English Language Arts, Expository Writing Unit



English Language Arts, Crime and Puzzlement Unit, Volume 1, Lesson 14: Back to the Classroom Standards Met: This lesson is part of the Crime and Puzzlement Unit Plan and meets the standards adumbrated therein. Big Ideas: investigation, observation, analysis, synthesis, explanation. This lesson aims to assist students, particularly struggling readers, to use image and text to practice step-by-step analysis that leads to synthesis. This lesson activates prior knowledge of methods used in the previous lesson to solve the case at hand. Students will be able to focus on a drawing and a piece of text and perform a relatively complex analysis of a set of evidence and use it to draw conclusions about what occurred in a given scenario.Classroom Aim: What is logic? What is analysis? What is synthesis? How can we use logical analysis and synthesis to figure out who did what from the pictures and text of the Crime and Puzzlement case Back to the Classroom?Do Now: Cultural Literacy worksheet: If the shoe fits, wear it.Class Work: Whole-class, group, or individual work depending on the needs of students, on a Crime and Puzzlement case using the array of skills outlined in the Methods and Materials section of this lesson plan.Independent Practice: After reviewing the evidence in the case, conclude your investigation by using the evidence you have analyzed and synthesized to name a suspect or guilty party.Methods and Materials: This lesson seeks to assist students struggling with a variety of cognitive and intellectual obstacles to learning, including, but not limited to low levels of literacy, attenuated or impaired attentions spans, an inability to think synthetically or form gestalts, and weak impulse control. The materials for this lesson are derived from Lawrence Treat’s book Crime and Puzzlement, Book 1 (Jaffrey, NH: David R. Godine, 1981). This book comes highly recommended from a variety of sources (they are universally praised as both clever and edifying), most notably in George Hillocks’ otherwise unremarkable Teaching Argument Writing, Grades 6-12: Supporting Claims with Relevant Evidence and Clear Reasoning (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2011). Each “case” in these books require students to analyze a picture and a piece of text in their endeavor to solve it.To the casual observer or even an observer who touts him-or herself as an educational leader, the materials in the Crime and Puzzlement unit plan may appear to lack rigor. There are a number of responses to this assertion, all of which can be found in the Crime and Puzzlement Overarching Unit Plan. The salient characteristic of this lesson, like all of the lessons in this unit, is that it is designed for students with a variety of learning challenges, not the least of which is low levels of literacy. This unit and the lessons that comprise it are designed for struggling learners. That said, even for students reading at or close to grade level, this material—its images and texts together—demands close attention, and calls upon students to observe, analyze, and synthesize a considerable amount of information. Working from the two documents that comprise each “case” (i.e. lesson) in this unit requires students to answer comprehension questions, assess the evidence the comprehension questions yield, and synthesize the answers to solve the case. By any measure this work allows struggling learners to move to the top of Bloom’s Taxonomy and produce a synthesis. This lesson can be used as either a whole class activity, group work, or individual work, depending on students’ skill level, ability to focus on multi-step work, and intangibles that arise in the education of challenged and struggling learners.Need for Lesson: ELA CRM PZLMNT V1 LP14*lp; ELA CRM PZLMNT V1 LP14*dn; ELA CRM PZLMNT V1 LP14*rd-ws; ELA CRM PZLMNT V1 LP14*ansr kyKey Points and Connections:Some Essential Questions:What is evidence? What is observation?What is logic?What is analysis?What is synthesis?Next Lesson: Crime and Puzzlement Volume 1, Lesson 15: Dropout ................
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