EL Support Lesson
A Rainbow of Feelings
Students will be able to answer comprehension questions about a story and identify feelings.
Students will be able to describe a character with feeling words using visual supports.
- Gather the class together for a read-aloud.
- Make a face (happy/sad/angry) and ask the students if they can guess how you are feeling based on your face.
- Explain that today you will be listening to a story about a little kid who is experienceing lots of feelings.
Building academic language
- Preview the new vocabulary (feeling words) using the vocabulary cards as a guide. Introduce each feeling and then ask the students to show that same feeling on their faces and/or using their whole bodies (if space allows).
- Model describing a time when you have felt __ __ __ __ (angry/happy/sad) by saying something like: "I felt __ __ __ __ when __ __ __ __ ."
- Pass out a set of vocabulary cards to each student.
- Ask students to turn and talk to share when they have felt one of the feelings.
- Read aloud the text. Explain that you will pause as you read and students can practice showing how Owen is feeling either by holding up the vocabulary card or showing on their faces.
- Pause as you read to allow students to show Owen's feelings on their faces (or using their cards).
- After the story has finished, ask students to think about what happened int he beginning of the story (Owen is happy and plays with his blanket) and how he feels. Have students retell each part to a peer.
- Repeat this process with the middle and end of the story.
- Ask students to share out with the class using provided sentence frames: "In the beginning Owen felt ."
- Display the paper plates and art materials to the students. Explain that now students will get to choose one of Owen's feelings from the story and will get to make a paper plate face of Owen that shows how he feels.
- As students are working, encourage them to share with their desk or table mates a time when they have felt like Owen. Provide the following sentence frame to support their discussion: "In the beginning/middle/end Owen felt. I have also felt __ __ __ __ when __ __ __ __ ."
Additional EL adaptations
- Work with a small group of students to retell the beginning, middle, and ending of the story using the vocabulary cards to describe Owen's feelings.
- Provide additional student copies of the text for students to reference as they retell the story.
- Ask students to create additional paper plate feeling faces showing the beginning, middle, and end.
- Have students practice retelling the story using their paper plate faces and feeling words to describe Owen.
Formative Assessment of Academic Language(5 minutes)
- Listen to student conversations and note if new feeling words are being used to describe the story.
- Ask students to share with you what part of the story they chose to focus on when making their paper plate face. Assess if students can accurately retell the story using feeling words to describe Owen.
- Circulate around the room during the independent work portion of the lesson plan and assess if students are able to make a text to self connection using feeling words.
Review and closing(3 minutes)
- Display the finished paper plate faces and ask students to share which part of the story they focused on and how Owen was feeling.
- Provide sentence starters and sentence frames to support student discussion.