Evaluation of Narrative Writing Lesson Plan

By Lisa Gunderson

The middle elementary years are crucial for the developmental stages in children. Pre-adolescent's experience major physical changes, such as puberty, as well as new peer relationships. While most children in early childhood are more optimistic, between this age group is at a higher risk of anger, guilt, frustration, and jealousy. The preadolescent years are when schools become a major influence on development that includes public self, building social skills, and founding self-esteem on both academic and non-academic competencies. The lesson plan, Narrative Writing Lesson, is consistent with all of the developmental needs of adolescents including Piaget and Vgotsky’s cognitive learning views through collaboration. It is also consistent with Erickson’s stages of Personal and Social Development, specifically the psychosocial crises, Stage V, identity vs. role confusion. This lesson plan, made for the 6^th grade class, is approximately 3 weeks and it touches all of the specific needs of children during the developmental years by gaining more mature peer relationships, positive social characteristics, as well as the critical emotional needs of children at this age.

Cognitive development is an essential part of the preadolescent child. Piaget’s view of cognitive development is that knowledge comes from action. This lesson plan fits Piaget’s view of cognitive development because children first act with their environment through socializing with their peers. The first step of this lesson is the “ice breaker” with a beanbag toss and learning peer’s names, the second time around favorite food, and then the third time around telling their favorite activity. Everything that students share keeps within a comfort zone of the student’s personal life. This all ties in with Piaget’s views of collaboration because the students are working with each other to develop a better sense of their environment while learning the skills they need to write a narrative paper. This lesson plan shows that students will utilize schemes by the teacher giving the students tasks that they are already familiar with throughout this lesson plan. The next step of the lesson plan is directing students to communicate already known topics such as their name, favorite food and activities, causing students to use assimilation. This task promotes good communication skills and if a student has a general idea of good communication, most likely writing skills will also be built. By the teacher giving students topics that relate to what they already know, students have the opportunity to connect previous skills to construct a new form of communication, in this case a narrative essay.

The later step that this lesson plan entails is the one-on-one peer critique, which forces the students to use constructive criticism, necessary for situations later in life. The one-on-one peer evaluation creates equilibrium, the process of restoring balance. Students gain equilibrium about the positives and negatives in a paper by hearing what their peers have to say about their writing. Sometimes, as a first time learner, it may not make sense as to why something is wrong or right until it is explained by somebody else. On the other hand, the person finding the positives and negatives in a paper will reach a higher level of mastery because it will force them to detect and explain what might need work and what might be very good. Social interaction is one of the main methods of learning in this lesson plan, and Piaget believed that interaction with peers, especially ways of critiquing and sharing ideas helps the students to better understand and develop meaning to the subjects learned. By hearing each other “out loud” the students can gain a better sense of the process it takes to format an essay, thus creating equilibrium. This process also corresponds to the constructivist’s theory, which I will later discuss in this essay. This lesson plan would create a Piagetian classroom because the students are encouraged to discover, through collaboration and various activities, the stages of process writing.
Vygotsky and Piaget had many different views on the cognitive development of children. But two similarities that they both agree on are collaborative learning and learning in a series of steps. Vygotsky’s theory states that cognitive development and the ability to use thought to control our own actions require first mastering cultural communication systems and then learning to use these systems to regulate our own thought process. This lesson plan uses this theory by first having the students work together in a larger group, which allows them to work in their zone of proximal development. The instructor does not just send the students off to work on their own to develop a narrative essay, but instead uses the main “tools” in the classroom, other students. The students discover together, through active learning that is very structured, the techniques to writing a narrative essay.

The lesson plan also exhibits the use of scaffolding, a term that Vygotsky used to describe the transition of assisted learning to individual learning. Scaffolding is shown because first students work within groups and help one another through assisted learning and later they work as individuals to create their own meaning of the information. One example in the lesson plan is when students work together as a team and after the initial beanbag toss students are told to work individually for a short period of time to begin drafting. Working individually promotes self-regulation because it forces the students to use independent thinking skills between group activities. Later, scaffolding is used again because the homework assignment, which is individual, that is given allows for the student to take the time to rethink what they learned with assistance and correct mistakes based on their new knowledge. Another way that scaffolding helps students is by teaching them skills for scholarly decision making based on what they learned. For example, if a student is writing their own paper, they are going to run into points where they need to decide what are positives and negatives. If they were previously taught how to go about that, they will be able to identify what is good and what needs work in their paper.

I observed Vygotsky’s theory of cooperative learning in the one-on-one critiquing of two students towards the end of the lesson plan. The students “hear out” each other’s thoughts and reasoning process, providing models to each other to benefit their understanding of the assignment. The idea of cooperative learning suggests that the students work together to help each other through a new task, as all of the students are equally new at writing a narrative paper. This concept creates a sort of support group for the students while learning along with their peers. All though students were given the chance to critique each other, I do think that it could have been more structured because all of the students are new at the process of writing. I think that the lesson plan should suggest that students receive a detailed rubric so that they know exactly what to look for or else suggestions will come from inexperienced knowledge. If a student without a full understanding of how to write evaluates another student, incorrect critiquing will occur which then could lead to only more uncertainty rather than a high-quality comprehension of how to write.

Erickson’s, Stages of Personal and Social Development, though not evidently said, are supported by this lesson plan. The 6^th grade class that this lesson plan is designed for, is an age group that falls under the preadolescent, 6-12 years of age. The stage that they are categorized under is stage V, identity vs. role confusion. This can be supported because the most significant relationships at this age are school and neighborhood based and this lesson plan encourages students to engage with their fellow classmates in a positive manner. Prosocial behaviors are voluntary actions towards others such as caring, sharing, comforting, and cooperation. These behaviors are highly encouraged throughout this lesson plan. When students are working with one another, the instructor makes sure that the students are using these positive behaviors to help encourage classmates rather than bring them down. These behaviors will also help to contribute to later views of the adolescent’s self-concept and self-esteem which are dramatically changing at the years of 6-12 years old. By first having students evaluate each other, later it will help when the student does their individual work at home to evaluate their own work as well as later in life. This lesson plan highly takes in consideration the age group it is working with especially because the instructor made sure to take extra considerations for different and developing personalities by switching up the activities into large group work, smaller groups, then one-on-one and later individual. The multiple activities keep in touch with the many learning styles that students exercise.

Emotional development plays a large role throughout this three-week lesson plan. At this age, students are going through many developmental changes, one major change for most preadolescents are the first stages of puberty. This lesson plan is effective because it teaches the students not only how to write a narrative essay, but initiates peer bonding and helps to form skills needed to build positive relationships with their peers.

Back to Piaget and Vygotsky, the constructivist views of learning dates all the way back to both of these theorists. The constructivist view is based on a student-centered learning environment where the students use each other to understand a new concept. The teacher in this classroom steps aside and instead makes sure that the plan is very structured to make sure that it does go accordingly. In this lesson particularly, students work together, actively, to discover the methods of writing a narrative essay and acquire life skills that they can use effectively in the future. These crucial developmental skills support Piaget, Vygotsky, and Erickson by promoting the use of cognitive skills, positive social interactions, emotional development, and most importantly, self-discovery for the rapidly changing, preadolescent.