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.
Before I started reading the
book, I went over with the students what I planned on doing with them, how I
was going to stop every couple of pages to talk about the pictures to help them
figure out what certain words mean. We were going to be using “context clues” –
as soon as I said that I had Ollie asking me “What’s context clues?” After
explaining it to them, they were ready to go.
During
the lesson, we would stop every couple of pages and use context clues to figure
out what was going on in the story or what certain words mean. A good example
of this was when we wanted to figure out what “tight times” meant- we used instances
of the text and pictures to figure out it might mean something to do with when
parents didn’t have a lot of money or things. Recognition came mostly from
Sunny- Ollie didn’t recognize faces but was quick to pick up other context
clues such as other words or other pictures.
One
cool thing that happened during the lesson that I did not plan on was Sunny
asking me “What does his dad do?” referring to the dad in the book- what job he
might have lost. I almost told her that the book didn’t tell us that and moved
on, but then we decided to use context clues from the pictures to figure out
what job he might have. We looked at the dad’s clothing – Ollie drew a
connection to what his dad wore, and Sunny noticed that the dad had a
briefcase, so they were able to figure out what jobs he might have had- they
decided it was probably some kind of an office job.
After
the lesson, I ended the lesson by asking my students why using context clues
while reading a story could be useful. Both students agreed that using context
clues could help you figure out a phrase or word you might not have known the
meaning of beforehand.
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- Sunny was
easily distracted, and I spent a lot of time getting her back on task. This
made it so that my students were not super involved in my lesson and were constantly
looking around.
Another
large limitation I had was that my students had trouble recognizing the
expressions on the characters faces in the book. I think it would have been beneficial to them
for me to create a quick pre-activity where we looked at faces and determined
what expression they were showing.
What did you notice
about yourself as a teacher? What questions do you have?
I noticed that I had little patience with Sunny
when she got off task- at first I would gently remind her, but as she would
continually find something to distract herself with, whether that be with books
or watching the other class, I had to get more forceful with her. How do I keep
my students on task, without being too harsh/strict?
I
wrote about this is my first reflection- but luckily this time I allowed my students to go off on a slightly
unrelated note- what was his dad’s job- and I was able to make it connect to
the lesson and help supplement what I was trying to teach. I hope I can always allow myself to be so open
minded to see what new directions we can go in. How do I keep students on task
while still allowing occasional forays into new territory?
No comments:
Post a Comment