Rachel Booker-Reading Lesson Reflection 2

Reading Lesson Reflection:  Discuss your experience after teaching each lesson: 

·       What did you notice about your students’ participation and learning in relation to your objectives?

Since this was the third time students were exposed to the book, they were very eager to participate. Dave, Kyle, and Julius were all present and fully participated.  At the beginning students needed scaffolding in finding details. “Voice in the Park” had a lot going on in their illustrations, which caused a few distractions when looking for details. I had to explain what “the big idea” meant and how to identify it in a story. Eventually students were giving various insights of each character and listing supporting details in each column.  Julius would take into account how the characters acted, Dave and Kyle mostly drew from surroundings in the illustrations and characteristics of the characters.

I began the lesson by reading the first voice then asking them what details stood out the most to them of that character, We discussed what made that character unique and then wrote it down. Many students would say “she is mean”, “lonely”, “rich”, and l ”likes to be clean”. I had to scaffold them through out majority of the lesson, hint towards what detail was more appropriate and to not be too led off by the complex illustrations. We worked as a team for each voice, they did well with identifying details but they struggled with circling the big ideas. It was easy for them to identify the big idea of the book as a whole, which were the park and the different people who come to it. On an individual level it was hard to make a text to world connection of the main idea of each voice/character. Circling the big idea among details was the most troublesome objective. The students did not get frustrated but began to just circle details they felt was best. Some details that were circled did not make sense to the big idea, which lead to me going back and clearing misconceptions.

By the end of the lesson students had a better idea of selecting important details but still needed scaffolding in determining the big idea. It kind of became a guessing game amongst them around the end. The lesson was not a complete failure and I do believe a different book may have resulted with better responses.

·       What were the strengths and limitations of your lesson for supporting your students’ learning?

The limitations of the lesson were using the same book the third time around. “Voices in the Park” is an exciting book full of complex illustrations and a fun theme. For this strategy it was difficult for students to stay focused on the task at hand sometimes. Dave did not respect the participation norms and often interrupted in excitement about what was in the picture, which led to further distractions. I would say that the strength of the lesson was using a homemade organizer. It was a strategy that I see them use sometimes, which made me happy. They learned how to make notes of things they found interesting or important.

·       What did you notice about yourself as a teacher? What questions do you have?

Despite how the lesson was going, I remained calm and positive, which I cannot say for other situations. I realized that I am flexible and more geared toward student needs than my lesson outline. I do wonder what better ways I could implement reading strategies. I do not read for leisure and often try to avoid it so I would like to know how to improve my attitude towards reading (as well as my future students).