“It’s okay mom, I’m a karate kid, no worries.” ~unnamed child at Baize Martial Arts Tournament

I am an unorthodox individual. My inspiration to teaching or realization that I could teach did not sprout from a calling, responsibility from family like most others, or another teacher that absolutely inspired me to become a teacher. My real idea of wanting to be a teacher came from the realization that my hobby of hosting a game of Dungeons and Dragons was extremely close to being a teacher. I don’t expect to have a level 6 Fighter with Weapon Focus and Weapon Specialization using swords and Greater Cleave, but I do expect to have a Sophomore-level English Student in my class with an interest and understanding in Edgar Allen Poe and be able to interpret some poetry. There are other situations to me wanting to become a teacher. I truly realized that I could teach when I use to be an assistant instructor in a Karate class. It was the most fun and the largest challenge I had at any job I’ve held, and I loved every bit of it. When I was done being an assistant instructor, I decided I wanted to be a teacher, and it was a job that I knew I can do. Every day I have the opportunity to teach a classroom, I marvel at how a passionate hobby of mine that originated in the basement of my parent’s home playing Dungeons and Dragons, has in some way manifested itself to teaching a class. I stand in awe as I see the challenges I faced and overcame in teaching a karate class reincarnate itself in a new classroom that I work and overcome once again. I see all these things, and I know teaching is where I am supposed to be.

“Justin, you’re very unorthodox, formal, and hold a very casual personality, but it works. Without a doubt, you need to be here.” ~Walter LeJeune Karate Teacher (my supervisor)

So, please proceed, and see just one example of my “creative” mind at work. I think this Unit Plan is a fairly great example for people to gauge and understand just what kind of teacher I plan to be.

Brothers

Grimm’s Fairy Tales

Sophomore English

Justin McGraw

Spring Semester 2011

Overview

Rationale:

Being able to identify so many different types of elements to literature is a very useful and essential key to reading. If a student knows the difference between a Epic Hero, Romantic Hero, Parody Hero, Tragic Hero, and Anti-hero, then they can use that ability to identify a type of hero in later reading, or for something as trivial as watching a movie in their free time. Another skill that will be focused heavily on in the Unit is being able to identify a moral from the story. I thought it would be easier to introduce students to finding a moral in the story if they would practice from stories they already had a general idea about.

This is a 6 week Unit well suited for a school like Logos. Since I had to be mindful of the details like students do not have homework, and the attendance and participation of a classroom can be a little lack luster on some days than others, I decided the best method would be to work on a Unit with short stories. I want students to be able to read different kinds of Fairy Tales that they are a little more familiar with, “Little Red Riding Hood”, “Cinderella”, “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves”, “The Frog Prince”, and more, but I wanted them to read them from the original source and not the edited Disney or childhood version most are accustomed to. The Brothers Grimm did an excellent job in the past of writing a variation of literature that gives students a very wide variety of genera to identify. Students will read stories that are funny, some stories that are morbid, some that are ironic, some that are tragic, and some stories that end happily ever after. A Fiction Unit that revolves around Fairy Tales is also a great way to introduce students to different types of characters as well. They will be introduced to a few different types of characters/heroes throughout the Unit, and I will assist the students to be able to identify qualities of the specific type of character/hero.

The Summary: Students will read, in class, a number of Grimm’s Fairy Tales in the classroom in a 4 weeks period. They will also be responsible to complete worksheets that go with the reading in identifying certain characters, the theme of the story, and the moral of the story (if there really is one). The summative assessment of the Unit will be introduced where the students will select a Fairy Tale they enjoyed and write their own short story that goes with it. The fifth week of the lesson, I intend to allow the students to spend an entire week dedicated to writing their short story. Some examples would be “The Enchantress’ story” for Rapunzel. I will even allow some creative crossovers like “The Huntsman’s story” which would follow the Huntsman where the student could say it was the Huntsman from “Little Red Riding Hood”, was the same as the Huntsman in “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves”. To help aid with this idea for the final project, I will also briefly present them to a comic series called “Fables”. The final week of the unit will be spent where the students will share (if they are willing) a short story that they have written for any Grimm’s Fairy Tale they wish to select. Then the end of the Unit will be concluded with a test.

Objectives:

- From Bloom’s Taxonomy of Analysis: Students will be able to compare and contrast the Grimm’s tales from the Tales they knew as children.

-From Bloom’s Taxonomy of Comprehension and Evaluation: Students will be able to identify and explain different traits of characters, themes, and morals of the stories they read.

-From Bloom’s Taxonomy of Knowledge: Students will be able to recall overlapping characters from one story if they are used in another story, and offer their opinion to discuss the reoccurrence of certain characters.

-From Bloom’s Taxonomy of Application and Synthesis: Students will be able to create their own short story that uses details and themes of the Grimm’s Fairy Tales that fits in with the story or stories that they created their own for.

Length of Curriculum: 6 weeks. 4 weeks for Reading, 1 week for writing, 1 week for presentation and test.

Materials:

The school: Computers, Projector, Computer Lab.

The Teacher: Worksheets and handouts for students. Select issues of “Fables” to present, printed copies of the stories that will be covered in the classroom.

The Student: Paper, Handouts given to them, and writing tools

Means of Assessment:

Formative Assessment- The students will have worksheets that go with each story and topic that they will read. The handouts will be held onto by the teacher to later redistribute to the class in preparation for the test at the end of the Unit. At the end of every story that is read, the worksheets will be collected and graded to determine whether the students understood the lesson or not. Above all, the worksheets will be an essential tool to help students for the Summative Assessment.

Summative Assessment- The students will have two different assignments for this assessment. The first one will be a short story that they will write (there will be a rubric) which will have all the elements of a Grimm’s short story within it. I aim for this to be an amusing assessment as I will encourage students to use some dark and sometimes morbid elements to write the story. The major Summative Assessment will be the Unit Test at the end. I do not aim for this test to be extremely hard, and will most likely use questions that mostly come from the student’s handouts and maybe some questions and discussions the students have offered throughout the Unit.

Teacher-Centered Lesson Plan 1: Types of Fiction Characters and Themes

Date: Day 1
Objective
Students will be able to / Students will be able to identify various themes and elements in Fiction Literature. Students will know how to identify the type of character or even the type of hero. They will know how to pull from the story key ideas and morals.
Assessment
By the end of class, what should your students be able to do, know, or answer? / Students will be given the option to work with a partner or alone. They will be given a worksheet that will have a small short story and a picture of a general superhero (for example: Superman), from the lesson and their in-class notes, they will identify the superhero to the specific type they are and they will figure out a meaning from the short story they are given.
Spiraled Skills
What other skills will be touched upon or reviewed during class? How will this be integrated? Please choose at least one other skill. / *Identifying key themes: Irony, tragedy, etc
*Identifying types of characters: Main, supporting, Tragic Hero, antihero, etc
This lesson will start the Fiction Unit and help students be able to identify the different types of elements that make up a lot of fiction. Whether it is a book they have to read or even a movie they watch on their own.
Opening
What is the purpose of this lesson? / Do Now: What makes a Fairy Tale? Do they have a good ending or a bad ending? Are they meant to simply be told to children?
Rationale: Students must learn to look at Fiction in different ways and understand that even something as simple as a Fairy Tale, has more depth to it than a story they remember as a child. Fairy Tales are typically a type of foundation to larger forms of fiction and help introduce people into a variety of characters, themes, and morals.
Guided Reading
How will you and your students cover the reading (partners, whole group, independent, etc.)? How will students engage in during reading strategies during this time? / Since the students never have homework at this particular school (there are a number of reasons why students do not have homework). It is suggested that I allow the students to read independently or to simply do a read-aloud in the classroom. It is because of this specific detail that I choose to do a complete Unit focusing on Short Stories.
Direct Instruction/
Intro New Material
What key points will the teacher convey to the students? / Key Points:
·  It is more than just a story, what kind of theme does it have?
·  What does the story try to tell us, the reader?
·  What kind of Heroic character is this?
· 
Independent Practice/ Assessment
How will students practice this skill independently?
How will the assessment be administered? / Students will use the information they have learned in this lesson to identify every story that is covered in the Fiction Unit. For every story that they later read, they will quickly identify what kind of character each one is, what kind of story the Fairy Tale is, and at the end of the story list what kind of moral could be drawn out from the story.

Lesson Plan 2

Subject: English Grade: 12th Grade Teacher: Mr. McGraw

Objective: Students will read through the story “Snow White and Rose Red” from the Brothers Grimm fairy tales. At the end of the story, the students will then tell me what they know from Rose Red and write a short summary of why they think Rose Red is lesser known.

Materials Needed:

-Comic book: “Fables” -Power Point

-Printed copies of “Snow White and Rose Red” -Computer

-Paper and Pencil -Projector

-Question packet -AV cables

Warm Up:

The students will have presented on the projector a couple of pages from the Vertigo Comic “Fables” involving the character Rose Red. They will read the comic panels and then do a quick write of who exactly the character Rose Red is.

Presentation:

The teacher will read out loud and select students to read from the Grimm’s fairy tale “Snow White and Rose Red”.

The teacher will also stop the class on key points in the story to ask students questions to check for comprehension.

(Optional): Students may also answer questions on their packet while they are following along or the questions are asked during class.

Feed back:

Quick write: After reading “Snow White and Rose Red” students will then take five minutes to give a quick write to confirm why they think Rose Red is not mentioned as much in the fairy tales of Snow White. A brief discussion will follow the Quick Write activity.

Assessment:

The students will take some time to fill out the Question Packet on the following lesson.

Unit:Grimm’s Fiction_Lesson: 3_Jigsaw “The Juniper Tree” __
Teacher:_Mr. McGraw______Date:_Spring 2011_
Objective
Students will be able to / Students will be able to work in groups, or one large group, to operate in the jigsaw structure reading “The Juniper Tree”. Once they complete reading and recording information from their reading, they will engage in a large discussion to explain the part they read to the rest of the classroom and be able to listen to other classmates to complete their question packet for the story, and understand what happened in the story.
Assessment
By the end of class, what should your students be able to do, know, or answer? / By the end of the class, the students will have a question packet that should be completed. Additionally, the students will be able to answer the primary question to “The Juniper Tree” in how does “The Juniper Tree” and “Snow White and the Sveen Dwarves” relate?
Spiraled Skills
What other skills will be touched upon or reviewed during class? How will this be integrated? / Other skills that students will learn from “The Juniper Tree” is how to identify a moral from the story, I choose “The Juniper Tree” because the moral to find in this one is much easier than other Grimm’s stories.
Opening
What is the purpose of this lesson? / The purpose of this lesson is to further the student’s knowledge to relating one fairy tale to another one. There is one very large parallel to “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves” and “The Juniper Tree” that I would like students to recognize for further reading of Fairy Tales in this unit.
Guided Reading
How will you and your students cover the reading (partners, whole group, independent, etc.)? How will students engage in during reading strategies during this time? / The students will cover the reading for “The Juniper Tree” by working in small groups, or working in one very large group (depending on the class attendance). The students will work in a Jigsaw to read one small section and then engage in a large discussion to learn the entire story from each other student reporting information.
Direct Instruction/
Intro New Material
What key points will the teacher convey to the students? / To introduce the topic, the teacher will ask the students questions that are involved with the story. “Have you ever read a fairy tale where someone gets their head cut off?” “Have you ever imagined a mother framing her own little daughter for mother?” “Have you ever seen anyone so guilty that it kills them?” I will ask these questions just to entice interest for “The Juniper Tree” this is by far the darkest of the Grimm’s Fairy Tales that I have selected to read.
Independent Practice/ Assessment
How will students practice this skill independently?
How will the assessment be administered? / The students will obviously engage in independent work by the portion of the book they have to read. Understandably, in the classroom there will be a few students that may not want to participate at all in this project, so the teacher will be well prepared to pick up the slack for any students who refuse to participate.
Closing
How will students receive feedback on their performance? How will you determine evidence of mastery? / This lesson plan is highly structured to measure performance and participation. The jigsaw format requires everyone to participate, and there are plenty of questions the students will answer in the packet to measure their participation or how much they are following along.

Lesson Plan 4