Lesson Plan Name: Steph, Mike, & Matthew

rd
Date: Wednesday, 3 Period Course: ELA
Duration: 60 minutes (11:00-12:00) Grade: Sec. IV
Location: Co-ed suburban public school in Montreal Group: 30 students
**BYOD policy in effect since September 2015 (regular stream)
Rationale Students should be able to interrogate taxonomic schema; this lesson provides
students with a low-stakes opportunity to interrogate (and potentially redefine) a
highly-accessible taxonomy of popular monsters put forth by the PBS Idea
Channel video on monsters. This will be supported and enhanced via the
creation of artwork that reflects their experiences with this weeks texts. Such
artwork will also serve as scaffolding toward their written assignment.
Lesson 1. Students will be able to categorize popular monster archetypes by
Objectives watching a PBS video which introduces them to Nol Carrolls monster
taxonomy and later creating (and categorizing) a monster of their own
invention based on a personal fear.
2. Students will be able to work together to draw on classify a monster
assigned to them by the teacher.
Unit Objective To engage students with the codes and conventions of the gothic genre
ELA Competency 1 (Talk): Discussing & explaining monster categorizations
Competencies Competency 2 (Reading): Viewing a video from PBS Monster Ideas
Competency 3 (Production): Drawing monsters & writing notes
Cross-Curricular CCC 1: Uses information
Competencies CCC 3: Uses critical judgement
CCC 4: Uses creativity
CCC 8: Cooperates with others
Materials + BYODs, YouTube videos (Backsteet Back, PBS Idea Channel video on
Resources monsters), giant Post-its
Time Plan
11:00 - 11:05 Pre-Assessment/Review:
(~5 minutes) Quiz on Kahoot: Gothic conventions

11:05 - 11:15 Opening/Hook:
(~5 minutes) Backstreet Boys Backstreet's Back
Connect to Thriller by reemphasizing convention via think-alouds

Learning Activity(ies) - Strategy(ies):
11:15-11:25 1. PBS Idea Channel video on monsters (media text)
(~10 minutes) Think-aloud in written form
What are you thinking as you watch the video?
11:25-11:50 2. Discussion:
(~25 minutes) Group activity
5 groups
5 giant Post-it notes

MATL 2016
 Each note has 1 monster (The Mummy, Godzilla,

Sharknado, Bigfoot, or Five Nights at Freddys titular
antagonist)
Students first draw the monster and then take notes to
indicate which category/categories the monster fits under
(if students want to add a category, they may do so
provided they justify this categorys existence)
11:50-12:00 3. Introduce Monster Maker Writing Assignment
(~10 minutes) Take a fear that you have and create a monster to represent it.
Write a ~250 word explanation of the monster
Upload drawing and accompanying explanation to class
Tumblr.
Students may draw their monster by hand or use this
(chrome-based) app.

Assessment/homework:
Writing Assignment (Due on Monday)
Post-Lesson We would fill this out after our lesson in order to hone it for future (re-)use.
Reflection

MATL 2016