Rebecca Florek Title: Dragon Comic Strip Objectives: The students will independently create a comic strip based

off of the book Raising Dragons. The students will first fill out a sheet of paper that will outline what each box will contain then the students will draw on the comic strip with a sentence or two describing what is going on in the picture. Standards 3. Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, descriptive details, and clear event sequences b. Use dialogue and descriptions of actions, thoughts, and feelings to develop experiences and events or show the response of characters to situations Procedure Anticipatory Set On Tuesday we read a book called Raising Dragons to start off our unit on dragons. Also on Tuesday you all did a character chart on Hank the dragon. Well today we are going to make a mini comic using some items from Raising Dragons. Introduction Before we start can anyone tell me what is a comic? Listen to some of the students answers Right a comic book is a sequence of drawings that tell a story. We are going to make a comic book about the eggs that Hank gave the girl in the story. On Tuesday we talked about how each egg is different because each egg has a different dragon growing inside of it. I want each of you to pick an egg from the story and create a story about the egg with a mini comic book. In your comic book I want the dragon to start as an egg and then become a dragon. Your comic book will have to have a problem and a solution in it. Before you start on the comic book I want each person to fill out this piece of paper that will help guide you when you are drawing in your comic book.

Modeling Boys and girls I have an example of a comic from the newspaper. I want you all to look at it and tell me what you see. Show the students the comics and listen to some answers.

Guided Practice Now I am going to show an example of a comic that I made based off of one event in the book Raising Dragons. Before I even touched this sheet of paper I sat down and filled out this worksheet. Go over each box on the paper. In Box 3 be sure to remind students that they are supposed include the name of the dragon as well. Be sure to go over Box 6-outcome: what happened because of the action of the solution. Go over the brainstorm sheet with the students and point out that each box matches a box on the comic book. Show how I used the worksheet to make my comic too. Explain to the students that in the little rectangle under the picture they are to write what is happening in the picture in a complete sentence or 2.

Independent Practice Now that Ive modeled what I want the comic books to look like I am going to pass out this paper and this paper only. When you have completely filled out this paper with complete sentences then I will put the blank comic strips on this table and you can come up and get one. Remember you are going this independently

Differentiation Ms. Liuzzis third grade classroom has a range of students from below grade level to above grade level. I think this lesson is challenging enough to engage each level of reading and writing. For students that are above grade level I would encourage them to really think of a challenging plot and use harder vocabulary words within their comic. For students that are below grade level I might help them come up with ideas or ask questions to jumpstart an idea. Also I will already have typed up on the actual comic sentence starters to help the struggling students identify how to write a complete sentence. Closure To close this lesson I will have the students turn in their comics and worksheet. I will make sure that the students know that I will be grading them. I will be walking around the room to see if the students need any help.

Assessment Formative- I will assess the students through observation. I will make sure that the students complete the worksheet before they start making the comic. Summative- I will collect the comic and the worksheet and grade the students based on if the students followed the directions. I will grade the students out of 10 points: 4 points for the comic 4 points for the completed worksheet 2 points for creativity

Materials Book- Book- Nolen, Jerdine, and . Raising Dragons. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003. Worksheet Pencils Colored Pencils

Blank Comic Strip

Name:_________________________ Box 1- Title of the Comic Box 2- Description of the Book egg

Box 3- Description of the Dragon (unique characteristics)

Box 4- Problem

Box 5- Solution

Box 6- Outcome

Box 7- The End _____________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________

Rebecca Florek Reflection on Planning Writing this lesson plan was harder that I thought it was going to be. I originally figured out what I wanted to teacher for the lesson this lesson a week before I was going to teach it. My practicum teacher got to make up her own unit and she chose to do a unit on dragon. I had originally planned on having the students create their own dragon menus, but after teaching the students on Tuesday prior to this lesson I decided against menus because I did not necessarily think that the students would get something out of making a menu for a dragon. So two days before I was going to teach the lesson I decided to change my lesson completely. My teacher said that I could basically do anything I wanted as long as it related to dragons. I have gotten to know the students in the classroom pretty well, and looking back on all the lessons that I have taught the students I noticed that for the most part the girls did what they were told and followed directions, but the boys were a different story. After learning about how girls read more than boys and that girls often do better in reading and writing than boys I tried to aim my lesson to something that will really be fun for boys. I grew up with two brothers so I started thinking about what they enjoyed to do and I remembered that my older brother was obsessed with comics and I thought to have the students create their own comic about an egg that turns into a dragon and has a problem and a solution. And that is exactly what I did. I had some trouble figuring out what was going to be in my anticipatory set and introduction, but I figured it out and was pleased with my overall lesson plan. I used the comic section in the newspaper as an example and I think that really helped the students understand that a comic tells a story.

Reflection on Instruction I was very nervous before I was going to teach this lesson. I was nervous because I had changed the lesson at the last minute and I was also very nervous because I was getting observed. I tried to be as specific as possible while still trying to make it as simple and easy for the students to understand. I had the comic section from the daily local and the Philadelphia inquirer that I was going to use for an example. Also as soon as I told the students that they were going to make a comic one boy raised his hand and said that he had a comic from the library with him and got it to show the class. That made me feel a little better because I knew he was going to be one of the boys who would really enjoy making his own comic. As I was practicing aloud what I was going to say for this lesson I noticed that I talked very fast, so before I even started teaching I kept reminding myself to talk slow. The goal of my lesson was to have the students come up with their own mini story that they would display in a comic. Before the students could even touch the blank comic page they had to fill out a sheet of paper that specifically told them what they needed to put in each box in the comic. The students had to write in complete sentences. I filled out this worksheet for the students, and showed them how I filled it out and displayed it on an ELMO. The reason I modeled the worksheet was because according to Cappelii When teachers share and model with their own writing, they stand with their students as members of the writing community and as fellow writers instead of as the writing teacher. The writing community needs a teacher who is willing to take risks in the composing process and face the same peaks and valleys that his or her students do (p.19). I chose to model an event in the book Raising Dragons by Jerdine Nolan. I used an event from the book that the students were familiar with because I did not want to make

up my own comic because then the students would then copy off of my idea and not come up with their own original comic. I had the students fill out a worksheet that had 7 different boxes. Each box matched a box on the comic strip that they were to fill out. The students were to think of a decorated egg, a dragon and name it, think of a problem, solution, outcome, and an ending. The students have been learning about story maps so I had them just use a small factor of a story map. According to Harvey & Goudvis (2007) Through interactive read-alouds, kids listen to stories that introduce traditions and cultural practices, and then together we construct large story maps that focus on characters, problems, conflict and messages to record important story elements (p. 210-211). I thought it was important for the students to focus on problem and solution and have them make up their own problem and solution. After teaching there were a few things that I needed to work on. I think I need to be more specific about what exactly I want the students to do. I need to repeat important information more to the students. For example I told the students that they were to create their own story about anything. They could be as creative as they want, and they did not have to have characters from the story Raising Dragons. While walking around I noticed that only a handful of students were making a comic about the characters from the book that we read. So as I was walking around I decided to interrupt the students and let them know that they can use their own imagination. They do not need to use the characters from Raising Dragons they can come up with anything they wanted as long as it had a dragon in it. All in all I think it was a great lesson and I felt really good teaching it.

References Harvey, S., & Goudvis, A. (2007). Strategies that work. (2nd ed.). Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publishers. Dorfman, L., & Cappelli, R. (2007). Mentor texts. Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publishers.