Reading Lesson Overview
I have
decided to work with four students for my two mini reading lessons. These four
students were suggested to me by my mentor teacher. The first lesson will focus
on the strategy of retelling and I am working with two male students whom I
will call Jay and Pete. For the second lesson I am working with two female
students whom I will call Hannah and Anne. I will be teaching them how to take
a picture walk and make predictions.
As I was
talking with my mentor teacher she suggested Jay and Pete work with me because
they are very strong in math. She said they do not struggle with reading, but
they could always use extra practice. She also said that comprehension
strategies would be especially important for these students because they are beginning
to read books with more words which require strong comprehension skills. She
also suggested Hannah and Anne because the two of them are up and coming
readers. She said that teaching them a reading comprehension strategy would be
beneficial since they are at the point where they will be beginning harder
books and knowing ways to help them better comprehend the text when reading
will help them as they enter into this next reading stage.
I decided
that I would assess the two groups on their retelling and prediction skills
before giving my actual lessons. I wanted to do something informally so I knew exactly
what they did not know so I could scaffold to the best of my ability in the
mini lesson. Therefore, I read each child the book, Dog Breath: The Horrible Trouble with Hallie Tosis by Dav Pilkey. In
this story, the family dog, Hallie has bad breath. The parents want to get rid
of the dog so the children try to help him with his problem. They tried
multiple ways to get rid of Hallie’s bad breath, but they did not succeed. However,
when burglars came into their house one night the dog saves the family because
of his bad breath. In the end the family decided to keep the dog because he was
a hero!
Before I
read the book I asked Hannah and Anne if they knew what the phrase ‘making
predictions’ meant and both of them responded, “No.” I then asked them to look
at the picture on the front and the pictures throughout the book and make a
prediction of what they think the book was going to be about. I also explained
that a prediction is stating what you think might happen. Hannah immediately
said that she thought the dog will have bad breath and then have good breath at
the end. Anne said, “The dogs breath smells yucky, nobody likes the dog, got in
the newspaper that he had a stinky breath.” After the story Hannah realized
that her prediction was wrong. She said, “No, they didn’t sell their dog because
they put plugs on their nose.” While Hannah is beginning to realize that her
prediction was wrong there is still room for her to give a stronger argument as
to what was wrong and what the text said to prove the inaccuracy. When I asked
Anne if her prediction was correct she said, “Yes.” When I questioned her about
the newspaper part and why he really got into the newspaper she said she forgot
that part. Therefore, Anne can also benefit from a thorough picture walk and
prediction making lesson that goes back to the initial predictions after
reading.
I then worked
with Jay and Pete. I was interested how they retold a book without any prompt
of how to retell. Each student went one at a time after I read the book. Jay
said, “The dog had bad breath and he got the bad guys and their eyes were wobbly.”
Drew said, “The family had to plug their hose ‘cause they had so bad breath.
They put a sign up.” What I got from this was that they include some of the
parts to retelling, but not all. I will focus the lesson on making sure they
know which components are essential when retelling a story.
At first I
my mentor teaching thought a K-W-L would be beneficial for the students.
However after reading the Stahl article I learned that K-W-L’s have had little
research done on them so as of now they are not proven to be an effective
strategy (Stahl, 2004). While picture walks also do not have a lot of research
I am including prediction making as well to strengthen the comprehension
strategy. The Stalh article also talks positively about retelling. Stahl says, “Techniques
like the five-finger retelling might provide a concrete means for fostering the
inclusion of story structure elements with young children” (2004, p. 600).
Therefore, I am definitely going to include the five finger technique in my
lesson.
No comments:
Post a Comment