Book Used: “Tight Times” by Barbara Shook-Hazen. It’s a
book about a young boy who wants a dog- but his father loses his job. The young
boy finds a kitten in a trashcan outside later that day. It’s a short picture
book with most words students can understand.
What did you notice
about your students’ participation and learning in relation to your objectives?
To
start off the lesson, my students and I went to the library since the rest of
the class was engaged in learning a new math game that was very distracting.
Although the library had another class in it during this time, it was still quieter
there for the students in my group than in the classroom.
During the lesson, I would stop every
couple of pages and ask my students to tell me what had just occurred in the
story. For the most part, Michelle would jump in first and tell me almost all
she could remember about the past few pages, which was great. Tommy was a
little bit quieter, however he did contribute at least once each time, and his
contributions were always what Michelle had missed or glossed over.
I did
notice a couple of times during the book that my students could remember what
had happened on the page we just read but not the page before that. I’m not
entirely sure why that happened- it didn’t seem to have any pattern to it,
although one of the times was after the librarian had started a video for the
other class to watch. I wonder if they only struggled when they had been distracted/not
paying attention.
At the
end of the book, I noticed that one student was able to retell me most of the
story in order; he missed only minor details here and there. However, for the
other student, she couldn’t remember the very beginning part, which was weird
to me since she had been contributing the whole time. But it seemed like she
got disheartened quite easily- after thinking for no more than 10-15 seconds,
she just simply shrugged and said “I don’t know, I can’t remember.” This was
confirmation more to me that she gets easily frustrated and will give up when
she struggles with something instead of it being a lack of skill on her part.
To
finish off our lesson, I asked my students “So, now that you know what
retelling is and how you can do it, why do you think it is important to use
when reading?” At this point, it seemed like Michelle had mentally “checked out”,
and even with me asking her to refocus and participate it felt like pulling
teeth. Tommy was better and responded that it was a great way to go over what
had happened in a story and remember it.
What were the
strengths and limitations of your lesson for supporting your students’
learning?
I think the biggest
limitation overall was that there was another class in the library- at one
point, a student in the class called out “Tommy?! Tommy!” To Tommy’s credit, he
turned around briefly but ignored it the rest of the time and was focused on
the lesson.
One
strength was that because I was reading the book to them, students were unable
to skip ahead or play with the books as can sometimes happen. We were able to
focus on the objective of the lesson- retelling- rather than having Michelle
get frustrated early because she couldn’t read a word or because Tommy wanted
to read the whole book. Granted, I only had one book, but I think it worked out
favorably in the end.
What did you notice
about yourself as a teacher? What questions do you have?
I
still struggle with getting a discussion going. I wonder if this is because
sometimes a discussion winds up a little off course, and I correct it almost
immediately- am I too quick to guide it back to course? And am I being too harsh
when I do that? Sometimes going off in a different direction with a discussion
can lead to interesting new ideas, but how do you tell when it could be a good
side trail or one that goes to a dead end?
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