesson. The entire block of this lesson was an hour and a half

(I condensed the video to 45 minutes) so I was nervous about students becoming bored or disengaged.

But I was super happy with my pacing/timing and choosing the end the read aloud before finishing the

story and use it as a closure to the lesson. The activity itself also went really well in that the students

maintained their attention and continuously worked for the duration lesson.

Throughout the course of this lesson, the students were constantly distracted (understandably

so) by the Swivl. It would turn to follow me when I wore the tracker and I wanted to place it at tables of

the students so that it would watch them work and see how they interact when a teacher is not with

them. But I did feel that it was too distracting for certain groups at times so I usually tried to avoid

leaving the tracker at those groups since the camera would face them. Another thing I thought that

could have gone better was having another component to the lesson that allowed the students to

showcase their understanding of the story elements. They were all able to identify them perfectly but I

wanted something more that would have shown how much they understood the necessity of story

elements.

If I were to teach this lesson again, I would incorporate an addition activity/assessment that

might have the students create a short story and incorporating the story elements that we covered.

They would then choose 1 element to eliminate and explain how this might impact the story as a whole.

By having them do this I think it would not only reinforce the lesson objective but also ensure that they

understand why these elements are important.