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?