Exploring Standards-Based Lesson Plans

As a hopeful, future high school English teacher, lesson planning, and building a tailored curriculum for my class and subject has been a fascinating, and honestly, frightening aspect of teaching so far. It was difficult for me to even imagine how I would go about doing so. This particular assignment has helped me confront that fear, and I've come to realize it's not all that intimidating when you understand how to break down a book or idea into components that can be understood; and can also be fun, and engaging for the entire class.

I've chosen to focus on a lesson that would appeal to the fun, creative sides of high school English students, but one that also develops critical skills in interpretations and writing development. The lesson, called "What's in my Pocket?", begins with students receiving a list of items a character has in their pocket or bag, and then are asked to write a short paragraph or more describing the kind of character they imagine would carry these items. This would be especially useful for freshman and sophomores who are building their creative writing skills, and their comprehension of characters and symbolism through objects and actions.

This particular lesson is aligned with Common Core State Standards: W.9-10.3, W.9-10.4, RL.9-10.3. W.9-10.3 is a standard that helps students write narratives and to develop real or imagined experiences using effective technique, well-chosen details, and well-structured event sequences. Developing characters based on items, and developing items based on characters effectively demonstrates a compelling way to build that technique. W.9-10.4 is implemented to produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience. By developing characters with specific items tailored to their description, students are tasked with the appropriateness of their story/character development, creating a character that is defined by such items, and therefore, aligned with their given persona. RL.9-10.3 analyzes how complex characters develop over the course of a text, interact with other characters and advance the plot or theme. When implemented for a specific text, students will progress through their readings and gain an awareness and understanding for the characters and their motives; they will be able to pinpoint particular key details and ideas the character expresses, and the student will then be able to create their own assumptions based off of these educated findings.

"What's in my Pocket?" is a fantastic lesson that can easily be implemented into any classroom as an engaging and enjoyable activity that has the capabilities to allow students to break down characters and understand them more deeply, while also engaging their creative sides once they understand the concept, so they can then utilize it in their own story/character creations, and interpreting character/story elements in other readings. I'd love to do this as a creative writing project with a novel the class would be reading, as the character development is more in-depth. Presenting them with a few objects at the beginning of the class, I would then give them the task of developing their own character who has these objects as a half page journal entry to acquaint them with the process.  Afterwards, each student could then create their own imaginary characters with a few details, and then create their own items for their character. The items they draw or write down are to be placed in an envelope, then passed around the room anonymously, and students are then suppose to write about a character they imagine would be carrying these items. After everyone is finished a comparison can be made between the original student's story, and to the story of those who received the bag of items. It could be made even more fun, but would take more resources, if many small, inexpensive, and cheap, if not free, items could be gathered up, and each student would then be allowed to gather 3 or 4 items each and give them to another random student, who is then to write a creative character involving those items. It could then push their creative capacity by being confronted with multiple, unexpected items to incorporate and think of in terms of character traits.

I'm not going to lie, I'm saving this lesson until I get the opportunity to implement it myself, see if my expectations for it as a lesson are met, and if the students enjoy it as much as I'd like them to. Learning is empowering and when you make learning fun and enjoyable, it's all the more powerful.

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