Sunday, April 28, 2013

Preston Lesson 2 Reflection


                I felt very prepared for this mini-lesson.   During this lesson I only worked with Kenny, Javier, and Joseph because Omar was out of the classroom at the time working with reading specialists.  Overall, I think it went really well and was a positive experience for both me and the students.   I think having new materials for the students to work with (the train sound blending mat and sound cards) instantly engaged the students. 

                My lesson objection was that students will create and read words using various phonemes and their blending sound mat.   Specifically my goal was for each student was to successfully read at least three words and create at least one word on their own.   All three of the boys I was working with successfully met this objective.  I taught this mini-lesson Friday morning during literacy centers when my teacher was also working with guided reading groups.  One thing that I noticed during this lesson was that the students wanted to finish the activity quickly so that they could get back to their literacy centers.  Because of this I modified the lesson slightly.  I didn't go over all of the words I had originally planned because I didn't want the lesson to take up too much time.  I made sure that the students all still meet the lesson’s objectives without it take too much time away from their center time.  This brought to my attention the difficulty as a teacher to find time to work with small groups of children.  It is important to remember to not make students feel like they are missing out on what the rest of the class is doing but rather are at the advantage.  

                I think that the materials were a major strength to my lesson.   The materials I created supported the students in blend sounds together by visually breaking up each sound for them.  A limitation to this lesson was that the students were limited to the words that they could create own their own.  I specifically provided the students only with the sound cards that they would need to create certain words.   When the students were asked to create their own words they were stuck and ended up trying to create words that we had already worked with.   I had to redirect that students to create new words and then they were able to come up with “and”, “the” & “hat”.

                Overall, I think that my lesson was successful because the each student met my learning goal. The more practice that the students have with this activity the better they will get at blending sounds.  After the lesson I left the materials will my mentor teacher so she can continue to work with these three students. 

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