Downer: reflection 2

I felt that the four students had a good start to breaking words into syllables after the first lesson we worked on. I wanted my second lesson to be with the same four students because I new they would need additional help since this was a new strategy for them. I wanted the students to have another strategies on how to break words into syllables. This lesson I focused on helping the students look at ending suffixes. At the start of the second lesson we reviewed the rules of the first lesson, the students struggled with this greatly. They forgot all the rules and had difficulty splitting up words we worked on last week. I focused most of the lesson on reviewing the rules and strategies on how to break words up into syllables before introducing another concept. By the end of working with them they were begging to have a better understanding on how to break the words into syllables and sound out difficult words.

 I then introduced the next strategies; they picked up on this very fast. They were able to identify endings very easily and quickly understood that endings were there own syllables. I then provided words for the students to work on. The students did a great job of having the ending be a syllable, however they struggled with breaking up the rest of the word. This is a difficult concept that I believe the students will need a lot of practice because they do not receive this skill in the classroom. The students are in the sixth grade and are already expected to know how to sound out words. This has made me realize that even if students are in a higher-grade level it is important to once and a while review basic concepts because sometimes they are forgotten. Reviewing how to break words into syllables would help out not only my four students but also a lot more students in the class. At the end of the lesson it was clear they were able to sound out words better, I informed my teacher on how they were doing and she said she would continue to work with the four students so that they continue to improve sounding out difficult words. 

Downer: lesson plan 2

Reading Lesson Plan # 2 Rationale: The students that I used for the first lesson are the same students that I am using for the second lesson, If feel that they have not developed the knowledge or understanding yet on how to break up words into syllables and sounding out difficult words since I have just met with them once. Also, my teacher encouraged me to work with these students again in a small lesson to continue to help them learn how to sound out difficult words. Objective for this lesson (performance, condition, criteria): Students will learn how to identify ending sounds in words and keep endings together when breaking up syllables into words. Materials & supplies needed: list of words, paper, pencil  Words I am going to use: Painstaking         Duration Legislation          Deteriorate Treacherous       Burdened

Procedures and approximate time allocated for each event  • Introduction to the lesson (7 minutes)  Last week we all worked on breaking words into their syllables so that it is easier to sound out difficult words. Everyone did a great job, today we are going to continue to work on breaking up words into syllables however I am going to give you a new strategies that you can use to help you learn how to break up difficult words so it is easier for you to sound out the word.  Does anyone remember one rule that we learned last week (we will discus the rules and quickly look at two words we worked on last week, innocent, punishment). Great job everyone, today we are going to look at the ending of words and learn that when there is an ending like: ing, ed, tion, ous, or ate you keep it together. That is one syllable all by itself, you do not want to break it up when breaking up words into syllables. • OUTLINE of key events during the lesson (10 minutes) I am going to provide you some words, I want everyone to remember the rules that we learned last week and use those rules to help you break up these rules. However, all of the words I am going to give you have suffix, when I say suffix what do I mean -        student the word will be ending in ed, ing, tion that is correct and when the word end is a suffix you have to keep the whole suffix together and that is a syllable. I would like everyone to now word independently and break apart the words using a pensile into the different syllables. We will then come back as a group and work on discussing why you broke the word up the way you did. Great job everyone on working quietly and by yourself, we are now going to go through the list of words to make sure everyone broke the words up correctly in syllables. Each student will have a chance to say how the broke up the word and then sound out the word. (discuss with the students on the different words and work through words if they incorrectly broke the word into syllables.) • Closing summary for the lesson (3minutes) Everyone had done a great job breaking difficult words into syllables, when you come to a difficult word make sure you remember the two strategies we have used.  In order to have understood looking at the ending sound as an individual syllable you would have learned the rules like we did in the first lesson. This will be really important when reading spirit bear by Ben Mikaelsen because that book contains a lot of big words that are difficult to sounds out. Ongoing-Assessment: I will have each of my students that I worked with read a couple pages of spirit bear to me so that I can make sure they are using the rules and instructions I provided to them during the two mini lessons. It will be important to help students apply this information to when they are actually reading. Over the coarse of the week I will focus on these students and listening to how they read so that I can still work with them on breaking difficult words into syllables.

Adaptations: Based on what you know about your focus students, what Academic, Social and/or Linguistic Support will be needed during the lesson? Once again I will need to make sure my students understand the meaning of the words that I am presenting to them, I have two English language learners who struggle with vocabulary and it will be important that they understand the meaning of the words. Also, I will make sure students have clear directions to follow and time that they can reflect and talk to their piers since they learn better when interacting and talking to others about the information they are learning.

Dokho Reflection 2

Dokho Reflection 2- Word Knowledge with Homophones

Originally I planned on only giving my students a quick review of homophones because they had previously learned about them in a different class. I ended up having to clear up some misconceptions that my students had about homophones and redefine them because my students were slightly confused. This helped my learning goal because by the end of my short lesson my students had a really strong definition of what a homophone is, they had written examples and more detailed examples from their posters. My students enjoyed coloring and creating posters for their homophones. All three of my students are relatively mild mannered so they didn’t have any problems sharing or using materials the right way. I had the students share their posters with each other afterwards, which I wasn’t going to originally do. I think that sharing the posters added more words and references to their schemas about what homophones are. Now when they need to use homophones again, they have at least three solid examples and visual representations that they can refer back to.

A strength of my lesson was that it involved a bunch of small activities within one large activity. There was a group discussion, independent work time, and presentations. I thought that the variety was good because it let different students shine at different times. For example, Stacy doesn’t talk much out loud but she really enjoyed coloring and working on the poster. Plus, I could see that she had been paying attention during the group discussion because her poster was complete and accurate. A limitation of my activity was that it was easy for students to get wrapped up in the drawing and coloring aspect of the lesson. I asked my students to illustrate the homophones that they were representing so that they could see how they sound the same but have different meanings. Though the coloring part was important, it wasn’t the most important. I had to monitor how much time I allowed them to work on their illustrations or else we could have been there for an hour.

I noticed that I was able to provide a lot of different examples for the students about what homophones were. This made me happy because it means that I was able to use my prior knowledge to teach, and that is something that I should be doing in my own classroom everyday. I wonder if this lesson would be as effective if I did it with the whole class. It might be more beneficial to do some other type of activity such as writing a story or a play based off of the different homophones. It might also work to have this lesson be more of a homework assignment after the initial lesson about homophones. Then the posters could be brought back in and hung up around the room.

Dokho Reflection 1

Dokho Reflection 1-Fluency with Reader’s Theatre

I found that my students were motivated and excited to do my reader’s theatre task.  Even Stacy (who is usually very shy) wanted to read out loud. My students were so eager to begin acting out the play that they didn’t want to take time to look for words that they didn’t recognize. I assured them that the play would go a lot smoother if we did the introduction activity. Because of the introduction activity, my students were very prepared to act out the play. All of my students participated the whole time; they thought it was just a fun activity instead of a lesson. By the last time that we acted out the play all of my students were reading the script smoothly and with little to no errors. They were also using the punctuation and their own imaginations to give their characters certain inflections and personalities. I feel that my lesson goals were met because the students did improve their fluency, learned new words, and read with more ease and confidence then usual.

A strength of my lesson is that it was fun and engaging. My students wanted to participate instead of me telling them that I had to participate. When an activity is entertaining for kids as well as educational they will be more willing to participate because it doesn’t feel like work. They may even learn more because they want to be performing to the best of their abilities. A limitation of my lesson is that I had to choose one reader’s theatre play that was appropriate for all three of my students. I don’t know if I was able to accomplish that. I felt that the play was at the right level for Stacy and Igor, but not challenging enough for Mary. I feel that Mary did not benefit or learn as much from the lesson because there were not many words that she didn’t recognize or need to decode. My solution to this problem would be to group a class of students based on fluency levels so that they are all reading the appropriate play and feel challenged but not overwhelmed.

As for myself, I noticed that I was also more motivated to do this lesson because I knew that the students would enjoy it and learn something. When I have my own classroom I have to make sure that I bring the same enthusiasm to every lesson so that my students will be excited too. I also have to remember that students do respond better to fun and there are ways to make things exciting and educational at the same time. It’s worth it even if it takes more effort. I wonder how this would work with an entire class. We could put on one big play or a bunch of smaller plays. I think it would be exciting to work on them for the whole year and then present them with props and costumes at the end of the class.

Parker: Reflection 2

Reflection 2: Prosody

What did you notice about your students’ participation and learning in relation to your objectives?

                 Unfortunately, two of the four students were absent for the lesson due to ESL instruction.  However, in terms of participation, I thought that the two students present were very engaged in this lesson.  I think that this was mainly because of the analogies I used, which linked to the importance of the lesson topic.  Rather than simply telling students that they should read fluently, I modeled the difference between disfluent and fluent reading by using the analogy of a robot.  These two students found my robot reading very funny, while it also made them realized the importance of prosody and reading with expression.  One student exclaimed, “You sound weird when you read like that.  I don’t want to read like that at all!” Here, I could see that the comparison I showed between disfluent and fluent reading heightened students’ engagement and the level at which they were able to relate to the lesson.

                This comparison also relates to their learning.  Students were very receptive to the skills presented in the lesson, especially after I modeled prosody by reading a few sentences of the City Birds aloud to them.  I noticed that students were making connections to the way in which I modeled and to their own reading as they engaged in a choral reading of the text.  They used fluctuation with sentences containing punctuation, such question marks and exclamation points; paused when they came across a comma in a sentence; and lowered their voice if a sentence ended in a period.  I also noticed that students were making similar connections to their own reading and the chunking of the sentences.  Regardless of whether a comma was placed in the middle of a sentence, I attempted to chunk the sentences in relevance to how I read them.  This not only helped the students read with more expression, but also made the text seem less overwhelming.

What were the strengths and limitations of your lesson for supporting your students’ learning?

                As mentioned above, I felt that a strength of the lesson was the use of modeling.  Based on my observations while being in my placement, I have noticed that some students are confused on what it actually means to read fluently.  Giving an example and a non-example allowed students to compare the two versions of the reading and then determine which version sounded better.  It seems as though students know what “good” reading sounds like, but do not necessarily pair it with the concept of “fluency”.  I also felt that my choice of using partner reading at the end of the lesson was a strength.  This gave students the opportunity to practice reading with prosody and expression on their own, keeping in mind the chunking and choral reading done previously.  I told the students that I wanted to see how well they could read the text without my help, and that I was only going to sit and listen.  With that, I noticed that they were helping each other with not only decoding words, but also with fluctuation with specific punctuation.  As one student was reading a page of the text, the other student stopped him and said, “You should raise your voice up there because there’s a question mark.” This indicated that this student had met the objective of the lesson, so much that he felt confident enough to help his classmate.

                I felt that a weakness of my lesson was the choice in text.  I wanted to use a text that was an independent level for the students, but because it was at a first-grade level, many of the sentences were very short.  This made it hard to chunk certain parts of the text with the students, which was one of the main focuses of the lesson.  If I were to do this lesson again, I would use a text that used a more complex sentence structure to easily show students the chunks of a sentence.  This, in turn, would aid in their levels of expression.

What did you notice about yourself as a teacher? What questions do you have?

                As I was doing this lesson, I noticed that was very successful in engaging students in a choral reading of the text.  However, I noticed that occasionally, one student would miscue or decode a word slower than the other.  Is it appropriate to delay a choral reading to ensure that each student reads the text with 100% accuracy?  Should this be a focus even though the lesson’s objective only touches on reading with prosody and expression? In addition to this, I had to catch myself from stopping students during the partner reading.  Occasionally, one student would read a sentence or part of with little expression or fluctuation in voice.  Therefore, I am wondering if it is ever appropriate to “cut in” when you are only checking for progress and monitoring students.  How much independence do you give students during this activity and the like if you notice they are not fully meeting the lesson objective? 

Parker: Reflection 1

Reflection 1: Phonemic Awareness and Initial “S” Blends

What did you notice about your students’ participation and learning in relation to your objectives?

                In terms of participation, students’ engagement levels were rather high throughout the lesson.  Based on their reactions as I distributed the materials for the activity, I concluded that the type of activity I had chosen was not one similar to what they have done before.  I formatted the task so that the four students would cut and paste the pictures and words to make a t-chart, which is a format that my mentor teacher frequently uses in small-group reading lessons.  Despite that I mentioned and checked for this background knowledge in the introduction of the lesson, the boys were rather amused, as well as distracted by the scissors and bottles of glue they were handed.  I do not believe that this interfered with their mastery of the objectives of the lesson; however, I noticed myself continually reminding students of how to correctly use the supplies, instead of rewarding or scaffolding them in the completion of the task.  As I reflect, I realize that students were fully engaged in the task, but more so with their use of the materials.

                These four students are currently at a mid-first grade reading level, according to their scores on DRA assessments, so I assumed that they were familiar with the four s-blends I had chosen to work with.  Students had minimal difficulty in categorizing the illustrations; I was only required to correct students on the identifications of three pictures.  What was more challenging for this group of students was categorizing the corresponding word for each picture.  As the group was moving on to this stage in the lesson, one student exclaimed, “These words are so long! This is too hard, Miss Parker…” I noticed that other students were becoming frustrated as well, despite that they were trying to do their best in decoding the words, especially by using their favorite strategy: stretching.  From there, I mentioned the fact that the first two letters of a word could give them a hint about which column of the t-chart it belonged.  Students eventually recognized this pattern and group the words accordingly, but still had some difficulty decoding the remainder of each word.  Therefore, I could conclude that each student met the objective of identifying each s-blend and reciting the corresponding sound; however, they may still need instruction focusing on decoding multi-syllabic words.  This, of course, was not an objective for this lesson.

What were the strengths and limitations of your lesson for supporting your students’ learning?

                As mentioned above, it appeared that students were more excited about using glue and scissors than they were about the actual activity.  Therefore, I can conclude that the use of these specific supplies was a limitation of the lesson.  Discussed multiple times during the duration of my education courses, the use of manipulatives and supplies can sometimes be detrimental to the mastery of lesson objectives and goals among students.  In my case, students were more concerned about how much glue they could possibly fit on the back of the pictures and words, how neatly they could cut out each word, etc.  To focus more on meeting the objectives of the lesson, it may have beneficial to only require students to place the pictures and words on a t-chart previously made, rather than gluing.  This would not only have focus students’ attention more on the topic and task, but also could have significantly decreased the duration and time of the lesson.

                Despite that students were somewhat distracted in this aspect, I felt that a strength of this lesson was the use of illustrations.  Two of these four students are English Second Language Learners.  Not only are they new to the English Language, they are also new to American culture.  The illustrations serve as a pair to the words used in the second part of the lesson, as well as introduce them to things were not exposed to them at home or in their previous culture.  A second strength that I noticed during my lesson was the use of categorizing.  Rather than randomly selecting and teaching words with initial consonant blends, I only required students to focus on four of those blends, those specifically beginning with “s”.  Because students had already seen some of these blends in the words of texts that they have read, categorizing pictures and corresponding words improves spelling, phonemic awareness, and phonics skills.  While categorizing, students recognized patterns between the spelling of a blend and the sound of that blend.  For example, while gluing the words under their corresponding pictures, students noticed that all of the words in a column of the t-chart began and sounded like the blend placed in the top row.  One student exclaimed, “Look! All of the words in this column start with the sound s-p-!”  This pattern was one of the main focuses of the lesson, which I hope they will use in both reading and writing.

What did you notice about yourself as a teacher?  What questions do you have?

                As I was teaching this lesson, I noticed that I have not yet mastered providing consequences for non-compliant behavior.  Despite instructing one particular student on how to use a bottle of glue correctly multiple times, he continued to use excessive amounts of glue for the pictures and words, which consequently made the glue flow onto the carpet.  I refrained from yelling at or punishing this student, but I noticed that I was regulating his behavior more than I was observing the other three students’ progress.  I refused from exclude him from the activity because of his behavior because I did not want him to lack the specific instruction; however, putting students in “time-out” is something that my mentor teacher does very frequently.  Thus, I still have questions about how to handle non-compliant behavior.  Is appropriate to remove the materials and exclude a student from the task altogether? What are some approaches tackling non-compliance but still allowing the student to be involved in the lesson or task?

                On top of this, I felt that I did well in scaffolding students to arrive at correct observations and answers during the task.  After stating the lesson objective and outlining the procedures of the task, I took in “I Do It” approach, in which I asked students to find the picture of a sweater in their bag.  I said the name of the object twice slowly to the group, and ask them to identify what s-blend the name of the object began with.  Rather than giving students complete independence in doing the task, I modeled how to discover the s-blend by “stretching” the word.  Additionally, if students had a question about a picture or word, rather than giving them the answer right away, I provided them with a hint or clue to push them towards the right answers.  Although I scaffolded students in these ways throughout the lesson, I felt as though I was using some of the same prompts over and over again.  What are some ways to differentiate prompts in scaffolding?  What are some different techniques that allow students to discover consonant blends both with support and on their own?

  

Reading Lesson #2 Word Knowledge with Homophones

Reading Lesson Plan # 2: Word Knowledge (Homophones) Rationale: The three students that I have chosen for this lesson are struggling readers. According to Tompkins, there is a close relationship between vocabulary and reading fluency and achievement. Students that have a larger vocabulary will know more high frequency words and most likely have greater knowledge about how to decode difficult words. These students may not be exposed to many new words on a regular basis, especially the ELL student, who may only be very familiar with specific content vocabulary. Teaching homophones is a great way to increase student’s vocabulary and clear up any misconceptions for ELL and any students struggling with comprehension and fluency. By adding these new words, their differences, and their meanings to student’s learned vocabulary, they will be on their way to becoming better readers. Objective for this lesson (performance, condition, criteria): Students will define what a homophone is. They will create and present a homophone poster by listing the words, defining the words, illustrating the words, and using each word in context in a sentence. Materials & supplies needed: Poster board or paper, drawing materials, writing materials, list of homophones, dictionary.

Procedures and approximate time allocated for each event  • Introduction to the lesson (5 minutes) ·       “Today we are going to be talking about homophones. By the end of this lesson you will be able to define a homophone, use a homophone pair in a sentence, define each word, and illustrate each word.” ·       “Does anyone know what a homophone is?” ·       “Homophones are words that sound alike but are spelled differently and have different meanings. Waist-waste is an example of a homophone. Waist spelled this way is a part of your body near your stomach. Waste spelled this way can mean food or other things that you don’t use and you throw away.” ·       “What are some other examples of homophones that you can think of?” ·       “Why are homophones important to know?” ·       “Homophones will be important to know when reading a book or any other piece of writing. They way something is spelled can give you clues to what a sentence means and knowing lots of homophones can help everyone read quicker and with less struggling with words we don’t know. Today we are going to make posters of some different homophones!” • OUTLINE of key events during the lesson (15 minutes) ·       Each of you will get a slip of paper that looks like this. It will have the two homophones and two definitions. Your job is to decide which definition goes with which homophone. Then you need to think of a sentence that uses each homophone. ·       “Here is an example of my homophone poster. I used the homophone soared and sword. You should place one homophone on each half of the paper with the right definition and sentence. Then draw a picture that goes with that homophone. You can use the dictionary as a resource and you will have 10 minutes to complete you poster independently.” ·       The teacher will have slips of paper face down for the students to choose from. After allowing the students to work for 10 minutes the teacher will ask each student to share their poster. ·       “When you share your poster you should say your homophone, then explain what each word means, and read your sentence. What should the rest of the students be doing while one student is presenting?” • Closing summary for the lesson (10 minutes) ·       “What did we learn today about homophones?” ·       “Why do you think homophones are important for students and even adults to know?” ·       “How do you think knowing homophones will help you with your reading?” ·       “Homophones are important to know because they will help you understand the things that you read. Homophones are also vocabulary words and the more vocabulary you know the more books and texts you can read.” Ongoing-Assessment: I will assess each student’s poster to make sure it contains all of the necessary components and that the student understands the meaning of their homophone. I will evaluate the students’ answers during the closing summary to make sure they understand the criteria for homophones and how they are important for students to know when reading and writing. I will record which homophones the students have learned so that the vocabulary can be incorporated into another assignment to check for retention and comprehension.

Adaptations: Based on what you know about your focus students, what Academic, Social and/or Linguistic Support will be needed during the lesson? ·       Students with limited vocabulary of knowledge about the English language may need to look up their homophone pair in the dictionary or online for further clarification with other examples and illustrations. I will have many different examples for a wide variety of student levels.