Siebers Reading Lesson 1

Reading Lesson Overview

Overview: 

For these two reading lessons, I chose to focus on two students in my classroom,  Ivan and Bob. After looking at assessments from the past few months on several of the struggling students in my classroom, I noticed that these two children seemed to struggle with very similar aspects of reading. In February, Bob was given four sentences of five or six words each to read. He was unable to read any of the words in these sentences, however the teacher made a note saying, “able to tell me the sounds, but not able to tell the word (p/o/p -> mop)”. On the same reading assessment given to Ivan in March, he was able to read a few very common words which are part of their word wall, but there was a similar note about Ivan not being able to put sounds together after sounding out each letter in unfamiliar words. Based on these results, I chose to focus both my lessons on helping these children to blend the sounds of the letters in words in order to identify the word as a whole. By looking at their reading assessments, I know this was something both these children had been struggling with and, based on the teacher’s knowledge of the children, she felt these two children were still struggling with blending sounds to make words. 

Reading Lesson Plan # 1

Your Name: Kelli Siebers  

Grade Level: Kindergarten

Date lesson was taught:  April 15, 2013 Number of Students: 2

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

• Based on assessments from the last 4 months, these children both struggle blending or putting sounds together after sounding out each letters’ sound to recognize the word. 
• In order to continue progressing towards reading, these children need to learn how to blend letter sounds together in order to figure out the words they are reading.

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

- Blending (phonemic awareness)

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

- Children will be able to identify and blend words that are stretched out into their component sounds.

1. Materials & supplies needed:

- Note cards with pictures and words that the children should recognize (sun, flag, tree, book, cup, plane, car)

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

PRE-READING: Make participation norms explicit, elicit background knowledge, develop interest, and set purpose (2 minutes).

• Make participation norms explicit:

• While we are in the hallway, we need to remember the school expectations of being respectful, responsible and safe. 
• We are going to do an activity today where you take turns. When it is not your turn I expect you to figure out the answer in your head. This will be important because if one of you needs help I will ask your to help instead of me. 
• When helping your classmate, I don’t want you to just give them the answer but I want you to help them figure it out by talking through what you did in your head to figure out what the answer was.

• Introduce the text

• Today we are going to play a game called guess-the-word.
• For this game I have a bunch of cards with pictures on them. I am going to say a word using “snail talk” which means I will say the words really slow. When it is your turn, I want  you to guess the word I am saying and pick up the card with the picture of what the word is. 
• For example if I said, “ccccccuuuuuuupppppp” you would pick up the picture of a cup. 
• When it is not your turn you will be listening and deciding if you agree with your classmate’s choice of the card with the cup on it. 
• After one person picks a card and the other says if they agree, we will all practice saying the word in snail talk and then saying it like we usually would. So we would say “cccccccuuuuuuuuuuppppppp, cup”
• This game is going to help you with your reading as it is a way to sound out words. 

DURING READING: (10 minutes)

• Bob, you will go first, and Ivan I want you to listen and decide if you agree or disagree with Bob.
• Ivan, it’s your turn, and Bob I want you to listen and decide if you agree or disagree with Ivan.

• What word did you pick?
• Do you agree with what (the other student) picked?

• No: I will say it again in snail talk and see if you hear something different this time or if you agree with your first pick.

• Still not agreeing: Have the child whose turn it is sound out each letter. Then I will say the word in snail talk, then a little quicker and continue until I say the word like normal.

• So what word was it?

• Let’s say it together in snail talk then say it like normal.

POST-READING ACTIVITIES AND DISCUSSION: Provide scaffolding for guided practice and/or application activity (2 minutes)

• Have each child pick a word in their head and then I and the other child will guess the word as they say it in snail talk.

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 (during the activity- 0 extra minutes).

• Are the students able to hear and figure out what words I am saying in snail talk? (correctly say or find the card with the picture of the word.)
• Did I need to say the sounds faster and faster for the students to be able to blend the sounds?
• Was the child able to come up with a word and break it up into its component sounds in order to “test” myself and the other child? 

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

• These students may need reminders of what the expectations are while they are at school. They also may need support focusing on the task as they can easily get off track. 

• Reminders that, while they are at school, they are to be respectful, responsible and safe. 

• If they cannot handle being in the hallway to do this task, I will give them warnings that if they do not act as they should in the hallway, they will be sent back into class to sit at their desk with their head down.

• Reminders that this activity is important as it will help them to become better readers. 

Reflection 1:

After thinking about how this lesson went I would say that overall it was a success. Throughout the lesson both Bob and Ivan participated and took turns picking out the word I was saying in “snail talk” and then they talked to each other to see if they agreed with each other’s responses. My objective for the lesson was for the children to be able to identify and blend words that are stretched out into their component sounds. I would say both Ivan and Bob were able to meet this objective as they almost always were able to correctly identify the which word I said in “snail talk” from their pile of options, and there was only one time where they did not agree on what word I was saying. After hearing me say words in “snail talk”, the children were then able to attempt to say the component sounds of some familiar words in “snail talk” and then say the words at a more regular pace. 

I felt that doing this lesson using “snail talk” or slowed down speech, instead of saying broken up sounds, was an effective way to get these children thinking about how individual sounds make words and that sounds go together in a meaningful and structured way. As a future teacher of young children, I think this type of lesson is a good starting point to having children say letter’s sounds and then having them blend these sounds together.  Talking slow made them think through the sounds without struggling through trying to remember individual sounds and their order. 

One question I have about teaching blending is wondering why teacher’s start with individual sounds and then attempt to have the children stick them all together in a meaningful way? I can see how listening to three or more individual sounds and then being asked to stick them together would be a difficult task for young children. I think starting with stretching out words but still saying the sounds all together would be more beneficial to students when they are first learning about blending sounds.