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AN EXPOSITORY WRITING LESSON PLAN FOR ELEMENTARY-SCHOOL STUDENTS
Background
This lesson plan was developed for a school where a large number of students in the fourth grade performed poorly on the writing portion of a new state exam. The writing portion of the exam tested expository writing skills. In the school's elementary writing program, however, the teachers had focused mainly on fiction story-writing skills, and they had not provided instruction in expository writing. Samples of the students' responses questions that asked for them to "explain" or "show" frequently started with the phrase, "Once upon a time." Working with a curriculum coordinator, the teachers worked to incorporate expository writing into the second, third, and fourth grades.
Assessment
One teacher decided to have each student produce a piece of expository writing based on observation and questioning of a docent at a local historical society. She asked each student to research and write about a specific historical artifact, working from a list provided by the historical society. Using the school's digital camera, she took a picture of each artifact and handed out printed pictures to the students. These pictures were later displayed alongside the final essays.
Standards Met
This assignment was a direct response to students' poor performance on the state test. It was also designed to serve as a practice arena for future, on-demand performance testing.
Using the Mid-Continent Research for Education and Learning Database, the teacher found that her performance assessment met several additional standards.
| Language Arts Standard 1, Grades 3-5, Benchmark 7 |
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Demonstrates competence in the general skills and strategies of the writing process. Student writes expository compositions (e.g., identifies and stays on the topic; develops the topic with simple facts, details, examples, and explanations; excludes extraneous and inappropriate information). |
| Language Arts Standards |
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Writing demonstrates competence in the general skills and strategies of the writing process. Student demonstrates competence in the stylistic and rhetorical aspects of writing; uses grammatical and mechanical conventions in written compositions. |
The following is the actual Connecticut state standard:
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LEARNING STANDARD 19: Students will write compositions with a clear focus, logically related ideas to develop it, and adequate detail.
Grades K-4
Standard: Write well-organized compositions with a beginning, middle, and end, drawing on a variety of strategies as needed to generate and organize ideas.
Examples: 3-4: Students plan a mini-encyclopedia on birds. As a group, they generate a set of questions they want to answer, choose individual birds to research, gather information from library books or a computerized encyclopedia, compose individual illustrated reports, and decide how they might best organize them for a classroom encyclopedia. (Connects with science and technology, arts.)
See our Resources page for links to searchable databases containing state and federal standards.
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Rubrics
The teacher developed a rubric for evaluating the final finished essays. She focused on several areas important to the students' writing development. Her rubric was incorporated into the way she engaged students in the writing process, so it reflects variations on a generalized theme.
Expository Writing-Artifacts Line Rubric
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4 |
3 |
2 |
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| Identifies Object |
Identifies the object and stays on the topic; describes the object accurately and vividly. |
Identifies the object and stays on the topic; few or no inaccuracies. |
Identifies the object and stays on the topic; some inaccuracies. |
It is not clear what object is being described. |
| Development |
Develops the topic with colorful facts, descriptive details, examples, and explanations; excludes extraneous or inappropriate information. |
Develops the topic with simple facts, some details, examples, and explanations; includes no extraneous or inappropriate information. |
Develops the topic with some facts, a few details, examples, and explanations; includes minimal extraneous or inappropriate information. |
Does not develop the topic, wanders, and/or includes extraneous or inappropriate information. |
| Mechanics |
Flawless grammar, sentence structure, punctuation, and spelling. |
Few errors in grammar, sentence structure, punctuation, and spelling. |
Some errors in grammar, sentence structure, punctuation, and spelling. |
Many errors in grammar, sentence structure, punctuation, and spelling. |
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Results
This lesson plan had a happy outcome. It was first initiated more than two years ago, and the students who went through the lessons achieved the target goals on the state mastery test for writing.
The following are samples of completed student works. These works satisfied the original assessment goal: a piece of expository writing that was based on observation and questioning of the docent at the local historical society. With second graders, it was neither practical nor developmentally appropriate to show an example for each gradation on the rubric. Instead, student work was prominently displayed as finished.
| 1. Corn |
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The Ogdens ate corn. That's why they have it on their wooden table. Here is where Jane Ogden and her daughters mixed ingredients to make cookies and moistened fresh berries for the winter. The table has wood pots and iron pots on it. This is where Jane stored her recipe book. This table was very important to hold things. Jane Ogden had a measurer so food trade would be fair. |
| 2. Reflector Oven |
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David shot animals with his rifle. Then the reflector oven was were duck, rabbit, goose, and turkey were cooked on a stick. Jand Ogden could peek through the oven to see if the food was done. Jane and her daughters would use the oven. |
| 3. Kettle |
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Welcome to the Ogden kitchen.
These pots were a part of Jane Ogden's kitchen. The itinerant tinker was a busy worker. He traveled from village to village fixing pots and pans made from tin. Tin pots were imported from Europe in big ships. The blacksmith made the pots. The smaller pot was used for boiling hot water that was poured into the big pot. The oven was where Jane baked her breads and pies.
To take the goods out, Jane used a peel. |
| 4. Map |
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Back in the Colonial times, maps were written with ink. Very often they would make the most important houses show up on the map like the Ogden house, Sturges house, and the Buckley house. The house's were named by the last name of the first owner, which was David Ogden and Jane Ogden. |
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| Photo Credits: Werner Liepolt and Ann Nesbitt, Coleytown Elementary School, Westport, CT. |
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