Lesson Plan Critique

I believe this lesson plan is quite creative and does a great job of engaging students in the content. The first aspect that stands out from this lesson is that it does not force students to work with a “blank slate”. Students this young are just learning how to write and the need to be creative may hold them back from writing anything at all. By allowing them to use words from a book that they love, students can focus on actually writing and not spend too much time worrying about what to even write about.

Another great aspect of this lesson is that it requires collaboration, planning, and editing, three skills that students will need to use throughout the rest of their life. The students collaborate and plan with their classmates in small groups. Then, after the poem is put together, the class can edit it if it seems that some lines are out of place.

Finally, the performance aspect of this lesson really ties it together as more than just a writing assignment. Students are getting to create a poem and see it in action. It is likely that students who have completed this lesson truly feel proud of their work and looked forward to performing their poem. Though it sounds simple, creating a lesson that students actually care about and want to call their own can be a difficult task. I believe it was accomplished with this lesson plan.

If I had one critique, I would say that I am not sure the discussion of poem types would go over well with this young of students. There is a chance that these students have not seen many poems and even if they have, I am not sure they have the cognitive ability at that age to distinguish between different poems they have read and determine what features define them.