Christine+Rott

Lesson One: Pre-Reading Activity for “The Diary of Anne Frank”

Approximately half of the 4th quarter of the 8th grade language arts curriculum is devoted to “The Diary of Anne Frank. I spend lots of time activating prior knowledge before taking on the reading of the play. In the past I have done an anticipation guide; I typically give the students 15-20 statement in regards to Anne Frank and general WWII/Holocaust knowledge and ask them to label each statement as true or false. We then go over the statements and talk about background knowledge for Anne Frank and misconceptions about the era.

Using SmartResponse, I have entered the 20 T/F questions into a Smartboard file. Students will be able to respond using a personal response clicker. I think using the Smartboard and the clickers will generate a lot of interest, and I think the students will be eager to see how their answer compare to the rest of the students’ responses. This method will also indicate to me as the teacher which fallacies need top be corrected within each period.

Lesson Two: Vocabulary/Spelling Sort

The 8th grade spelling/vocabulary curriculum is comprised of word study of Greek and Latin word parts. We have done words sorts in the past with pencil and paper, but it’s been a pretty mundane activity.

This year, I took the words for spelling lesson 7 and created a SMART Notebook file. I asked the students to work in pairs or triads and sort the words according to criteria they came up with. Some students looked at prefixes, suffixes and roots, but others came up with more creative methods. After working for a few minutes in small groups, students came up to the board and dragged words into groups. The rest of the class was asked to figure out the rule or criteria that were used to complete the sort. Then we undid the first group’s sort and tried other ways.

The SMARTboard added more engagement to the lesson, allowed many groups to quickly share, and helped the 8th graders to better learn the words. Also, since I forgot a word, I was apply to show off how the software has handwriting recognition. The kids loved it! Lesson Three: Vocabulary/Spelling Review

Our curriculum is heavy on vocabulary, so I’m always looking for more ways to work with words. After playing around more with the Lesson Activity Toolkit, I found a fun way to review vocabulary. I was able to create an interactive crossword puzzle with spelling list 8. It would be great to use as a warmup with the kids, or something like this would be a high interest activity when I do small group rotation/centers.



Lesson Four: Post-Reading Strategy “The Diary of Anne Frank”

As a school district, we have been working diligently on reading strategies. In addition to that, we spend so much time on “The Diary of Anne Frank” I think it is valid to utilize several pre, during and post reading strategies to improve the overall comprehension of our 8th grade readers.

The lesson I developed is similar to a reading strategy called “Possible Sentences.” The SMART notebook file will generate words one at a time for the students. There are several different ways for me to use the file. I could have the page reveal all the words and ask the students to write a paragraph summarizing what we have read using each word. I could also have the words come out two at a time and ask students to write a sentence with each word pair that would make sense as it relates to the story. I could ask students for definitions of the words as they appear.

Students really seem to enjoy when I use the SMARTboard to do things randomly. I fact, I also found a “random student picker” Excel file. The kids seem to enjoy when I use it to find volunteers in class.