Katie Poe
Breakthrough Fort Worth
Texas Christian Unviersity

In getting to know my students, I have learned that the best way to teach them is to be as cheesy as all get out. Even though they are going into 9th grade, they eat my goofy teaching techniques up. Therefore, when writing a lesson plan for Point of View statements, Mia Stachura and I decided to ham it up. Our Do Now was a short story about blind men trying to find out what an elephant was, which we read aloud to our classes and then facilitated a discussion on the importance of listening to all POVs. We then broke down the formula for POV statements, stopping to practice with relevant examples, such as their POVs on school uniforms. I think everyone's favorite part of the lesson was the Structured Practice. I had my students sit in a circle while I read The True Story of the Three Little Pigs, kindergarten style. We then discussed as a class how the POV is different from the other story. We also created several POV statements. The Guided Practice was a little more serious since the students listened to the first 5 minutes of "I Have a Dream" and then wrote a POV statement, but they still enjoyed it. When they learned at the beginning of the week that we might look at speeches, they begged for that one speech and I was happy to oblige. The POV lesson was the most engaged I have ever seen students. They absolutely loved the cheesy, goofy stories and activities and mastered the objective lickety split. We're about to move into writing body paragraphs and thesis statements and I plan on keeping the cheesy and active components in my future lesson plans!