Harris Reading Lesson Overview

·       Discuss the target areas you have chosen for your lessons, and how you know your target areas are appropriate for these learners’ needs. You will need to access any assessments completed by you or your MT that help you understand the focus students’ learning needs and talk with your MT about appropriate strategies to use to support the focus students’ learning.

        Before I began planning my two reading lessons, I introduced the assignment to my mentor teacher and we discussed which students could most benefit from small-group instruction, and what aspects of reading they struggle with the most. After reviewing students' literacy assessment scores, it was clear that a select few students really seemed to struggle the most with phonemic awareness and comprehension of text. These particular students tend to struggle with comprehending text due largely in part to the difficulties they experience with concentration and attention.

Reading Lesson 1 (Phonemic Awareness): The activity that I plan to implement with my focus group is a game of Bingo, with which they are all already familiar. However, I plan to customize the game so that each box on the Bingo boards contains a distinct picture of an object, with a clear label directly beneath it. When implementing the activity, I will say a letter sound (e.g., /k/) or a letter-combination sound (e.g., /ch/), and each child will look at their board and determine whether or not any of the pictures/words on their board begin with that particular sound. If so, they will place a marker in the designated box.

Reading Lesson 2 (Comprehension): The second reading lesson that I plan to implement with my focus group is a read-aloud. The book I plan to read to the students is "Just Saving My Money" by Mercer Mayer. The book is about a boy named 'Little Critter' who wants a new skateboard, and has to earn the money on his own. The comprehension questions that I plan to ask the students include: "Who was the main character in the story?" "What other characters do we meet in the story?" "What did the main character want to buy?" "What did the main character have to do in order to get what he wanted?" and "What did the main character learn?" Such questions will allow me to gauge how well the students understood and comprehended the content of the story.

·       Read at least one of the articles listed on our course schedule to assist you in selecting an appropriate focus and instructional strategy for each lesson.

The article that I chose to read was the Briggs and Forbes article "Orientation to a New Book: More than a Picture Walk". This article guided me in selecting an appropriate focus and instructional strategy for each lesson. The article provided several examples of effective questions to pose to focus students before beginning the text, in order to get them interested in the book, and focused. Through implementing these strategies and asking the questions suggested in the text, I am confident this will help my students more easily and thoroughly comprehend the text.