Bailey Reading Lesson Overview

Reading Lesson Overview: Write a brief description of 2 or more focus students (using pseudonyms) you want to work with for your reading lessons, and be as specific as possible in describing their learning needs:

I have chosen to work with Sarah and Luke (pseudonyms for confidentiality purposes).  The main reason I chose to work with these two students is because I have seen them work well together and I know they will be willing to work with me on reading strategies.  They both enjoy reading and share with me about what they have recently read and what other books they would like to read.  My MT told me that it would be easier to work with them also because they are high achievers in both language arts and math.  That is why we have planned for me to pull the students out during math time. 

I do not know too much about their past reading experiences because I work with my MT’s reading group, which is considered one of the lower level reading groups, while these two students are in a different teachers classroom with the higher level group.  I have gone into their class only a couple times to observe what the higher level reading group works on.   I have seen Sarah and Luke work together to do fluency tests and find how many words per minute they can read, so I know they are comfortable working together and reading aloud to each other.  I have also seen them choose books to read in the library to help give me better ideas of their interests.

I chose to use the book So You Want to be President by Judith St. George and illustrated by David Small to use during both lessons.  The first lesson we will be focusing on how to use word-learning strategies and the next lesson we will practice how to use a story map.  I chose this book because in their reading group, the students read short biographies and had to make a little pamphlet about each person they read about.  Sarah and Luke enjoyed this assignment and told me what they had learned about a couple of the past presidents, and other significant people in U.S. history.  This book will provide words that they do not know the meaning of and can make a graphic organizer for, so that is one reason we will focus on word-learning strategies and story mapping.

Both these students need help with understanding the words they may have heard before, but do not know what they mean.  Once, they learn the word meanings they will be able to comprehend the ideas in the story.  This will make it easier for them to fill out a graphic organizer that asks for the book title, author, and four main ideas and details of the book. This will give them more practice in comprehending the story, by retelling/writing what the main ideas are in the book.