Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Focus Lesson- Using "and" Correctly

Mini / Focus Lesson Plan- Using the Word “and” Correctly

Rationale: I was talking to Mrs. Maxwell about what the students have the most problems within their writing and she said they are constantly using “and” to begin sentences. They rarely use it correctly in sentences and often use it too often or too many time in a sentence. I think this is a common error in beginning writers so I would like to address it!


Standard: ELA1W1 The student begins to understand the principles of writing. The student
i. Begins to write different types of sentences (e.g., simple/compound and declarative/interrogative).


Mentor Text:
Small Paragraph-
1My name is Axel. 2I am a student in Mrs. Maxwell’s class. 3I love to play soccer and watch movies with my friends. 4And I like to eat pizza. 5And one day when I grow up I want to be a fire fighter. 6Other students in my class are Kenya and Leslie and Kennet and Jennifer.


Lesson Description: (5-10 minutes)
-          I will post the paragraph on the smartboard, read the paragraph to the students and we will circle all the “and’s” we can find.
-          We will look at each sentence and see if there is anything we need to change.
o   Sentence 1 and 2 can be combined. We can plug in “and” so you have a compound sentence instead of 2 short sentences.
o   Sentence 3 uses “and” correctly. We could separate the thoughts into 2 sentences, but they are related because they both talk about what he loves to do. This way we don’t have to repeat “I love” at the beginning of 2 different centences.
o   In sentence 4 we need to simply drop the “and”. To make it flow better, we can insert “also” so the sentence would read: “I also like to eat pizza” because he is further telling about himself.
o   In sentence 5, we would just drop the “and” altogether. It does not need to be there at all.
o   In sentence 6, there should not be as many “ands”, we should only have one between Kennet and Jennifer.
-          After we make all these corrections we will review when “and” is appropriate and needed (ie. When you are listing things, to connect 2 sentences with a similar thoughts etc)

Independent writing:
Students will be encouraged to look through previous writing and circle each “and” they find and see if the sentence really needs it. They should ask themselves “does this sentence make sense without it?” and if it does, take it out. In future writing they should be more careful about putting “and” between everything. However, they should also try to use it the right way in making more compound sentences.

No comments:

Post a Comment