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Clark University Master of Arts in Teaching Program Learning Activity Plan

Chris Van Allsburg Unit: LAP 4 Casey Rothenberg

I. Content: Describe what it is you will teach. What is the content? During this lesson students will be exploring a common characteristic of Chris Van Allsburgs writing, which is his frequent use of mystery. His texts often require readers to think beyond the words and develop deeper meanings or ideas about the characters and themes. Students will be acting as detectives solving a mystery in one of Van Allsburgs books, The Stranger. Throughout the lesson students will be making observations, asking questions and making inferences about who the stranger is and what is going on in the story. II. Learning Goal(s): Describe what specifically students will know and be able to do

after the experience of this class.

Students will be able to: • Produce a well thought out solution for the mystery: who or what is the stranger

in Chris Van Allsburg The Stranger? • Learn what an OQI (Observations, Questions and Inferences) chart is and learn

how to use one. • Listen carefully to a story and make inferences about a specific character in the

story. • In groups, engage in meaningful discuss/debate how to answer the different

questions regarding the text, while also providing appropriate reasoning and responses.

III. Rationale: Explain how the content and learning goal(s) relate to your Curriculum

Unit Plan learning goals. During this lesson, students will use strategic thinking and questioning to navigate information being provided by Van Allsburg’s book. This will allow them to come up with meaningful inferences backed up my evidence from the text. The reading strategies being used are crucial for students overall literacy abilities. Being able to make inferences has its benefits in the real world on a daily basis. Often students are in situations where all the evidence isn’t blatantly provided and only through asking questions and paying close attention to details/ clues are students able to develop meaningful conclusions. These skills will allow students to succeed in various circumstances, as well as tackle difficult texts that aren’t straightforward. Also students collaboration and group work will work towards one of the units overarching goals that addresses building and sustaining a successful classroom environment. One that allows meaningful conversations and debates occur, where students are sharing their mind and responding to others ideas in a respectful but honest manner.


IV. Assessment: Describe how you and your students will know they have reached

your learning goals. The lesson involves two writing assessments. The first occurs in a group collaborative effort, where students are circulating around reading and responding to different questions at different tables. Responses will be written graffiti style, allowing all students to write down their own thoughts.

1. What is or isn’t happening when the stranger is at the Bailey’s? What happens right after he disappears?

2. Why do you think the trees in the distance were red and orange? What does it mean when leaves change color? Why do you think the leaves around the Baileys house weren’t also changing?

3. What does the stranger’s interaction with the rabbits teach us about his character? Why do you think the rabbits are so comfortable with him?

4. What do we know about the season when we see geese flying toward the south? Why is the stranger so fascinated by the geese he sees?

5. The text says the leaves were green. What is happening when the stranger blows on the leaf? Look closely at the picture. What changes about the leaf as he blows on it? Look closely at his face. What does his expression mean? Think about how the pictures in the story show the seasons are changing.

The second writing assessment is basically an exit slip asking students to explain who or what they think the stranger is. The mystery will definitely be a challenge for some of my students so I am not assessing them on the accuracy of their response. Instead I am looking for reasoning on whatever their guess is, and the reasoning must relate back to our OQI chart and/or what they found within the text.

V. Personalization and equity: Describe how you will provide for individual student

strengths and needs. How will you and your lesson consider the needs of each student and scaffold learning? How specifically will ELL students and students with learning disabilities gain access and be supported?

The main text of the lesson will be read a loud, which will prevent students with varying reading abilities from falling behind. During the text I will also be asking prompting questions and pausing throughout the reading after a helpful clue has just been read. This will help students add to our OQI chart and build up evidence for answering the mystery. Pictures and text accompany all of the questions from the actual story, which will help scaffold their responses. I would not be surprised if some students had weren’t able to pay attention to every detail in the story because the whole text can be rather long and dense. Also there are some rather tricky vocabulary words that may be unfamiliar to ELL’s. Because of all this, having the text and pictures readily available while trying to answer text-based questions will be extremely beneficial. Also, during this part of the


lesson, Josh and I will be circulating around helping students read the questions and start thinking of how they want to answer it. Groups will be selected carefully, and arranged in a way that allows students to help one another and all students to express their learning. For ELL’s, students on IEP’s, and students who generally struggle with literacy will all benefit from working with their peers. Since the mystery can be confusing it is important for these students to observe others verbalizing their thought process regarding the most important parts of the story. This will reiterate the clues in friendlier language and help guide some puzzled students. VI. Activity description and agenda

a. Describe the activities that will help your students understand the content of your class lesson by creating an agenda with time frames for your class. Be prepared to explain why you think each activity will help students on the path toward understanding.

Time Teacher will… Student will… Materials

8 min. -Discuss how Chris Van Allsburg often writing stories that include a mystery and have elements of a fantasy -instruct the students on their mission as detectives to solve the mystery, and using the OQI chart (observe, question, infer)

-Listen and talk about Chris Van Allsburgs writing style and the different mysteries in his stories -Listen and ask question about the OQI chart

-Chart paper and a sharpie

15 min. -Introduce the text and ask students to identify the mystery that needs to be solved -Read a loud The Stranger -Stop periodically throughout the text to call on student and add to our chart.

-Observe the front cover and the title and develop a question that must be answered. -Listen closely to the story, -Thinking of questions and observations and giving thumbs up when they have something to participate.

-The Stranger by Chris Van Allsburg -OQI Chart

25 min. -Set out different questions around the five tables. -Instruct students to circulate around the tables with their groups and try their best to come up with as many ideas to

-Work effectively within groups. -Walk around to the different tables and using the text and/or photos try to answer the questions. -Begin developing a

-Questions (see assessment) -Printed out sections of the text, The Stranger


answer the question within the five-minute time slot.

conclusion on who or what the stranger is.

5-7 min. -Add any final inferences on our chart. -Ask students to take 5-7 minutes to independently answer the question: who is the stranger. Tell them that they must back up their answer with some reasoning that refers to the text or our chart.

-In RRJ answer the exit slip. -Read quietly once finished.

-OQI Chart

b. What particular challenges, in terms of student learning or implementing

planned activity, do you anticipate and how will you address them? I think that students may not be able to grasp the idea of the stranger being more than just a human, and actually representing a season or mother nature/jack frost. Another challenge I anticipate is students not working productively in groups as they circulate around answering the questions and developing their theories. Students might: not respond to others thinking in a totally respectful manner, be tempted to have conversations not on topic, or disengage and let the others do the work. Luckily there will be two teachers also circulating to make sure students stay on topic, stay engaged and keep conversations appropriate. VII. List the Massachusetts Learning Standards this lesson addresses.

Reading Standards for Literature

• 1. Refer to details and examples in a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text.

Writing Standards • 3. Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using

effective technique, descriptive details, and clear event sequences. • 9. Draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis,

reflection, and research. Speaking and Listening Standards

• 1. Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grade 4 topics and texts, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly.


VIII. Reflection

a. In light of all areas of planning, but especially in terms of your stated purpose and learning goals, in what ways was the activity(ies) successful? How do you know? In what ways was it not successful? How might the activity be planned differently another time?

b. What did you learn from the experience of this lesson that will inform your next LAP?

Before teaching the lesson, I was skeptical that students would be able to answer the

question: who is the stranger? However, all of the activities helped scaffold students

conclusions by the end of the lesson, which turned out better than I anticipated. After

briefly discussing Chris Van Allsburg’s tendency to include mysteries in his stories,

students were ready to put on their detective hats. Most students were comfortable

creating and using the OQI chart, which turned out to be very helpful when answering the

exit slip question. At first, when adding to the chart, most students immediately jumped

to the inference section. I had to emphasize that we would be leaving the section blank

until later on because we cant be sure without reading the whole story, and pushed

students to re-phrase their inference into a question. This strategy worked out well, and

the class created a strong list of important questions that can be asked about the stranger.

Our observation section was not as strong, because most students were participating

questions or possible inferences. It would’ve been helpful to further model the

importance of taking every small detail into perspective when analyzing the text and

illustrations.

I was surprised that students weren’t able to instantly think of the mystery that needed to

be solved based on the books cover and title. However, I realized they were focusing

primarily on the illustration and trying to decipher why he was making such a surprised

facial expression. Even though they were overlooking the title, students were

exemplifying abilities to look deeply into a picture to dissect the pieces and what they

contribute to the overall meaning. During the actual read aloud students did a great job

maintaining their focus and engagement. A pre-established method for sharing out

observations, questions and inferences would’ve been beneficial, because at times I felt


disorganized and that some students barely got a chance to participate while others were

contributing too much. However, during the read aloud students provided some very

thoughtful question and provided sound reasoning to back it up. Early on in the text on of

my students actually suggested the idea that the stranger is similar to Mother Nature and

could possibly be Mother Nature’s son or father nature. Even though this student is one

of my most academically advanced, I was still surprised at how quickly she picked up on

the stranger’s identity.

The carousel activity was fairly productive based on what students wrote down. By the

last two stations the activity seemed to be dragging on and answers were getting a little

repetitive. It probably would’ve been a good idea to drop the last rotation and get students

working on their exit slips right away. Text and pictures accompanied with guiding

questions seemed to work out very well in helping students develop conclusions about

the strangers identity.

After wrapping up the carousel activity, students had very reasonable inferences they

wanted to add to our OQI chart. The majority of the class understood there was

something special about the stranger, that he was not a normal human and he had

something to do with the transition of seasons. In the exit slips, there were a variety of

answers, but most of them followed a similar theme and were able to provide thoughtful

answers. A group of students wrote about him being father nature or somehow related to

mother nature. Another group wrote about him having control over summer, fall and/or

winter, and possibly being the god of seasons. Somehow I did not anticipate the

correlation of the stranger to god, but only a few students put this down as an answer and

I was able to avoid any sensitive conversations. Unfortunately, there were two-to-three

students who did not provide a thought out solution for who the stranger was. They took

the question very literally and simply stated that the stranger was the man who got hit in

the beginning of the story. Luckily this was the exception, and the majority provided at

least one reasonable answer.

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