Co-Teaching February 2012 Grade 2

Generating Ideas
Written by: Lisa M.
Co-Teaching Team: Fern D., Indra K., Margaret DS

Lesson/Unit of Study Title
Generating Ideas
Map Adventure Story (80 minutes total)

Grade
2

Learning Goal/Ontario Curriculum Expectations
1.1 identify the topic, purpose, audience, and form for writing

1.2 generate ideas about a potential topic, using a variety of strategies and resources

1.5 identify and order main ideas and supporting details, using graphic organizers (e.g., a story grammar: characters, setting, problem, solution; a sequential chart: first, then, next, finally) and organizational patterns (e.g., problem solution,

Resources
• http://www.eqao.com/Educators/Elementary/036/BookletsandGuides.aspx?Lang=E&gr=036&yr=09
• 2010 Language 2 Scoring Guide EQAO
• 2010 Language Book 2 EQAO

Language Lesson Plan
Activation: What is an adventure story?  Generate and record ideas on the chart.  (10 minutes)
Partner Work: You find a map in the playground.  With a partner, generate a list of ideas that describe where that map might take you. (10 minutes)
Independent: EQAO 2010 - You find a map in the playground.  Write an adventure story about where the map takes you.  You have 10 minutes to generate ideas for your story and 50 minutes to write your story. Pay attention to the amount of space you have to write today.  You can not go over.

Reflections/Observations
• The students believed that the adventures had to be from their own life experiences. This stemmed from the Small Moments we had been writing.
• Many students had difficulty understanding how to use a graphic organizer to plan a story. Instead they drew a map of the place they were going to go for their adventure.  Only a few students drew a map that showed a progression of events.
• Many students did not refer to the context of the story starter in their introduction.
While writing, many students were still spelling high frequency words incorrectly and using a lower case “i” for the word “I”.
 • Many students were still struggling with using punctuation corrrectly.

Goals for Instruction
• Margaret suggested taking a step back and spending at least two weeks just working on graphic organizers.  She suggested focussing on one or two that the students were familiar with already.
• We wanted students to recognize that adventure stories can stem from their imaginations.  They do not have to be rooted in personal experiences or small moments.  For example, you can go to visit Jupiter in an adventure story and use the prior knowledge to describe the character’s experiences while exploring.
• Our curriculum focus for the 6 week period became “generating ideas”.

Post-Unit Reflections
• The students had a much better understanding of an adventure story that stemmed from the imagination.
• While a few students drew a map again during the summative assessment, most understood that planning your ideas meant using a graphic organizer, such as a BME (beginning, middle, ending) or CSA (character, setting, action).
• Students were able to construct their own graphic organizer using the models displayed on the writing wall.
• Students ideas were much more creative and most stories had a clear beginning, middle and ending.
• Students had a better understanding of how to use the space given during an EQAO assessment piece.

Post-Unit Goals for Improvement
• Students need to work on beginning sentences in a variety of ways.
• Students will learn to add additional detail to the middle of their compositions.
• Students will continue to build their bank of descriptive and interesting vocabulary.
• Students will apply the knowledge of a beginning, middle and ending to non-fiction pieces.
• Students will learn to choose which graphic organizer is the most appropriate for their assignment.