Unit Lesson Plan

Emma Bird
TESL 476
April 18, 2017
 These lesson plans are built to fit into a unit on nonfiction for a fourth-grade Language

Arts class that has at least some, if not all, ELL students. This unit and the example lessons

detailed below follow the Virginia Standards of Learning for what fourth grade students should

be learning in Language Arts, while also providing comprehensible input and other teaching

methods and learning opportunities that are beneficial for English language learners. The unit

should last about three to four weeks, ideally coming immediately before or after a unit on

fiction. The first lesson provided -- the informative nonfiction lesson -- would come towards the

beginning of the unit, perhaps the second day of the unit (after the nonfiction genre as a whole

has been introduced). The second lesson -- the one on persuasive nonfiction -- would come right

after the first, with perhaps one day in between the two allotted for review of informative

nonfiction and elaboration on this subset of the genre. The last lesson in this unit lesson plan

would fall somewhere towards the end of the unit, because the Literature Circle activity is much

more hands-on and involves more Higher Order Thinking Questions. However, the lesson should

be placed far enough from the end so that there is ample time allotted to finish reading the

chapter book and doing the accompanying Literature Circle lessons before the end of the unit.

Rather than giving students an exam at the end of this unit, I would assign them a small

book report which would allow them more opportunities for freedom and creativity in the

assessment. Doing the Literature Circle activity in the weeks leading up to the end of the unit

would give them practice in reading and analyzing a nonfiction text, providing scaffolding for

when they do this on their own in the final assessment project. For the book report, I would give

them a variety of different nonfiction books to choose from depending on what their interests

may be, allowing the students to guide their own learning and pursue what they are most

passionate about or interested in. The books would be very short and contain simple language for
comprehensible input. Students could choose to either write their book report or create a visual

representation like a poster board. Students would be graded on whether they met the following

criteria in their report: identifying the author's purpose (inform, persuade, and/or entertain),

describing how they can tell the book is nonfiction, summarizing the book, and relating it to at

least one experience or event either in their own lives or that they read/heard about somewhere

else. Students would not be graded on spelling and mechanics in this particular assessment,

rather on their grasp of the nonfiction unit, but corrections would be provided for these kinds of

mistakes for students to learn from.