Lesson Overviews - day 1, 2 and 5.

Lesson overview - Day 1 Shared Reading
        The first day, we introduce the book and then ask children to make predictions on what they think the book will be about. Students will make these predictions by looking at the front cover. We focus on reading the story and getting the students interested!

Lesson 1 Reflection:
    

·        What did students learn and which students struggled with the lesson?  

                Students looked at the front cover of the book and tried to make predictions based on the front over the book. Students saw the shark on the front cover and made predictions about a shark who was captured by a person. Because these shared reading books can be a little misleading regarding what the story could be about based on the title and picture, students predictions were not correct. This however is not a bad thing because predictions do not have to be correct. Students were able to look at words and recognize a pattern and what was going to come next.

·        What are alternate reads (interpretations) of your students’ performance or products? 

                       I noticed that students were able to sit for longer periods of time and listen when I was being more engaging. This may have been when I told children to listen so carefully because they would have to hear me whisper and know what I was telling them. Students have learned so far the routine of the week and really what will be happening each day almost so they know what you are going to ask them and sometimes may be bored of this schedule. 

·        What did you learn about your students’ literacy practices that extend beyond your objectives?

               Students can recognize a pattern and also know where to start reading a book. They also look to the pictures for support of the words. Students also can follow your finger while reading the text so they are demonstrating some one to one correspondence.

·        When and how will you re-teach the material to students who need additional support? 

              I will be working with guided reading groups and using some of these concepts during this time would work out great. I will have shared reading books where students have a book and I have the same book. We could point out concepts that are still needed and see students handling a book directly. 

·        If you were to teach this same lesson again, what would you do differently and how do you think the changes would improve students’ learning? 

               If I were to do this lesson again, I would focus more on classroom management because students are trying to push my limits with them and I need to find other ways to get the students attention and interact with them. If the behavior was being corrected, I can get to students in a different way so that they pay attention more often and would be able to learn more.

Shared Reading day 2 - Overview
   Students are trying to make a connection to reading the book Shark in a Sack by Joy Cowley. Students are also looking at the first and last letter in the words can and put.


Shared Reading Reflection - day 2
        

·        What did students learn and which students struggled with the lesson? 

                 Students were having a harder time with making a connection with the book because the book did not really have a story line that goes with it. Students made a connection to the lollipop because I made a connection with it originally and other students said that they knew that too. With the words can and put, students stretched out the word with me and were able to tell me what the first and last letter in each word was. Some students that had trouble with this were students who did not have letter-sound correspondence and were not sure what sound made that letter. I also showed the students the word in the book and then wrote it down as I helped students stretch it out so they grasped the concept after seeing the word. 

·        What are alternate reads (interpretations) of your students’ performance or products? 

              Students are still learning what the expectations are when they are at group time. Though many students still do the right thing, they still will fool around on the carpet rather than paying attention. I also am finding out that as you give students directions, if I start out by saying how much you hope students are listening because if they are not, they will not know what to do, students tend to pay more attention to you. I also realized that students know your attitude level because they will tempt you with that attitude as well. 

·        What did you learn about your students’ literacy practices that extend beyond your objectives?

              Many students are understanding letter sound correspondence and are using this in their writing. While students were writing at their seats, you can see children working on stretching out the words and writing down the first and last sound that they hear in each word. This is something we have been working on and some have extended what sounds they are writing. Also, students are gaining an understanding of the difference between an author and illustrator. Some students notice the pattern in some of the shared reading books, while others simply memorize what you are saying and then may not recognize the patterns later. 

·        When and how will you re-teach the material to students who need additional support? 

              Again, these concepts can be taught using guided reading time and focus specifically on certain concepts about print with different students. This way in a smaller setting, students are getting help with those concepts and they are interacting on a one to one basis and you can focus in on the child. 

·        If you were to teach this same lesson again, what would you do differently and how do you think the changes would improve students’ learning? 

                  I would add different words that were not in the book because students were really understanding the topic of first and last.  I would focus on words that you can still hear these sounds, but I may choose a few longer words in the book or add different words. I might also stretch out the word before writing it out to see if students still grasp the concept the same way.

Day 5 Overview - Shared Reading
          Students are going to go over a few concepts about print after reading Shark in a sack by Joy Cowley. Students will also make their own book and make up some words that would be a part of their new story. This will extend their thinking and connect different concepts about print to their own writing.

Day 5 Reflection - Shared Reading

·        What did students learn and which students struggled with the lesson?  

                  Today, students focused on learning the question mark and the exclamation mark and what these things meant. Students were having a hard time understanding what the exclamation mark meant. The question mark, students were having a hard time explaining the concept. This is something that would still need to be gone over again because children made a few guesses first and then one person told me the answer. I gave students other examples of sentences that would have question marks at the end and it was when students asked a question, there would be a question mark at the end. Students are also still learning on writing the words and stretching them out all by themselves and then reading it back to themselves. Because of this, students had a hard time writing out their own book.

·        What did you learn about your students’ literacy practices that extend beyond your objectives?

                   I noticed that some students would stretch out their own words and connect it to drawing a picture. Students came up with responses to questions about what we could write and it made sense with the book. Some students were able to recognize the pattern in the book and what they thought would come next and would ask about it when going to write their own stories which was good to see. 

·        When and how will you re-teach the material to students who need additional support? 

                     I can help students through interactive writing where students can come up with a story and we can stretch out the words and work on writing the letters that we hear. We can also use this during guided reading because I could focus on those concepts about print and seeing the ending marks and different words and patterns. 

·        If you were to teach this same lesson again, what would you do differently and how do you think the changes would improve students’ learning?

                  If I were teaching this again, I would focus more on modeling how to do the book. I helped students brainstorm a list of what we could write. I also showed students the book and said the words out loud, however I should have written them down on a book to show them. I also would have drawn pictures around next to the words I was writing because some students copied the words off the board without realizing what word they were actually writing. These words were meant to be used as a guide to writing and thinking about the story more.

Guided Lead Teaching: Shared Reading

Two Week Shared Reading Unit

Day 3:

Lesson Overview: Reread enlarged book, Look Out The Window together whole-class. Draw name sticks and children will retell the story, one person (and event) at a time. The first person will tell what the character saw first, the next person will tell what he saw second, and so on. Use retelling pictures in back of book to check if students are correct.

Day 3 Reflection:
•Overall, this lesson was successful and students learned how to check their understanding of a story by retelling major events after reading. While most students could retell the events of the story in the order in which they occurred, I noticed that my most struggling readers had difficulty remembering the order events happened. This may because their reading instruction focuses mainly on saying words phonetically, using strategies to decode unknown words, self-correcting, etc. As a result, they have not had as much practice with reading comprehension and may not have paid as much attention to the events in the story.
•I learned that many of my students can make inferences when reading. For example, one line in the text repeated, “Look out the window, look everyone. But when everyone looked, the [animal] was gone.” After reading, I asked students how Pablo was seeing these animals and why no one else could see them. A few students responded that he was seeing them in the clouds and when everyone else looked, the clouds had moved and changed shape. When asking how they knew, I received responses like “I looked at the picture,” “The clouds are shaped like animals,” and “He couldn’t be really seeing lions and whales at school.” Overall, the text never actually expressed that Pablo was seeing animals in the clouds, but by looking at the illustrations and thinking about what makes sense, students were able to infer that that was happening.”
•Students who need additional support (along with the rest of the students in the class) will receive additional instruction and practice with retelling. The next Making Meaning unit focuses on retelling, where we will spend two days on one book—reading the first day and retelling as a class the second day. Additionally, for students who struggled to retell in this lesson, I will confer with them during independent reading and ask them to read and then retell their stories to me. For students who need more guidance with this, I can say “While you were reading to me, I noticed four main events that happened in the story. Retell the story using four fingers.”
•If I were to teach this lesson again, I might stop after each major event (i.e. every time Pablo describes what he sees in the clouds) and point this out to students. For students who struggled during the lesson, this would highlight the important events that they need to pay attention to when they’re reading.


Day 4

Lesson Overview: Reread text together whole-class. Cover (with sticky notes) the words that tell what Pablo sees (i.e. lion, lamb, whale, etc.) As we come across these covered words, guide students to look first at the illustration, then cross check with the first letter of the covered word.

Day 4 Reflection:
•Overall, this lesson went well and students were able to determine all of the covered words. Students learned to check two sources of information when encountering an unknown word while reading. Particularly in this lesson, students cross-checked the illustration with the first letter of the unknown word to figure it out. It was difficult for me to tell which students struggled with the lesson, as not all students were able to share ideas with the class during our discussion. All of the students who were able to share identified appropriate animals based on the illustrations and then were able to correctly identify the unknown word based on the first letter. After one student gave a suggestion for the covered word, I had students put their thumbs up if they were thinking the same word (I could see that almost all students did). However, this could be interpreted as some students simply putting thumbs up because they saw that their classmates did or because they had no ideas of their own.
•Through this lesson, I learned that students can pick up on repetition. After the first few days of reading the book, students had the repeating part of the story (“Look out the window, look everyone. But when everyone looked the [animal] was gone.”) memorized and could read along at that part. Noticing and being able to reiterate the repeating lines is a skill that will help my beginning readers.
•The following week during Reader’s Workshop our lessons will focus on cross-checking. We will teach students that when coming to an unknown word, they should ask: Does it sound right? Does it look right? Does it make sense? Additionally, we’ve sent home a newsletter to parents describing what the cross-checking strategy is and how they can help their child practice and use it at home. Overall, it is a skill that we will come back to throughout the year.
•If I were to teach this lesson again, I would plan this activity on day one or two of reading the book instead of towards the end of the week. I know that several children knew the covered word simply because they were familiar with the text and storyline. In order to ensure that students determine the covered word by cross-checking, I would repeat this lesson with text that students are less familiar with.

Day 5

Lesson Overview: Reread text together whole-class. Display pictures of clouds over projector. Draw name sticks and have 2-3 students respond to each picture like Pablo did in the story (I see a [animal] [action] by; i.e. I see a lion roaring by).

Day 5 Reflection:
•In this lesson, students learned how to make connections to text. Earlier in the week I asked students if they had ever looked at clouds and seen different shapes or animals. In this lesson, students could pretend to be the main character, Pablo and look for different images in clouds. Thus, they connected with the character and gained a more meaningful understanding of the text. Although all of my students were able to appropriately find animals in the shapes of clouds, I noticed that my ELL students had a difficult time expressing it in the format I wanted. Specifically, I wanted students to respond “I see a [animal] [action] by.” (for example, “I see a lion roaring by.”) Some of my ELL students struggled to produce an appropriate action that matched the animal they saw. For example, one of my Japanese students said “I see fish walking by.” They likely struggled here because they were unfamiliar with the English words, not because they aren’t aware of what specific animals do.
•I learned that my students have very limited understanding of quotation marks. One student explicitly asked what those marks [quotation marks] meant. When I turned the question back over to the students, no one even felt comfortable guessing. I briefly described that they are something writers use to show when someone is speaking and I had one student pretend that they were Pablo. I wanted them to say only the part in the quotation marks (“Look out the window, look everyone.”), but the student read the text outside of the quotation marks as well. I provided a few more examples of sentences with quotation marks, but it’s clear that they need more instruction in this area.
•Making connections is a skill that we will practice frequently throughout first grade. Through our Making Meaning units and read-alouds during snack I will model how I make thick connections to text. Additionally, during independent reading time, students will have the opportunity to practice making personal connections to the characters, problems, solutions, themes, etc. in the stories they read.
•If I were to teach this lesson again, I would first have a student share with the class what image they see in the cloud. Then, I would have the class work together to brainstorm a list of actions that would make sense for that animal to be doing (i.e. if a student saw a lion in the cloud picture, it would make sense for that lion to be roaring by, running by, jumping by, galloping by, etc.). This would improve students’ learning by taking the pressure off of individual students when it’s their turn to share. It also gives more students the opportunity to participate throughout the lesson and work collaboratively with peers.

GLT - Reader's Workshop

While teaching these three lessons, we focused primarily on using all reading strategies that the students had been introduced to thus far and even more so covering the last three accuracy strategies. These three accuracy strategies are “tryin’ lion”, “first grade forgetfuls”, and “helpful kangaroo”. The students are all rather enthused about the strategies and truly love making use of them. When introducing the new strategies in each of the day’s lessons, I asked the students what each of the strategies might mean. With “tryin’ lion” I asked the students what it means to be brave. They all had similar ideas about how being brave is not being afraid of something, or trying something new. I then asked the students if being brave could mean not giving up – they immediately all agreed. During the lesson covering the “first grade forgetfuls” strategy, the students were taught to ask themselves three questions. These questions are, does my reading look right, does it sound right, and does it make sense. The students all tried their best to not get the case of the first grade forgetfuls and were proud when they remembered to ask themselves these questions. As for the “helpful kangaroo” strategy, the students all enjoy sharing how they either helped someone or were helped by another classmate. We are constantly working on getting along and being a good friend, and with the helpful kangaroo strategy they all make sure to let us know when they are being helpful.

During the active engagement portion of each day’s lesson, the students practiced the strategies together with a partner and then whole group. They used all their strategies and worked together to figure out the words. When asking for active participation during the lessons, nearly all the students’ hands almost always shoot up in the air. This shows me that they all want to contribute in some way. They are all proud of themselves when they can figure out the words, and show their certainty by providing strategies they used and reasoning for why they sued them. Thus, what I learned about our students’ literacy practices that extend beyond my objectives is that the students all make use of almost all of our strategies on a day-to-day basis. The students are flexible with their strategies and want to make it known that they used the strategies to figure out the words. The students are all very eager to be good readers and take pride in their reading abilities.

As I was listening in and observing during the mini-lessons as well as conferencing with students, it is evident to me that most all of our students use the strategies that they have been exposed to. We are always incorporating the same strategies in future lessons, so for those students who may need extra exposure to these strategies, will most certainly get it. If I were to teach these same lessons again, what I would do differently is have example books that the students have not seen or read before. This way, when I ask them to use their strategies, they will not already know the word. I think these changes would improve the students learning because they would almost be forced to use the strategies being taught in the mini-lessons to figure out the words rather than just recalling what the words are from past read-alouds.

Comprehension and Fluency

Comprehension and fluency go hand in hand with each other. Comprehension focuses on understanding the story and the meaning behind the words, the structure, the content etc. Students have to learn to question and analyze what they are reading. Fluency focuses on beginning to decode sounds and recognize words automatically. The more students are able to decode words and start to recognize letters and words automatically, it will help students to comprehend what they are reading. According to Timothy Rasinski, "readers must be able to decode words correctly and effortlessly (automaticity) and then put them together into meaningful phrases with the appropriate expression to make sense of what they read" (1). When reading to students, it is important that you stop to ask questions and to have students make sense of what you are reading to them. This helps students to understand what is being read and the content. It is also important that you teach comprehension strategies so that students begin to do them automatically once they start reading on their own. It is also difficult for students to start to comprehend on their own when students are decoding words so slowly. If students take 10 minutes to decode one word, it is going to be difficult for them to remember what it is they were reading and what it was about. It is also important that reading is taking place within the classroom. Read Aloud's, reading workshop, and other reading activities expose students to books and comprehension strategies so that both fluency can start occurring as well as strategies for students to help understand what they are reading.

 In my classroom, we teach fluency by reading the alphabet chart daily. We focus on different concepts within the alphabet chart. We also help students by working on letter identification as well as including words that students already know or words that we use over and over again. These words will help students to feel confident in their reading and will be words that they already have begun to know automatically. We also use anecdotal records to help us informally learn what students know and are still learning. Each week, we start to include more parts of literacy to teach with fluency, and we increase the speed we teach it at or the speed at which we ask students to respond. We tell students about how we notice that they are starting to automatically look at the first sound and think about the word that it might be. We encourage this type of learning so that students continue becoming excited about reading and hearing those sounds. The more accessible that students are to learning and practicing, the more fluent they will become.

To understand my students reading development, it is important to look at the beginning assessments that were taken at the beginning of the year. It is also important to think about the context that it was given in. Students all learn differently and it is important that we learn more about our children so that we can help them in a way that best suites their learning style if possible. We also need to have students feeling comfortable with us as teachers because they have to feel safe and comfortable to learn in our community. We also learn a lot through informal assessments as students are being asked questions through read aloud's and other activities done throughout the day. Conferencing with students is also important because you can get a feel on how comfortable students feel with reading. You also can see if there is something they like to read that may start students in a direction where they are more motivated to learn.