Reading Lessons

Kate, Henry, and Jimmy are the focus students I chose to work with for my two small reading lessons.  From observing in my classroom and talking with my mentor teacher, I concluded that each of these students would benefit from working in a small group.  For example, Kate is shy and often times very quiet during class discussion.  She rarely raises her hand to answer questions and only talks to the classmates that sit around her.  Next, I have noticed that Henry lacks confidence when asked to complete written work.  He often questions himself and worries too much if he is correct or not.  Sometimes he will not turn in work just because he is nervous to fail an assignment.  Jimmy has a brother in the classroom that I often see him competing with.  They share typical brotherly behavior such as competing to get higher grades, playing football the best at recess, and even racing to the lunchroom.  Competition is necessarily a bad thing, but I have seen Jimmy become discouraged when his brother “beats” him at something.  These students could all benefit from working with me with a smaller group of students.  I think Kate will be able to open up more and share her ideas aloud to her classmates, Henry will gain confidence by having me help if need be, and Jimmy will be pulled away from his brother.    

My mentor teacher also helped me determine the topic of both my small reading lessons.  We decided that it would be most beneficial for these students to work on text structures in expository texts and stick with the same topic over the span of two short lessons.  Previously, students have been learning about text features in informational texts such as bold and italic words and headings.  These particular students were struggling with identifying these features in different expository texts, so I thought that text structures and cue words would make them more comfortable with informational texts all together.  During these two lessons, students will be looking at different passages of each type of text, highlighting different cue words, writing their own passages, and filling out graphic organizers.  At the end of my lessons students will be able to pick out key words and phrases that will help them identify the different text structures (description, sequence, comparison, problem/solution, and cause/effect) of expository texts.