Sheila Terry

Heather Parr
Leading a Discussion Lesson Plan

Burke, Chapter 14: Integrating English Projects and Exhibitions

The Romeo and Juliet Project

Objectives
1. Students will participate in dialogic discourse by working in both small and large groups.
2. Students will gain an understanding of various assessments in an ELA classroom and recognize the
pros and cons, in terms of the potential effectiveness for students’ understanding of the material.
3. Students will acquire first hand experience with one or more of these assessments.

Rationale
Learning about these different types of assessments will cater to the needs of diverse learners
because they will allow us, as pre-service teachers, to better appreciate these assessments as teachers,
therefore, allowing us to better understand how students will perceive them. This activity will give us, as
teachers, tools that we can use in our future classroom to diversify the types of assessments that we
assign, consequently, reaching more of our students through these differing assessments. The activities
that we will present to the class will encourage dialogic discourse, thus providing a free-flowing exchange
of ideas among diverse learners, in order to promote meaningful learning.

Materials
PowerPoint, paper, makers, stations set up throughout the room

Pre-Lesson Tasks
1. Move tables into stations/clusters

Tasks
1. Present PowerPoint, which details different types of assessments that can be used in an ELA
classroom.
2. After presenting each type of assessment, brainstorm pros and cons of each while adding the ideas
to the PowerPoint.
3. Show list of stations and have students write down their top three station choices. (stations will be:
POV journal from perspective of any character in the play, graphic novel station, poetry station,
drama station in which they write their own version of a small chunk of the play, and book jacket
station) (Tasks 1-3: 8-10 min)
4. Have students get up and move to the front of the room while we place materials needed for each
station on the tables.
5. Have students move to stations, emphasizing that there should only be a certain number of
students at each station; if their first station is full, they should move onto their second choice until
they find a station where there is room.
6. Students will work in small groups to try to get experience with the assessment. (Tasks 4-6: 12-15
min)

Assessment (8 min)
1. Each group will share what they created and discuss how they think the activity would work in their
own classroom and how students might perceive the project. This way, our audience is going to be
assessing each assessment and we will know that they have learned the material by their
thoughtful responses.
2. Each group will re-evaluate the pros and cons of their project (in terms of their effect on dialogic
discourse, diverse learners, meta-cognition, form=audience + purpose, etc.) and we will make
changes on the PowerPoint, then move on to next group.

Questions for Audience

1. Would these assessments be something that you could see yourself using in your future classroom?
Why or why not?
2. Looking back at Burke, what do you think would be the most realistic assessment for diverse
learners?
3. Did this activity promote an appropriate level of dialogic discourse?
References
Burke, Jim. The English Teacher’s Companion. 3rd ed. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2008.