Lesson Reflections

Lesson #1
From general observations I feel confident that my students gained an idea of the characteristics of an adventure and understood what we read so far in the story. Individual students were able to respond to my questions about the fantasy and realistic elements in the story and were able to give their opinion about whether or not they would like to participate in this adventure. Many were also able to find good descriptive verbs in the text for the Good Verbs Keeper to write down. However, after a while students started suggesting every verb they could find and I had a hard time explaining why some verbs were worth noting more than others. (Ex: “plunged” was a good descriptive verb but “said” was not.)

An alternate read of this lesson came in this incident of the students suggesting every verb they could find. I believe that many students were eager to participate in whatever small way they could. The idea that some verbs are stronger or more descriptive than others may have gone over the heads of some students, but all students recognized that we were trying to identify some action words and were eager to contribute. Also, during the opening discussion about what an adventure was most students seemed to fixate on the idea that an adventure meant traveling or taking a journey, particularly traveling around the world. I had to probe farther to get responses such as “exciting” or “trying new things.” I’m guessing that they were thinking more of what people do on an adventure, not what an adventure is. Knowing this showed me what they knew already about adventures and gave me a place to start for showing them a broader picture of what an adventure is.

Many of my students are better readers and thinkers than I gave them credit for which I saw in their ability to find verbs and the chosen “Important Information Keeper’s” summary for the day. The girl I chose to do this did a very good job of picking out the most important details from each set of pages in the story. However, I don’t know yet if that skill extends to the rest of the class.

This is only the first day of reading this story and the unit as a whole. I would like to wait another day or two before taking action to re-teach any students who may need it. I need to gain a better idea of what they do and do not understand about this story first. I do plan to spend time tomorrow summarizing and reviewing ideas from today’s reading. That should help some students pick up on some of the information they might have missed.
Trying to fit a large amount of material for this unit into two weeks is requiring me to cram a lot of activities into each day. If I taught this lesson again I probably would have done the discussion about what an adventure is on one day, given students a short writing activity related to it, or done a read aloud from a different adventure story. Their attention began to wane toward the end of the lesson and I think this would not have happened if the two parts of the lesson – the adventure discussion and the reading – had been broken up into two separate days.

Lesson #2
I think that my students are getting a better idea of how summarizing works in terms of using this strategy to help them keep track of what was previously read in the story. However, many of them seem to struggle with differentiating between summarizing (or focusing on main ideas) and retelling the whole story. The student I chose as the Important Information Keeper on this day tried to retell everything and I struggled to maintain the flow of the lesson while also making sure he knew how to do his job correctly. It’s likely that other students would be likely to make the same mistake. I tried to emphasize to the whole class that summarizing meant focusing on just the most important ideas, but I’m not sure if I was clear enough.

Alternate reads: Issues with summarizing aside, I found that students were very engaged and intrigued by this story, especially the prospect of finding a whole new world at the bottom of the school lost-and-found. Throughout the reading students were raising their hands to point out things they noticed in the illustrations and asking their own questions about the story. I could tell that even the most struggling readers were engaged because at the end when we worked on filling out the “Story Steps,” students who usually seem unmotivated and unwilling to contribute were raising their hands to share what they knew about the story.

At one point in the story I asked students to look for clues in the illustrations. Students were very excited by this and wanted to keep contributing things they noticed even after I told them it was time to move on. Although I am working with third graders who are beginning to work with more challenging texts, they still respond heavily to clues in illustrations. I should use this as a tool to build on in future lessons.

I think that the idea of summarizing needs a little re-teaching so I plan to review it again during tomorrow’ s lesson. I plan to be very specific with the Important Information Keeper and make sure him/her knows exactly what to look for. My CT also suggested that I have other students in the class give oral summaries of each page in addition to the Information Keeper writing it down. That way more students can participate and this one student will have a little support if needed.
Teaching the idea of summarizing might have been more effective if I found a better way to have students interact with the Important Information Keeper. Perhaps I could have had this student provide summaries after every couple of pages instead of just at the end. This would have reinforced the process of summarizing throughout the lesson.

Lesson #3
The idea of summarizing and focusing on main ideas is starting to sink in, although many students still want to retell more details than they need. At the end of every two pages (when I remembered) I had a student give a quick summary of what was read on those pages. Some students kept their ideas focused, while others still gave more information than needed. The oral responses I gained during the “Think About the Selection” questions showed me that several of my students are capable of thinking beyond the story about possible outcomes, character motivations, and their own personal feelings about the story. Many students’ responses were a little superficial, but I can tell that they are trying to think about higher-level ideas, even if they can’t articulate their thoughts completely.

Alternate reads: I found during all of these lessons that I tend to probe students a little too much to reach a specific response that I want them to find. In some cases, students come up with their own ideas that are just as good or better than mine. Sometimes I need to run with their ideas and not worry so much about my own. This happened when I asked a question about why the characters couldn’t figure out which door they needed to take to get out of the lost-and-found. One student came up with a new idea and I praised him for it, but then I continued to explain my own as well. This point was not completely necessary for understanding the story so I probably could have let the rest of the class follow this boys’ interpretation instead of interjecting mine too.

During the MEAP we worked a lot on the strategy of looking back in the text to find the necessary information for answering comprehension questions. When I gave students the comprehension worksheet for this story I also gave them the page numbers on which they could find each answer, as a tool to help the struggling readers. I saw nearly all students actively looking back in the text for their answers and commenting on how helpful this was. Although it was not an objective for this lesson, I’m glad that my students were able to practice the skill of re-reading and searching for specific information in text.

Summarizing still needs to be practiced so I plan to build more informal summarizing into the next lessons in my unit so students will have more chances to work on it. If possible I also want to make sure I meet with students who struggle with reading to help them understand and remember what made this story an adventure. This reinforcement will help them before the final two lessons where they will be comparing and contrasting all three stories in the unit.
I realized that these lessons did not offer much opportunity for feedback from all students as individuals, with the exception of the comprehension worksheet at the end. To gain thoughts and ideas from all students and again to keep their attention, I might have assigned some of the “Think About the Selection” questions as written journal entries or discussed them in individual conferences instead of posing them to the class as a whole.