BOOK TITLE: The Report Card
CHAPTERS: 4-6
AUTHOR: Andrew Clements
LESSON PLAN AUTHOR : Jennifer Stacy

GRADE LEVEL: 4-5
LESSON DURATION: 60-75 Minutes

OBJECTIVE

• Students will express their own feelings about grades and tests and compare them to the feelings the characters in the novel The Report Card express.

• Students will identify secondary characters of the novel The Report Card and tell characteristics of each one.

• Students will make predictions about what they will read on day two.

MATERIALS

• Chart paper

• Butcher paper

• Scissors

• Post-it notes

• Character Charts: Download PDF

• A copy of the novel The Report Card for each child

• Compare and contrast essay: Download PDF

• Writing Journals

• Discussion questions: Download PDF

• Writing checklist: Download PDF

MOTIVATION

• Have students summarize the main events of chapters 1-3 from yesterday.  Have a student record those events on chart paper.

• Have students share how they think their parents would react if they came home with the same report card Nora did yesterday.

• Have students make predictions how they think Nora’s parents are going to react to the report card.

NEW INFORMATION

• The class will read chapters 4-6 today.  The teacher will need to choose how he/she wants the class to read.  The students can take turns reading out loud with the whole class, with partners, or on their own.  If the whole class reads together, the teacher will want to use the discussion questions (step 3) during reading, not after.

• While you are reading you need to think about the following:
• How does Nora’s family react to the report card?
• Once everyone is finished, the teacher will pose discussion questions to the whole class. Discussion could also be given to the partners as a worksheet and filled out by the partners as they read.  If the students are reading on their own they could write the answers to the questions as they read as well.  Then the class could come together and discuss what they wrote.

• After the discussion students are going to make character charts for the following characters:  Mom, Dad, Todd, and Ann. Students will add information to these charts using Post-It notes as we continue to read the book over the next two weeks.

• The teacher needs to read aloud each trait.  Discuss with the class if they agree with the character traits placed on each character chart.  Have students give examples from the story that support each trait on the chart.

• The students will also add any new characteristics they can think of to Nora’s and Stephen’s charts.

PRACTICE/APPLICATION

• Tell the students they are going to write another compare and contrast essay today in their journals.  They will compare and contrast Nora’s parents’ reactions to her report card to how they think their parents would react if they brought home the same report card.  If they aren’t sure how their parents would react, have students actually ask their parents when they go home tonight.  Tell the students to say they are reading a book in which a girl gets all D’s and one C on her report card and they were to find out how their parents would react to that report card and why they would react that way.  Be sure to tell the students NOT to tell the parents that Nora got the bad grades on purpose.

• The teacher will remind the students how to write a compare/contrast essay using yesterday’s example.

• The students will write their own compare/contrast story.  When they are finished students will be invited to share their stories if they want to.

EVALUATION OF STUDENT LEARNING

• Informal evaluation will occur during the discussion questions.  The teacher will be able to determine if students read the story based on their answers.  If the teacher wants a more formal evaluation, the discussion questions can be passed out as a worksheet and collected and graded.

• Informal evaluation will occur during the discussion of the character charts.  The teacher will be able to determine if further instruction on character traits needs to be done based on student responses.

• Formal evaluation will occur when the writing journals are collected using writing checklist. Since this isn’t a writing lesson, this will be a small portion of the total assessment.

CLOSURE

• The teacher will review the discussion questions of chapters 4, 5, and 6 as well as the traits listed for Nora’s parents, Todd, and Ann.

• The students will verbally make predictions of what they think will happen when they read on Day 3.  Predictions will be recorded on chart paper and reviewed at the beginning of Day 3.

NCTE STANDARD 3

Students apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and appreciate texts. They draw on their prior experience, their interactions with other readers and writers, their knowledge of word meaning and of other texts, their word identification strategies, and their understanding of textual features (e.g., sound-letter correspondence, sentence structure, context, graphics).

NCTE STANDARD 5

Students employ a wide range of strategies as they write and use different writing process elements appropriately to communicate with different audiences for a variety of purposes.