Monique Neysmith
Supervisor: Dr. Rosalina Diaz
Education 492 – Student Teaching II
Cooperating Teacher: Ms. McFadden
Observation Date: March 18, 2013
Time: 11:00 am – 12:00 am
Reading is a very important skill for students to have. It is the foundation for all other subjects in school and is also a key aspect throughout life. Everything we do involves reading of some sort so it is important for children to learn not only how to read, but to comprehend and to use different strategies in order to reach that goal. Whenever I think of an ELA/Reading lesson I know that I have to keep all of those things in mind because whatever I do will have an effect on the students and it can be good or bad. Paying attention to what I am doing and how I am presenting the material is important in order for me to have a productive and meaningful lesson.
Planning this lesson was difficult at first because I didn’t get the chance to see the students do anything but prepare for the state exam. I looked at the Common Core Standards and saw some things that they need to be doing at this level and decided what I will do from there. Just from observing their reactions when they are read to I knew that I was going to do a read aloud. They are very engaged and understand the text better when their teacher reads to them. When I think about read-alouds I also think about stopping during the reading to see if the students understand the story. Stop and Think is one of the many valuable comprehension strategies that can be used with students. I am choosing to stop while reading to discuss the text with the students instead of waiting until after I am done because students will grasp the story better. Kathy Collins said “During interactive read-aloud with accountable talk, the teacher models the work that careful readers do to comprehend texts and to foster ideas and theories about stories and characters” (p.37), and this is exactly what the students need to do to compare and contrast the two texts.
Since prior knowledge is so important, I decided that one of the texts will be one that the students are familiar with. That is so the students will have a better understanding of the second text, which they may not know. In her book Beyond Traditional Phonics (1997), Margaret Moustafa said “The amount of background knowledge children have on a topic prior to reading a passage has a powerful effect on their abilities to make sense of the passage” (p.64). Since I am going to tell the students that they will be comparing and contrasting two texts that are similar, they will have some understanding of what the text is about before I read it. That will make it easier for them to follow along as I am reading. Along with their schema about what the text is about, the students will also understand what I am reading because it was written by a Chinese man and it takes place in China. This aligns with what the students learned about China a couple of weeks ago. Integrating curriculum is very important and it lets the students know that what they are learning is for a reason and can relate to things they already know.
“Children’s oral responses lead the way for their written ones, helping them feel more confident about what they have to say and making it easier to put their ideas in writing later on” (Taberski, p. 82). The students’ discussions on what is going on in the text while I am reading will prepare them for their writing. They will use venn diagrams to compare and contrast the two texts. Because they would have already spoke about it, it will be much easier for them to write. Graphic organizers are perfect for students to write down information in an organized way, but I am not yet sure when I want them to write in the venn diagram. In Supporting Struggling Readers and Writers (2002), it was said that “If applied during the reading, they help students make sense of new information and enable them to see connections between events and concepts” (Strickland, et al. p.153). If I allow them to write before we are finished the text, we may not get to finish the text before the period is done. It was also said that “Graphic organizers that are used after the reading assist students in verifying predictions and in providing more detailed responses” (Strickland, et al. p. 153), which is very important for these students because they have been focusing on giving detailed responses for the state exam. There is a world outside of the state exams, however, so I am considering letting them write during the reading.
References
Collins, K. (2004). Growing readers: units of study in the primary classroom.
Portland, Me.: Stenhouse Publishers.
Moustafa, M. (1997). Beyond traditional phonics: research discoveries and reading
instruction. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Strickland, D. S., Ganske, K., & Monroe, J. K. (2002). Supporting struggling readers
and writers: strategies for classroom intervention, 3-6. Portland, Me.:
Stenhouse Publishers.
Taberski, S. (2000). On solid ground: strategies for teaching reading K-3.
Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.