Date: Monday, March 2nd, 2020

Grade: 4th
Class: Reading class

Background information​:
● This is the first lesson of our new unit, “The Redcoats are Coming”. In this unit, students learn
background knowledge about the American Revolution by reading texts that portray both sides of the
American Revolution.
● Unit Essential question​: Why is it important to understand all sides of a story?
○ Lessons 1-8 Focusing question:​ What were the perspectives of the two main sides of the
American Revolution?

What am I teaching and to whom?

● Content objective:​ I can identify the two main sides and leaders of the Revolutionary War.
● Language objective:​ I can use history vocabulary words in my written response (George Washington,
George III, England, colonies, etc.)
● Key vocabulary words​: colony, colonists, perspective, revolution

Why am I teaching it?

Overall,​ The Redcoats are coming! ​is the third unit of our district-mandated curriculum, Wit & Wisdom.
We are required by our institution to use this curriculum. Additionally, this unit introduces students to the birth
of the USA by building background knowledge of the American Revolution. The unit also provides students
with opportunities to explore multiple points of view of the Revolution by analyzing different accounts of the
Revolution. For the first lesson of the unit, we’re teaching students the key nations and people involved in the
American Revolution to provide foundational background knowledge for the rest of the unit.

How am I teaching it? Why am I teaching it that way?

Warm-up Activity: Juicy Sentence “Juicy Sentence” is a protocol that our students are
very accustomed to. My coteacher introduced this
protocol to her reading classes a few years ago and
has found it to be a helpful teaching tool.

We use it as a way to highlight language and key

words. For example, in this particular lesson, we
want to introduce key ideas to orient students. After
completing the protocol silently, one of the teachers
leads a discussion about the Juicy Sentence, where
students share out.

In this sentence, we’re focusing on these following

elements:
Juicy Sentence is a form of mentor sentences. We ● 1763 (important date, orient students)
select sentences from our unit texts, sometimes to ● Introduce 2 main figures
highlight a specific writing element or piece of ● Explicitly teach that you read “King George
content knowledge. Students follow a formulaic III” as “King George the third”
process to analyze each sentence. ● Introduce 2 main "countries": colonies,
● George Washington, Great Britain, etc.
1. Copy down the sentence
 2. I think the sentence means…
3. I notice…
4. Circle unknown words
5. Students write their own sentence, matching
the structure of the Juicy Sentence.
Differentiation note: some ELLs and students with
disabilities get the juicy sentence on a sentence strip
with key-words missing. Sometimes, we give them a
sentence strip for step 5 to guide the creation of their
own sentences.
Explicit Vocabulary Instruction (Slides shown
below)
Vocab:​ ​Perspectives, revolution, colonists
Students read the sentences on each slide. ​Turn
and Talk: ​Based on the sentences, what do you
think the word “___________” means?
Show explicit meaning on slide, add to vocabulary
pocket chart.
Directions: ​Read aloud with your class the part of the text
labeled “All.” Find the part that matches your assigned
group and read it aloud with your group.
All:​ There were once two enemies who were both named
George.
Blue and Red​: George Washington was the man who
freed the American colonies from the British.
Yellow, Purple Green​: King George III was the British
king who lost them.
All:​ Was King George a “Royal Brute1?”
Blue and Red​: American patriots said so.
Yellow, Purple Green​: But others thought he was “the
Father of the People.”
All​: Was George Washington a traitor?
Yellow, Purple Green​: The king’s supporters thought so.
1
​Brute: ​a cruel, mean, or violent person
We do this so that students can engage in the
thinking process without being hindered by slow
handwriting.
This unit is very vocab-heavy and there are lots of
words to cover. For this lesson, the keywords I
identified are perspectives, revolution, and
colonists/colony.
I like to have the students interact with the vocab
words by sharing predictions, reading sentences
about the words, and discussing with their table
groups.
Turn and talks allow students to have more talk time
in a low-stakes environment. Students can learn
from peers, and emergent bilingual students can
hear language modeled by native-English speaking
peers.
We use the pocket chart to provide a visual anchor
for vocabulary words.
We decided to do this chant, provided by the
curriculum, for a few reasons. First, it’s short enough
that it doesn’t take up too much time. It also provides
students with a short, catchy experience to preview
the topics for the read-aloud.
Students have the opportunity to practice fluency
without being singled out. Students also have the
opportunity to hear key vocabulary words in a
different format. Lastly, the chant is an opportunity
for students to practice reading with expression.
We’ve had some challenges with this particular class
of students, so we’re trying to look for ways for
students to express themselves and be silly in a
focused matter.
Blue and Red​: But many colonists celebrated
Washington as “the father of his country.” Lastly, it serves as a movement break.
Ms. Luetzow and Mrs. Welsh: ​Who was right?
All:​ There are two sides to every story.

“Loyalist and Patriot of the Day”: ​For this unit, we will
pick a “Loyalist of the Day” and a “Patriot of the Day” to
highlight students who are showing exemplary behavior or
academic strategies. At the end of the week, the students
can have a popcorn lunch on Friday and watch a Netflix
episode during lunch.
The goal of this is to highlight what students are
doing well, so each student can have a moment to
shine, even the ones who may not think they are the
best students in reading. We use a tracker to record
who earned it each day. We are doing this to create
a positive environment in our classroom. So far, the
students have liked it.

Scavenger Hunt and Picture Walk: ​George vs. Before the read aloud, we do a picture walk to give
George students the opportunity to preview the text. We
highlight specific features that we want students to
notice (ie: there are little images of historical figures
with quotations) Students can share with a neighbor
next to them because they usually have a lot to
share!

Text:​ Read pages 8-11 of George vs. George on
Document Camera (Think Aloud)
Student notes​: Notice-Wonder chart
In our curriculum, students hear a teacher read
aloud of a text. We like to keep the first-read
relatively open-ended; students hear the text and
record what they notice and wonder. We then like to
use the wonder part of the chart to address common
questions among students. The teachers model the
text in lesson 1 as a first read-through before the
students work with the text again in lessons 2 and 3.

Exit Ticket Shown below.

How will I know students have learned? How will students know they have learned?
There are a lot of opportunities to monitor students’ learning throughout this lesson. The turn and talks
allow teachers an informal opportunity to hear students’ thinking. The Juicy Sentence protocol allows many
opportunities for teachers to check in. I pay a lot of attention to step #4, unknown words, for the students on my
caseload. During Juicy Sentence, I like to circulate the room and take notes if I notice anything. By circulating
and listening to turn and talks, the teachers are able to gauge students’ learning. During the exit ticket, we can
gauge whether or not students met the objective of the lesson. For vocabulary, we are doing vocabulary
practice activities (shown below) before a summative vocabulary assessment.
Vocabulary Resources
This is what the word wall looks like for this unit (We’ve obviously added words since this original lesson)

We’ve use the world wall to complete vocabulary practice activities.

Note about vocabulary​: we also have a chart with a map and we use pictures to represent key words. As we
explain a lot of these words, we use the map and the pictures to illustrate the ideas. For example, when we
talked about taxes, I took the picture for “tax” from the word wall and moved it to show how the tax money went
from the colonies to Great Britain. Unfortunately, I don’t have a picture of that chart at this time.
Student Handouts
 Lesson 1 Exit Ticket ​→​ Answer each question in a complete sentence.
 
1. What are the two sides who fought in the American Revolution?

2. Who are the two main leaders of the two countries in the American Revolution?

3. What are 2 questions that you have about the American Revolution?

Lesson 1 Exit Ticket→​ Answer each question in a complete sentence. 

 
1. What are the two sides who fought in the American Revolution?

The two sides in the American Revolution are ___________________________________ and

______________________________________.

2. Who are the two main leaders of the two countries in the American Revolution?
One leader in the American Revolution is ___________________________________________. He

was the leader of __________________________________. Another leader in the American

Revolution is _____________________________________. He was the leader of

______________________________________.

3. What are 2 questions that you have about the American Revolution?
________________________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________

Lesson Reflection
Overall, I think that this lesson went well. We had a shortened class period because of a school
assembly, but we were still able to complete every element of the lesson. There were a few changes I made to
our classroom procedures for this particular lesson that were very helpful.
First, giving some students a sentence strip for Juicy Sentence proved helpful. Some of our students
struggle to match the structure of the Juicy Sentence, and it really helps when they receive some sort of
guidance. For ELLs, the sentence frame is extremely helpful.
For vocabulary, I’ve struggled with the best procedure to use. Last year, my mentor teacher solely used
the pocket chart idea with a very specific protocol that I found to be very limiting and not very interesting for the
students. This year, I’ve been trying to have students interact with the vocabulary words more. I found that my
slides were effective for vocabulary, but then the downside is that the slides are harder to post in a visual
manner in the classroom. At the beginning of the year, I tried to print out the vocabulary slides with the
definitions to post on the focus wall, but it became more trouble than it was worth and it eventually fizzled out.
With a vocabulary-rich unit like the American Revolution, I wanted to make sure that students would always
have a visual anchor for the vocabulary words. I now use a combination of the pocket chart cards, the slides to
guide the vocabulary instruction, and visual cues on our focus board. We have a map of the colonies and
Great Britain that we use with picture clues. We use these visual aids as we explain certain events of the war.
Lastly, students are required to practice and engage with the vocabulary words more with the new procedure
we have. After introducing a few vocabulary words, we completed a review activity where students had to use
the word wall to complete a cloze. Then, students can put their completed cloze in their folders so we can
make room for new words on the word wall. We also have not used explicit vocabulary assessment in our
units, so this is something I wanted to add for the American Revolution. Once the pocket chart is full, students
take a quick vocabulary check on Google Forms where they match the word to the definition. On the first
vocabulary check, most of our students (15/18) received an 80% or higher on the vocabulary check. After
tweaking the vocabulary procedure for both 3rd and 4th grade, I feel like I’ve finally found a nice balance of
providing a visual anchor with the pocket chart while also having the students engage in hands-on activities
with the vocabulary words.
The Loyalist and Patriot of the Day element worked well, too. During the chant, some students were too
shy, some students were too silly, but some found the perfect balance of being able to have fun with the chant
and then to get back to work and focus. We used the L/P of the Day to highlight a student who got in to the
chant, acted silly when appropriate, and who even redirected some of his peers when their silliness went too
far. This particular student is one we’ve had some challenges with, so it was really helpful to highlight his
example of positive leadership.
As for the reading activities, we’ve made a few changes that have worked well, too. First, we’ve
committed ourselves to using the document camera as much as possible, to better explicitly teach certain
reading strategies. For example, this particular book uses cartoons of real historical figures with primary source
quotes in speech bubbles. Using the document camera makes it really easy to highlight these features that
students may have otherwise missed. Also, we’ve implemented cloze-type activities where students reread the
text independently (or with a partner) to complete notes and activities. By first introducing the text as a shared
reading and then having students do more independent work with the text, students have multiple opportunities
to access and practice the text.
After this lesson, students mostly did well on the exit ticket. We realized that the students immediately
caught on the two leaders, probably because of our text, George vs. George, but they struggled to clearly
identify the names of the two sides. Moving forward, we made sure to emphasize that there are in fact different
names for the same sides of the war, depending on the terms you use. Initially, students were confused with
the idea of “perspective”, but because they have a lot of practice with perspective (particularly with the Boston
Massacre) we were able to clear up misconceptions about the word perspective, too.
Overall, I feel that our 3rd unit started out strongly, and I’m disappointed that we are putting this unit on
halt with distance learning.