Hillery_PA

Pre-Assessment

This pre-assessment was taken from my language arts lesson plan which covered Chapter Nine of //Elijah of Buxton// "The Mesmerist and Sammy" and was designed for a fifth grade class.It was intended to activate students prior knowledge about the sub context of the chapter, and to prepare them to make text to life connections after reading the text.

This pre-assessment is part of a pre-reading discussion's with a guided reading group, See my language arts Lesson plan for more info

“ Good Morning guys! Now before we get to reading the rest of chapter nine of Elijah of Buxton “The Mesmerist and Sammy” I want you to think about something. Do you know what it means to feel like your backed into a corner?” Possible students answers: No! Yes! Like you have to do something even if you don’t want to. “ That’s right, like you have to do something even if you don’t want to. Now without answering out loud I want you to think of three times in your life when you felt like you had to do something even if you didn’t want to. Have you come up with some ideas? (Students nod heads or say yes) Good now write them down in your reading journal.” I will write down three instances as well. Then after the students have finished writing in their journals I will tell them that we’re each going to share two of the events we wrote about with the group. “ Okay guys now where each going to go around and take turns sharing two of the times in our lives when we felt backed into a corner. I’ll go first; when I was little there was tall tree in the woods near my house where one of my friends had a rope swing. I didn’t want to climb the tree and swing down, but I didn’t want my friends to think I was scared. So I climbed the tree and swung down, but I was scared the whole time. Now Sarah why don’t you go next.”

Students will then use there prior knowledge to infer whether or not the character Sammy felt backed into a corner, and later will write an essay answering that question and describing what they would have done if they were in Sammy's place.