Division of School Improvement - Model Curriculum Units

LESSON TWO: Job Prompt Entries

LESSON DESCRIPTION

Students create journal prompt entries for a fictional vacation and create entries based on vacations they have taken.

GRADE-LEVEL EXPECTATIONS

W2F In composing text, use a variety of sentence structures and cohesive devices.

W3E Compose text for various audiences and purposes, selecting and applying appropriate format, style, tone, and point of view.

LESSON MATERIALS

§ Sources of literature

§ Supplies

o Overhead projector

o Cohesive device lesson form a grammar text

§ Handouts provided

§ Words to know

o cohesive devices

o style

o tone

o point of view

FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT Assessment Scoring Guide

Students complete journal entries for themselves based on previous vacations they have taken.

LEARNING ACTIVITIES

1. Discuss journal writing. Poll students to reveal how many have used journals in their personal or school experiences.

Questions

for

Students

How many of you use journals at school? Why?

How many use journals in your personal lives? Why?

2. Using an overhead projector or the board, model a typical journal entry. Review tone and point of view in modeling.

Strategy

Spend time discussing how the issue discussed in a journal entry will drive tone and point of view. Spend time discussing how point of view drives tone. Focus on conjunctions (coordinating, correlative, subordinating). Review transitions. Address cohesive devices over a course of several class periods.

Idea

Focus on conjunctions (coordinating, correlative, subordinating). Review transitions.

For information on cohesive devices, see The Writer’s Options: Lessons in Style and Arrangement by Max Morenberg and Jeff Sommers

3. Review cohesive devices with students. Complete the cohesive device activity with students in class.

Idea

Cohesive devices: elements that bind writing together as a whole. Cohesive devices include transitional words and phrases as well as repetition of key words and the use of reference words that point back to idea in the text.

4. Using at least two cohesive devices per entry, students respond to the following two journal prompts:

Day 1 – Washington D.C. write a journal entry form the father, Mr. Jordan, after he and the family returned from visiting the Lincoln Memorial to find that the family’s van had been vandalized with the tires being removed and the car up on blocks.
Day 2 – Washington D. C. Write a journal entry from the son, Michael who inadvertently took an illegal souvenir from the White House and thinks there are people following him and his family all around Washington D.C.