Thank you, JWoody for clarifying how we are to report our lesson plan(s). (I put the 's' there because I get easily confused between blogs, lesson plans, comments on blogs, and so forth that I am not even sure whether we are to report on one lesson plan or two.) Back to the lesson plans. I made a SIOP unit I titled "From Washington to Irving to Van Winkle and Beyond." It may sound like a crazy title, but it got the kids' attention and as we went through the unit (it took about two weeks), they came to understand the connections. I believe I already mentioned in another blog that I used the analogy boxes to review the figures of speech. To introduce the unit, I listed my seven objectives and then, using another idea from our strategies book, I wrote the following under my objectives: "As a result of this unit, I, _____(student's name), will [and here I renumbered to seven preceding seven double writing lines for the student to list what they were willing to commit to accomplish and/or what "take-off" ideas they would like to learn. If my objective was, for example, "1. the students will review and use with greater understanding the various figures of speech," a student might respond, "1. I will be more creative by using more metaphors in my writing." Once I modeled what they were to do, the students seemed to enjoy coming up with their own take on the objectives. Additionally, I grouped the students (3-4 per group) to research the specific areas we would be covering. Some students researched the causes of the Revolutionary War, some researched Washington Irving--birth and family facts. Others made a timeline of Irvings travels. There were eight groups; students chose the area that most interested them. I was really impressed by their powerpoint presentations. The students were given the presentation rubric I would be using for grading, so they knew exactly what was expected in their research and presentations. They also knew that they would be given an assessment on the information from all of the groups, so they took notes and paid attention to all of the presentations. After reading Irving's "Rip Van Winkle," we read a poetic version of the story, and watched a clay antimation DVD of it. Then, I got posterboard size paper and had the groups position themselves around the room to create a three circle venn diagram. This went really well. I had told them before any of the reading this would happen, so they were prepared. Trying to write the general ideas of a two week unit that contains ten lesson plans probably in a paragraph has not been easy and has probably been a pain for you to follow. If you're interested in the entire plan with a day by day breakdown of expectations, let me know.