Unit and Lesson Samples
Throughout my teaching career, I have had the opportunity to design and deliver a variety of lessons and carefully planned units that engage students and foster meaningful learning. Scroll down to explore a selection of lessons I’ve had the pleasure of teaching!
After reviewing the essays graded by my host teacher and me, we identified several key areas where students were consistently making grammatical errors. Using these insights, I developed a mini-unit addressing apostrophes, hyphens, commas in essential and nonessential clauses, active and passive voice, and vague pronoun usage.
To monitor student learning, I administered a pre-assessment at the start of the unit. After two weeks of introducing new concepts and reviewing prior material, students demonstrated immense growth not only on the post-unit summative assessment but also in the writing samples and essays they completed following the unit.
Individual Student Performance on Pre-Assessment
General Class Performance on Pre-Assessment
General Class Performance on Post-Assessment
Grammar Concepts Mini-Unit
Individual Student Performance on Post-Assessment
Almost every student saw strong growth on these grammatical concepts!
Through modeling, collaboration, gamification, and copious amounts of review, students showed immense progress in these concepts that are recognizable in their writing, both in and outside of class
A sneak peek into one of my lessons on The Pronoun-Antecedent Agreement
Individual
Mini-Lessons
Assimulation
As part of a unit on satire, I used the graphic novel American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang to explore how satire can be used to highlight and reinforce a central message. The novel’s parallel structure follows three distinct storylines, each centered on a character who alters themselves in order to fit in. To support students’ understanding, I devoted a lesson to the concept of assimilation. In this lesson, we examined both everyday, subtle forms of assimilation and more extreme historical examples of forced assimilation. I also incorporated the short story “The Cutting of My Hair” by Zitkala-Sa as a supplementary text to deepen students’ understanding of these ideas.
Advisor’s comment on this lesson.
Direct and Indirect Characterization
In a lesson focused on distinguishing between direct and indirect characterization, students engaged in a student-centered activity where they read the script “They Are Made Out of Meat” aloud after a brief introduction to character analysis. This activity encouraged them to act out their most imaginative alien interpretations while also thinking critically about the text. As they performed, students examined subtle clues about the characters, identifying what is revealed both directly and indirectly through dialogue and behavior. A handout was given where students can show their creative side and draw what they imagine one of the characters looks like, all while supporting their findings with direct textual evidence.
Advisor’s feedback on the success of the lesson.
Censorship and Book Burning in Fahrenheit 451
Early in our discussion of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, a student asked, “What’s the big deal about book burning?” Although it was still the beginning of the unit, and we had not yet explored censorship as a central theme, the question was striking. My little English teacher heart broke. That evening, I began researching the history of book burning and its evolution into modern-day book banning, which led me to design a lesson to provide students with deeper context.
I created a timeline tracing key moments, from 259–210 BC, when the Chinese emperor Shih Huang Ti buried Confucian scholars and destroyed their texts, to the book burnings of Nazi Germany, and even more recent instances such as the burning of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter in 2017. I concluded the timeline with the 2022 Florida “Don’t Say Gay” bill to connect historical patterns to contemporary issues.
Throughout the lesson, I encouraged open discussion and discourse, ensuring that multiple perspectives were considered rather than a single viewpoint. Students were given and engaged with a list of banned books by circling those they had read (including two from our current course), underlining those they recognized, and starring those they found surprising. After building this historical foundation, I transitioned to a contemporary perspective with Viet Thanh Nguyen’s essay, “My Young Mind Was Disturbed By a Book. It Changed My Life.” Following a read-aloud, students participated in a Think-Pair-Share activity and then reflected individually on a piece of paper and turning it in as an Exit-Ticket.
This was by far one of my favorite lessons done this semester and in a recent survey it seems to be a big contender for the students' favorite
one too.
Advisor's comment after an observation.