Garman Reading Lesson 1 and 2 Overview

The target area I have chosen for my lessons is phonological awareness skills. After having a discussion with my mentor teacher, as well as having observed the students often during their reading and writing lessons, it came to my attention that all of the students would benefit from more practice in developing this area. In addition, I also was able to give the students an end of quarter assessment for report cards, which helped me in choosing who to work with for these lessons. 

For my first lesson, I plan to work with two students who are in the more beginning stages of developing phonological awareness. These two students are still learning their alphabet letters and also struggle with their letter sounds (based on discussion with mentor teacher as well as assessments given). Because of this, I thought these two students would benefit from an activity and mini-lesson that would focus on phoneme-letter matching. 

The second lesson will be planned for two students who are further along in their development, and will focus on segmenting and blending sounds together. These two students I will be working with have demonstrated that they know their entire alphabet, as well as their letter sounds (with minor confusion at times). These students are ready to begin developing strategies to decode words, which will help them with their reading and writing development. 

Cornfield Reading Lesson Overview

In order to select students for my reading lessons I asked my mentor teacher who she would like me to work with. She told me it would be best to work with two students on their fluency, and a different two students on their comprehension. I know these areas are appropriate for my target students because my mentor teacher does literacy testing on them and knows who is struggling with what. The two students who are struggling with comprehension are not able to answer questions about the text after they read it. My mentor teacher says during comprehension activities she spends more time helping them, I have also noticed the same thing when I am in the classroom. The other two students I will be working with need more work on their fluency. My mentor teacher says they can identify words but struggle to read at a faster pace.

Tompkins Ch. 7

Chapter 7 talks about expanding student's knowledge of words. The role of a teacher provides daily opportunities for students to read books independently and listen to them read aloud. Teachers use sustained silent reading, interactive read-aloud and think-aloud techniques to improve student word knowledge. Now teachers categorize unfamiliar words intro 3 categories: basic words, academic words, and  specialized words. Word walls are a great way to divide words for student understanding. When it comes to tier 2 words, teachers use explicit instruction and a variety of word-study activities. Word maps are a great visual way to teach new words. Teachers are key in supporting students' development of word-learning strategies. What word learning strategies are, is that they are learning strategies that include using context clues, analyzing word parts, or checking a dictionary for meaning. Word play is another way for teachers to encourage students to learn new words. Unfortunately I do not have a book club novel yet, so that part of the blog I will be unable to post.