Williams Reading Lesson Overview

Reading Lesson Overview

·     Focus Students:

For my reading lessons, I am using one of my focus students from math, Student M. He is a student who transitioned into this class at the beginning of the semester. The class was a 1^st/2^nd split, and he was in a K/1^st split. Now the first graders form one whole class. From working with him and talking to my CT, I have learned that he does not deal with new adults very well. M refuses to do any of his work and most of the time misses out on going outside so that he will finish it. I have had very little luck with getting him to talk and/or work with me, but my CT tells me that I am the only other adult besides her that he has talked to. With the work he has turned in, it does appear that he is a little behind his classmates academically. His reading level is one of the lowest in the class. The thing that has seemed to get the best results thus far is small quiet settings. He needs someone that will work directly with him, but also that he feels comfortable with. I have also learned that you really have to be careful how to give corrective feedback. If he feels like you are telling him “you’re wrong,” he freezes up, buries his head, turns away, closes his eyes, and/or crosses his arms and refuses to speak anymore. So, I feel that he really needs someone to stress his strengths and not sound judgmental when providing feedback. If he doesn’t feel comfortable in the situation, no learning is going to take place.

I decided to also use a student who I haven’t worked with as a focus student before. Student A is a student that I go to when I want to know things about what they did yesterday, or what numbers were assigned for math, etc. She is very on top of things. Based on watching her work, looking at her assignments, and talking with my CT, it seems as though A needs to be challenged a little more. She enjoys helping others, and has a lot of patience (which is why I think she would be a good match for M to work with). However, sometimes I feel like others just try to go to her to find answers, not help. I think A needs a push to think deeper about literature, because she has shown great insight on other assignments. I also feel that A is sometimes forgotten about in the class because she doesn’t need help. I think this can be discouraging and I would like to see how she works in a small group setting with me, since most students that work one-on-one with adults are those who need the extra help. I think that this will give her a little more confidence and the extra push to think deeper.

·     Target areas
     The two target areas I have chosen for my lessons are “After-reading activities for ESL” and “picture walks.”

My students are not learning English; instead they are native English learners learning Spanish. They are in a Spanish Immersion program, which means all instruction is in Spanish right now. Based on assessments and student work, it appears that students are further behind in their Spanish literacy than English. So, I chose to use an after reading activity for ESL students, since it is the same situation. It seems that as they read, they are focusing more on pronouncing the words and then they don’t comprehend as much. Because of this, I would like to do a choral reading (to hopefully make M more comfortable) and then a story map. The story map will help them piece the story together and make within text connections.
I chose “picture walks,” first because I feel that the students all always like to look at the pictures, but they do it while reading and not as a predicting strategy. Second, I think that it takes a little more for these two students to become engaged in reading and predicting aids comprehension because “readers become more engaged in the reading experience and want to continue reading” (pg 262, Tompkins).

·     Article Based on the Miller article, I really think that I will need to use some explicit modeling (especially for the second lesson). This should also be beneficial because my CT has been recently interested in explicit instruction since attending a conference. I need to show the kids how to think aloud. Also, the Stahl article listed both of these strategies as commonly used and I wanted to gain a better insight on them.