Tips for Creating Lesson Plans for Grades 3-9

Creating a lesson plan takes practice. Many skills require an understanding of another fundamental. Make sure to keep your children's abilities and knowledge in mind when creating your lesson plans. If you come across a fun activity or game you want to use, but know that it is too advanced for your students, see if there is anyway to modify the information so that it will fit the specific children at hand.

Along with the prerequisites, plan ahead to provide your children with the necessary vocabulary to understand the material you'll be presenting. Your children may be able to handle a specific skill but this does not mean they will understand all of the terms that are used to describe or progress through the skill.

An additional way to grab students' interests and attention is to start your lesson with a hands-on-activity. This will allow them to expend any extra energy they may have, and get them into the correct mindset to successfully complete the lesson.

The following labeled sections list the math and English fundamentals taught in each grade level.

Third Grade Lesson Plans

Third graders are taught the following English skills:

• Reading narratives aloud
• Decoding regular multi-syllabic words
• Determining the meaning of words through the use of antonyms, synonyms, homophones, and homographs
• Determining the meaning of words through the use of the dictionary, prefixes, suffixes, and sentence and word context
• Recalling major points from text and using the information to create predictions
• Distinguishing the main ideas of text through the use of supporting details
• Distinguishing common forms of literature
• Comprehending basic plots of fairy tales and fables
• Creating a single paragraph
• Identifying subjects and verbs, and past and present tense

Some math topics to teach include:

• Adding and subtracting whole numbers
• Adding and subtracting money
• A basic understanding of graphs, multiplication, division, decimals, fractions, and measurements

Fourth Grade Lesson Plans

English lessons for fourth grade students should include:

• Determining the meaning of words through word origin, roots, derivations, synonyms, antonyms, and idioms
• Using a thesaurus to determine related words and concepts
• Identifying structural patterns in informative text to strengthen comprehension
• Comparing and contrasting information on a specific subject after reading several texts about the topic
• Describing the structural difference of various forms of imaginative literature
• Defining and using various forms of figurative language
• Multi-paragraph compositions
• Establishing and supporting main ideas with topic sentences
• Providing introductory and concluding paragraphs
• Quoting or paraphrasing informational sources and citing them correctly
• Using various reference sources to locate information
• Using simple compound sentences
• Identifying verbs, adverbs, prepositions, and conjunctions

As a child advances through the fourth grade, teachers will make their work more complicated. The following are some math fundamentals a parent should expect to see in their child's math homework and can create supplemental lessons for:

• Placing value on time
• Adding and subtracting whole numbers
• Adding and subtracting money
• Adding and subtracting decimals
• Negative numbers
• Factoring of small numbers
• Perimeter and area
• X and Y graphs,
• Introductory geometry
• Fractions and decimals

Fifth Grade Lesson Plans

English skills and classes become increasingly harder in the fifth grade. Students at this grade level will learn the following curriculum:

• Knowing abstract
• Deriving roots and affixes from Greek and Latin
• Analyzing text that is organized in sequential or chronological order
• Distinguishing between facts, supported inferences, and opinions provided in text
• Identifying and analyzing the characteristics of poetry, drama, and nonfiction
• Understanding that 'theme' is the meaning or moral of a selection
• Identifying the themes of various texts
• Evaluating the author's use of various techniques to influence the readers' opinions
• Creating multi-paragraph expository and narrative compositions
• Editing and revising manuscripts
• Writing research reports and persuasive compositions

Some of the specific mathematical skills that a fifth grade student is likely to learn or be introduced to during the year include the following:

• Percentages, volume and areas
• Adding and subtracting decimals
• Multiplying and subtracting decimals
• Continuation of long division
• Continuation of geometry, mixed numbers, multiplication of fractions, ratio, and probability

Sixth Grade Lesson Plans

With sixth grade begins middle school and increased academic expectations. Along with this milestone come numerous English concepts to learn:

• Recognizing the origins and meanings of foreign words used in English
• Analyzing text that uses the compare-and-contrast organizational method
• Creating outlines, logical notes, summaries, or notes to clarify an understanding of a text
• Identifying the genres of fiction and major characteristics of each form
• Defining tone or meaning in poetry through word choice, figurative language, sentence structure, line length, punctuation, rhyme, repetition, and rhythm
• Choosing the form of writing that best suits the purpose; write responses to literature
• Analyzing use of rhetorical devices for effect and intent

Sixth grade lesson plans combine many mathematical concepts including:

• Multiplication and division of fractions
• Algebraic expressions and equations
• Graphing of algebraic results
• Describing geometric patterns algebraically
• The use of angles, range, mean, median, mode, statistical analysis of sample populations, and the use probabilities to make predictions

Seventh Grade Lesson Plans

Seventh graders are constantly expected to utilize their English skills and will be introduced to new concepts during the school year. These concepts include:

• Identifying idioms, analogies, similes, and metaphors in prose and poetry
• Clarifying word meanings through definition, example, restatement, or contrast
• Understanding content-area vocabulary through the use of Greek, Latin, and Anglo-Saxon roots and affixes
• Analyzing the adequacy, accuracy, and appropriateness of the author's evidence to support claims and assertions, noting instances of bias and stereotyping
• Articulating the expressed purposes and characteristics of various types of prose
• Creating an organizational structure that balances all aspects of the composition and uses effective transitions between sentences to unify important ideas
• Revising writing to improve word choice and organization
• Placing modifiers properly and use active voice

The seventh grade usually marks a beginning of pre-algebra and an introduction to more advanced math such as:

• Scientific notation
• Differentiating between rational and irrational numbers, exponents, powers, roots, inequalities
• An understanding of the correct order of operations to evaluate algebraic expressions
• Proper use of algebraic terminology
• Graphing and interpreting linear and some nonlinear functions
• Measurement conversions
• The Pythagorean theorem

Eighth Grade Lesson Plans

Eighth graders are presented with the following English skills:

• Comparing and contrasting texts according to the treatment, scope, or organization of ideas
• Evaluating the unity, coherence, logic, internal consistency, and structural patterns of text
• Identifying significant literary devices that define a writer's style
• Analyzing a work of literature, showing how it reflects the heritage, traditions, attitudes, and beliefs of its author
• Achieving balance between researched and original ideas
• Writing biographies, autobiographies, short stories or narratives
• Using correct and varied sentence types and sentence openings
• Identifying and using parallelism

The majority of eighth grade students focus on a continuation of pre-algebra activities and skills, while many other eighth graders have advanced to Algebra I. The following are some math concepts that an eighth grade student may be working with or expected to understand:

• Solving equations through the use of inverse operations, distributive property, commutative property, associative property
• Prime factorization
• Equivalencies of fractions, percents, and decimals
• Number lines
• Two-step equations
• Finding the slope of a line
• Number conversion

Ninth Grade Lesson Plans

High school begins in ninth grade, bringing an emphasis on professional development and collegiate choices. This means the difficulty of English class increases as teachers begin to prepare their students for the 'real world.' Some English criteria students are expected to learn include:

• Preparing a bibliography of reference materials
• Analyzing the logic of documents by looking at the sequence of procedures and information
• Evaluating the credibility of an author's argument or defense of a claim by critiquing the relationship between generalizations and evidence, the comprehensiveness of evidence, and the way in which the author's intent affects the structure and tone of the text
• Articulating the relationship between the expressed purposes and the characteristics of different forms of dramatic literature
• Using the terminology of literary criticism

Ninth grade math varies from student to student and depends heavily on what math classes were completed in the seventh and eighth grades. Usually a ninth grade student will either be enrolled in Algebra I or Geometry. If your child is taking algebra, then the skills introduced will be similar to the ones listed under the eighth grade section. If your child is taking a geometry course, they will be presented with the following concepts:

• Identifying and providing examples of undefined terms, theorems, axioms, and inductive and deductive reasoning; write geometric proofs
• Constructing and then judging a logical argument's validity
• Proving and using theorems involving the properties of parallel lines cut by transversals, properties of quadrilaterals, and properties of circles
• Computing areas of polygons, including rectangles, equilateral triangles, scalene triangles, rhombi, parallelograms, and trapezoids
• Computing the volumes and surface areas of pyramids, prisms, cylinders, cones, and spheres
• Committing to memory the formulas for pyramids, prisms, and cylinders
• Finding and using measures of sides and of interior and exterior angles of triangles and polygons
• Knowing the definitions of the basic trigonometric functions defined by the angles of a right triangle