Lesson Title: The Emperor Of America
Curriculum Area: English Language Arts
Technology Strand: Uses technology but does not address a technology strand
Grade Level: 4
 
Essential Question: How do you use words to bring characters to life and improve the plot of the story?
 
A Activity Summary Students will work in three centers and a teacher directed center to participate in various activities to learn how words bring characteristics to life and improve the plot of the story.
C Curriculum English Language Arts
3.03 Consider the ways language and visuals bring characters to life, enhance plot development and produce a response.
T Technology Uses technology but does not address a technology strand
 
 
Activating Strategies
5 minutes
 To activate students’ prior knowledge of how words are related to each other, students will play a word game that is similar to Password.

Students will be divided into groups of three by counting off from 1-3. The roles of the students in the groups are as follows:
  1. Two students will chose one mystery word from a container and read the word, not allowing the third member of the group to see or hear what it is.
  2. The students who know the mystery word must alternately give one-word clues to the third student to try to make them say the mystery word.
  3. When a word has been discovered, the team should rotate roles clockwise so that a different student is the one who is now trying to guess the mystery word.
Repeat steps 1 and 2 for up to 10 clues.
If the word has not been discovered after 10 clues the mystery word should be revealed and the roles should rotate to the next person.
 
Technology Vocabulary: 
Detailed Technology Instructions:
 
Cognitive Teaching Strategies
Before going to centers have students read the story, "The Emperor of America" and make their crowns using markers, crayons, glitter, glue and pipe cleaners. They will write write their names on the side of the crown that has the Burger King logo on it (Burger King will usually donate crowns for this activity). While the students are working on reading the story and making their crowns the teacher will go around the room assigning a foreperson to each group (in this activity we had 3 forepersons). The foreperson will be responsible for keeping his/her group on task and explaining the center activities. Each student in the class will be given a colored card, either blue, red or yellow. The cards will represent the group to which they have been assigned for the centers.

Teacher Preparation before the lesson:
  1. Place a dot every 20 minutes on the clock in your room. This will help students know when they need to change centers.
  2. Download the files for the centers that can be found in the resources section at the bottom of this lesson.
  3. Make copies for the Listening Center and Teacher Directed Center.
  4. Load the norton_epitaph file on a computer or make it available on a floppy disk or server.
  5. Cut multi-colored cards for grouping students for centers. (green, blue, red, yellow)
Instruct students to wear their crowns during this lesson.

Teacher Directed Center
20 minutes

10 minutes
  • Students will read another story, "The Emperor" which is an interactive PowerPoint presentation displayed on the television screen using an AverKey. Students will be asked to fill in at each blank in the story in order to create their version of "The Emperor". Students will view the slide show again and fill in the blanks with the words that they have chosen in order to check for clarity. Upon completion, students will swap papers and reread the story using the words selected by another student. "Does this story have the same plot as your story? Why or why not"? Have the students conclude that descriptive words change or add to the structure of a story.
10 minutes
  • Students will take their crowns off their heads and to name several words or phrases that would describe their crown. They are then asked to write a descriptive paragraph about their crown. They should include descriptive words that would help someone identify their crown from all the others in the class. (They should not place their names on their papers because they will share their papers with other students in the class after the centers are finished.) Once they have written their descriptive paragraph the students will read over their sentences and count the number of descriptive words they used in their paragraph. They will write the number on the top of their paper.
While the Teacher Directed lesson is occurring, the remaining students will be working in centers to complete tasks that have been designed answer the essential question. Students will look for green dots on the clock to know when to rotate to the next center.

Centers
  1. Listening Center
    20 Minutes
    Headphones: Enough for each students
    The listening center will have a teacher made recording of the "Emperor of America" for a cassette player. Student will listen to the story using headphones and complete an activity where they will identify the plot in the story. If students finish early, they should draw a picture of the Emperor of America on the back of their paper.
  2. Vocabulary Center:(computer)
    20 Minutes
    Since there are two activities in this center it is recommended that the teacher color code the papers so that students will can circulate to the computer for MadLibs and back for the Thesaurus Activity. The teacher can place colored dots on the center task cards to let students know the order of the rotation.
    Thesaurus Activity
    Students will reread the story, "The Emperor of America." As they read, they will look for words that can be changed to more interesting workds using the Thesaurus on the The Writer. When they find a good replacement word for a word in the story, both the original and the replacement word should be written on the paper provided in the center (filename: Thesaurus)

    Mad Libs Activity
    Pairs and/or trios of students will go to the computer to complete the Mad Libs activity. One computer will be set up to go online to MadLibs to discover how the choice of words changes a story. Students will enter words of various parts of speech to which will be used to fill in the blanks in a story. At the second computer students will complete a similar activity using a Madlibs template (Emperor_Madlibs) on an Excel Spreadsheet. Once completed the students should print the stories that are generated on the computer.
  3. Students who finish early will participate in Self-Selected Reading at his/her table.
After all centers are done, direct the students to place their crown on a table at the front of the room, calling them by groups. As the students place their crowns on the table hand them a paper from the teacher directed lesson that was written about someone else's crown. Once everyone has had a chance to place their crown on the table and pick up the descriptive crown writing, the students will go to their seats and read the descriptive crown paragraph. The teacher will call the students by their tables to choose the crown that matches the description they just read. Ask students to share the descriptive writing of the crown they picked up from the table. Once the students have shared ask them to place the crown on top of the paper they just read and return it to the owner. After sharing several, allow the remaining students to go around the room to locate their crown and their descriptive writing. Resolve and mismatched crowns and descriptions.
 
Summary Strategies
5 minutes Give each student a slip of paper (or they may provide their own). Instruct them to answer this question on the paper.
What is the most important thing you have learned about how words affect a story?

Students will turn in this slip before moving on to the next activity.
 
Resources
For directions on how to download files choose: Mac (Kid Pix or Microsoft  Works), Windows (Kid Pix or Microsoft Works or Office), or Mac/PC (AppleWorks).
 
Online Resources
http://www.penguinputnam.com/static/packages/us/yreaders/madlibs/fun.html

Microsoft PowerPoint Files
task_cards.ppt
madlib_carnival.ppt

Microsoft Word Files
Word_Game.doc
Emp_tape_dialog.doc
Emperor_America.doc
listening_center.doc
crown_describe.doc
Thesaurus.doc

Microsoft Excel Files
Emperor_Mad_Libs.xls
Parts_Speech.xls

For follow-up activity:
norton_epitaph.doc
 
Re-teaching and Enrichment Activities
Students will use AlphaSmarts or Writers to write Joshua Norton's Epitaph. Once they have typed the epitaph they will beam their work to a Word template (norton_epitaph) on the computer. The student will type their name and print their work. Once they have printed their work and picked it up from the printer they will illustrate their epitaph.

The concept for this lesson plan was submitted by

Donna  Martin

 Prescott Technology Center, Data last modified: 10/9/2003