Hannah Reflection 2

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

I noticed that both of my students met my reading lesson objectives at different rates.  Chad was more successful throughout the activities than Jake.  Throughout every activity of the lesson Chad was able to demonstrate one-to-one correspondence.  No matter what form the sentences were presented in he was able to point to each word as we read them aloud together.  The only two words that Chad struggled with were “into” and “a.”  When these mistakes were made I went back over the sentences with Chad helping him point to these words as they were read aloud.  The second time these words occurred in the text Chad was able to correctly point to the words as they were read.  In contrast, Jake was only able to demonstrate one-to-one correspondence when they words were presented on different note cards or in different colors.  When we were reading the text from the book aloud together he was not able to point to each word.  Instead I worked with him, pointing to each word simultaneously.  If I was to work with Jake for more reading lessons I would print out copies of the pages and highlight each word with a different color.  Once he had experienced one-to-one correspondence in this presentation multiple times I would want to move on to highlighting every other word.  Hopefully this would give Jake experience pointing to each word in regular text font.  Then the teacher could work with him with text words that are all black.  Both students were able to use picture frames to find words within sentences on a page in the book.  Chad was able to meet my objective during every activity while Jake was only able to meet the lesson objective during curtain activities.

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

My lesson had strengths and weaknesses.  One strength was that the students liked the book I had selected and were interested in reading it along with me.  Both Chad and Jake wanted to demonstrate one-to-one correspondence so that we could continue reading and find out what happened in the story.  Another strength of my lesson was the number of activities I was able to include that incorporated one-to-one word correspondence.  The students were able to practice this skill in multiple forms and see that it doesn’t matter what form the sentences are displayed in there are always made up of words.  The size of the reading group was also a strength.  I was able to focus on the learning needs of the two students.  There wasn’t a large group of students I was trying to monitor throughout the entire lesson.  Therefore, I was able to recognize that Chad missed the words “into” and “a.”  Then I was able to take the time to model how to point to these words as they were read.  In addition, I was still able to monitor Chad, who was very successful throughout the lesson, while providing more support to Jake.  If I had taught the lesson to a large group I would not have been able to address Jake’s learning needs and offer as much help as I did.  A weakness of my lesson was that I was able to not modify Jake’s book on the spot to meet his needs.  If I had used a printed out version of the book and had highlighters on hand I could have quickly highlighted each word in a different color.  This modification would have helped Jake demonstrate one-to-one word correspondence throughout the reading of the book.     

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

I noticed that I was able to successfully monitor both students throughout the lesson.  Even while I was helping Jake point to each word I still was aware enough of Chad to notice his mistake while point to each word.  Then I was able to see him point correctly to the words “into” and “a” after I modeled how to point to these words as they were read aloud.  If the mini reading lesson group had been larger this would have been more difficult to do successfully.  I would have missed many of the one-to-one correspondence each student exhibited.  I also noticed that if I was not able to monitor both students simultaneously I made sure that each student got a chance to demonstrate their activity to me.  I made sure that was able to see how each student completed the activities.  I also noticed that I was able to successfully choose a book that would allow students to meet my lesson objectives but also keep them interested.  Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak is liked by many students but also had simple sentences on each page.  There weren’t lines and lines of text in which students could lose their place easily.