Student Teaching edTPA Lesson Plan Template

Subject: Reading Central Focus: Understanding and identifying the author’s opinion
and the main idea within a non-fiction article or text
Essential Standard/Common Core Objective:
RI.3.6 - Distinguish their own point of view
Date submitted: 11/3/2018 Date taught: 11/5/2018
from that of the author of a text.

Daily Lesson Objective: Students will be able to identify the topic, main points, and author’s opinion in a non-fiction
article.

21st Century Skills: Academic Language Demand (Language Function and

Critical thinking Vocabulary):
Analyzing Author
Information Literacy Opinion
Non-fiction
Marathon
Point of View
Opinion
Topic
Prior Knowledge: Terms: author, opinion, point of view, topic.
Students will need to understand the use of the language and punctuation used within a non-fiction article (i.e.
exclamations and descriptive words)

Activity Description of Activities and Setting Time

Students at carpet
Introduce that we will be looking for author’s opinions in a non-fiction article.
Ask someone to explain what non-fiction is.
Explain that we can identify author’s opinion by looking at adjectives or 1-2
adverbs that the author use that express a certain emotion (excited, amazing, minutes
1. Focus and Review
sadly, etc.). I will also explain that we can look at punctuation to understand
the author’s opinion like exclamation points (ask students what kind of
emotions can be expressed through an exclamation point, also ask about a
question mark.)

2. Statement of Objective
for Student
3. Teacher Input
4. Guided Practice
5. Independent Practice
“today I will be reading an article called “Roving the Red Planet” out loud to
all of you then you will be reading an article (“A Marathon Runner”) and will
need to identify the topic or the main ideas from the article and will also be 1-2
writing the author’s opinion from the article. Together we are going to create a minutes
chart so you can see what you will be doing on your own for the article you
will read on your own”
Read the article to students, pausing after each paragraph to ask if they can
identify any authors opinion or main idea identified within the article.
During stops, create a chart covering the main ideas of the article and the 5 minutes
authors opinion from the article, this will be used as the student’s model for
the activity they will do on their own with their other article.
During our pauses students will be identifying the main ideas and the author’s
opinion from the article. We will create a chart on the board to serve as our
model for the independent practice section of the lesson. 3-5
minutes
Students return to desks
Pass out the Marathon Runner article, instruct students to make their charts on
 the back of the article. 10
Students will read the article to themselves and create a chart on the back minutes
covering the main ideas and the author’s opinion from the article.

6. Assessment Methods of Students will be assessed based on their completion of the chart on the back of the article,
all objectives/skills: students should identify 3 main ideas and 3 facts about the authors opinions. 6/6 = 100

Bring students back to the carpet and asking students to give you main ideas
from their article and author’s opinion and write students answers on the
7. Closure board to make sure all students pulled similar main ideas and opinions from 3 minutes
the article and give students the opportunity to share how they found the fact
or opinion that they found.

Out of the 18 students I taught my lesson to, 11 of them identified 3 opinions and 3 main
8. Assessment Results of
ideas, 4 identified 2 of each, and 3 only identified 1 opinion and 1-2 main ideas.
all objectives/skills:

Targeted Students Modifications/Accommodations Student/Small Group Modifications/Accommodations

Students with IEP or 504 plans will be more closely Struggling students can read and complete the chart in small
monitored during the independent practice and teacher groups and use guided reading groups to provide them with
will provide extra scaffolding or instruction as needed.extra practice and scaffolding
Gifted students can be asked to identify 5 facts and 5 opinions
from the article rather than just 3.
Materials/Technology: “Roving the Red Planet” article, “Marathon Runner” article, Pencil, whiteboard, markers

Reflection on lesson: The lesson went really well but students struggled with identifying the opinions within the non-
fiction article they read on their own because they would mistake facts from the article with the authors opinion. Students
were able to identify all the opinions and facts that I had previously identified from our read aloud article.
When reading aloud at the carpet the students were very attentive to my reading and we stopped about 6 times throughout
the article to identify either a main idea, an author’s opinion, or that there is not opinion or idea within the section we just
read. I asked other students to explain how the student before them identified the idea or opinion that they shared with the
class.
Students identified that the author was impressed by the rover that was sent to Mars to explore the surface and the
conditions of the planet, they also identified that the main idea of the story was about exploring Mars with a NASA rover.
We identified 2 other facts and opinions from the article then students went back to their desks and completed their chart
after reading the new article on their own.
Most students identified that the author was impressed by the marathon runner’s ability to run for such a long time
without stopping and also being able to run extreme distances.
Some students confused facts with opinions and wrote direct quotes from the article as an opinion of the author. Overall,
all students were able to identify that the author was “impressed” or “amazed”.
Some students struggled with differentiating between facts and opinions and also with identifying the meaning behind
certain adjective that the author used and understanding the connotation attached to different punctuation.
When we came back to the carpet we discussed the difference between opinions and facts within the article that students
read on their own.

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