Friday, April 19, 2013

Reading Lesson 1: Overview, Lesson Plan, and Reflection


TE 402 READING LESSON PLAN

Reading Lesson Plan # 2

Reading Lesson Overview:
            The students I will be completing this lesson with are students that are in the classes lowest reading group. The teacher has their centers organized by reading level, and she has a center where she works with students doing RTI work based on their reading levels. When discussing with my mentor teacher, she explained to me that these students have a hard time with comprehension. This also hinders their ability to write or tell a summary at the end of a piece. I have seen many examples of students summaries and I felt that it was an important skill for the students to practice so that they can improve their comprehension skills. The students I worked with are Kevin and Ian. They both are in the lowest reading group and they often struggle with getting work done on time.
            As Neufeld explained in the readings, in order to teach comprehension it is important that students are able to quickly understand the meaning of words in a text and what is important in the text. This is why I have chosen to use highlighting while I read aloud the article to the students. This will allow me to point out interesting parts of the article and important parts, just like I would for a read aloud with a book. This will allow them to ask questions about the text and for me to ask questions about the text so they remain engaged during the reading.

Your Name:  _Laura Tollis____   Grade Level:  __4__  

Date lesson was taught:  _4/16/2013__  Number of Students: _2_

1) Rationale (What evidence do you have that your focus students need to learn this skill/strategy?):

The evidence I have for students needing to learn this skill of making summaries is from my mentor teacher. She explained to me that the students have trouble sorting through the content of a text and deciding what are key points in order to create a meaningful summary.

2) List the reading skill/strategy that is the main focus of your lesson (select ONE area):

Summary

3) Objective for this lesson (performance, condition, criteria):

Students will be able to highlight text for key points, then write a summary based off of the key highlighted points.

4) Materials & supplies needed:

Highlighters
Articles for each student
Lined paper and pencil

5) OUTLINE OF LESSON PLAN (Provide a bulleted list of ideas):

PRE-READING: make participation norms explicit, elicit background knowledge, develop interest, set purpose (_5_minutes)

• Make participation norms explicit How will you prepare the children to participate according to your lesson objectives? List ways you will help them understand behavior and participation expectations during the lesson. Be explicit about any changes in expectations if these are different from patterns they are used to (e.g., raising hands, asking their own questions, talking with each other rather than the teacher).

·         I will explain to students that we are going to practice making a summary
·         I will ask them what they think a summary is and what they think is important in a summary
·         Tell students to ask any questions along the way and that they don’t need to raise hands during the lesson, if they have a question they may just ask it. It will be more of a conversation than talking at the teacher.

•  Introduce the text  List what you will say/ask to activate children’s background knowledge (e.g., brainstorming, quick write, KWL). How will you help students understand the purpose of the lesson? List what you will say to motivate them to become engaged in the lesson. 

·         Unearthing Ancient Africa article
·         What do you know about the African continent?
·         What do you know about ancient civilizations? Can you think of any others?
·         What do you think this article will tell you about ancient Africa?
·         I am going to read this article to you as you follow along with me. After each paragraph we are going to stop and do some highlighting and stop for questions.

DURING READING: Model how to engage with the text (e.g., use of reading strategies and analytic thinking process, inserting vocabulary support, comments and questions to support and extend comprehension and interpretation) (10 minutes)

  • After each paragraph we will discuss what we think is important and needs to be highlighted
  • I will talk about how you only highlight key phrases and sometimes sentences, but never whole paragraphs
  • If needed we may also make notes of questions we have, or comments, in the margins of the article to help us write our summary afterward

POST-READING ACTIVITIES AND DISCUSSION: Provide scaffolding for guided practice and/or application activity (_10_ minutes)
            I will assist the students in writing a summary based on the highlighted portions of the article that we previously marked. I will model the first sentence and then ask them to finish their summary.

ONGOING-ASSESSMENT: what will you pay attention to in order to evaluate the extent to which your students met the stated objectives for the lesson (_-_ minutes)

            After the lesson, I will read the summaries that they wrote and compare them to what they highlighted. Students will meet the objective if they properly highlighted, and that the summary includes the key points that we discussed.

6) Based on what you know about your focus students, what Academic, Social and/or Linguistic Support will be needed during the lesson?

Students will be held to the same classroom social and academic norms. They will be expected to do their best and to stay on task.
REFLECTION:

            In relation to my objectives my students did fairly well with the lesson. The students throughout the article asked questions about what certain things were and made connections throughout the piece. They did not do as well as I hoped when we went back to highlight the key pieces and writing the summary. During the highlighting portion, both Kevin and Ian had trouble with determining what part of each paragraph was most important and should be highlighted. Then afterwards, when writing the summary they both often waited for me to tell them what they should write, instead of going back into the text themselves in order to remind themselves what had happened. I did my best to encourage the students to work independently without my help, but Kevin and Ian would not continue unless I helped them come up with a sentence starter.
            Highlighting was a new technique for these students, and I think that turned out to be an advantage during this lesson. Kevin and Ian were excited to try a new technique and explained to me afterwards that it helped them. I think that the weaker part of my lesson was the article that I chose for them to read. If I was going to do this lesson again with the same students I would have chosen an article that was not as difficult. I think this article was too difficult for the students, and hindered their comprehension, more than it taught them something new.
            For myself as a teacher, I think I did really well encouraging the students to find the important parts of the article in order to be highlighted. I think I explained how to highlight well, and made the skill meaningful to the students. I think I could improve on ways to encourage students to continue working, without me just telling them what to write. The students in my MT’s classroom are very used to having someone just tell them the answer if they did not get it. I felt like I was in a dilemma because I wanted to try to help the students, but I caught myself giving them answers. I would like to learn more strategies to helping students in a positive way that helps them to think critically and problem solve. 

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