Acting Out

Title – Acting Out
By – Jennifer Dalke
Subject – Language Arts, Other
Grade Level – 4-5

Unit contents:

• This part deals with the End of the book, and involves launching a Balloon Journey
• Here’s a Writing Activity involving the students’ Favorite Parts
• This section is on the Main Characters and Quoting
• This portion is on Acting Out portions of the book
• This lesson is on Predicting with Charlotte’s Web
• This part uses a Crossword Puzzle to learn Scientific Facts about Spiders
• This section is on Finding Spiders’ Homes
• A similar section – Finding Where Spiders Live
• Here’s More on Finding Where Spiders Live
• This portion is on writing Haiku Poems about Spiders
• Here students take on the roles of Arachnologists and Interview each other
• The Spider’s Life Cycle is the subject of this lesson
• Graphing the Lengths of Spiders is the subject of this part
• More Graphing, this time with Facts about Spiders
• Here students Plot Facts about Spiders
• Another Math lesson, this one using Spider Math Problems
• This part involves doing Research on Spiders
• A fun activity for developing Spider Webs out of cold Spaghetti
• This portion is on Spiders’ Venom
• A Writing Activity about Wilbur’s First Day

Subject: Reading Day 4

Illinois State Goals:
1. Read with understanding and fluency
4. Listen and speak effectively in a variety of situations

Instructional Objective:
Students will use both reading and acting skills to present portions of the book to the rest of the class.

Supplies:
* Charlotte’s Web, by E.B. White
* acting awards

Anticipatory Set:
* I will ask the students to use their predictions skills to determine what might happen in the book today.
* I will ask students which characters are their favorites. Why? Do they dislike any characters?
Why?
* I will explain that today they will be able to pretend that they are some of their favorite characters by acting out their parts in the book.

Activities:
1. I will separate the day’s reading (pp. 105-143) into 4-5 page sections
2. I will break students up into groups, assigning them characters from the assigned section to
act out
3. I will give students 15-20 minutes to prepare their section of the book
4. Students will present their section to the rest of the class in the form of a skit, following the
sequence of the book
5. After each group’s performance, I will ask that group to predict what they think might happen
in the next part

Adaptations:
Cassie (LD)- No real adaptation is necessary. I will be sure to assign her a part that is
appropriate for her ability. I will also be sure to group her with children that I know she is
comfortable with, and I know will help her if she has difficulties.

Closure:
* I will praise students for their excellent performances
* I will instruct students to write on a piece of paper the names of three children who they
thought did an outstanding acting job. They should fold these papers up, keeping the names to
themselves, and turn them in to me. I will tally up the votes and present the winning students
with small awards
* I will explain that tomorrow we will be finishing up the book
* I will hint that we will finish up the unit by performing an activity that is similar to the end of the
book, and it is very fun!

Evaluation:
I will evaluate the students based upon their reading, acting, and overall participation

E-Mail Jennifer!