Reflections on and Analysis of Teaching the Lesson
I taught my lesson first and it went smoothly, especially since it was my first time teaching this material and I had not observed someone else doing the lesson. I began my lesson by establishing the norms and writing “Respect” and “Magic 6” on the board. This was to make the expectation clear that the same rules and consequences will apply in this lesson as they do in our 103 kindergarten classroom. We have been discussing throughout the year what respect means and what it looks like. For many of the students, this is their first time in a classroom setting and interacting with so many children their age. Learning to work with others is an important skill in kindergarten that translates to the rest of their lives. The “Magic 6” is my teacher’s way of classroom management (peanut butter bottoms, pretzel legs, peanut butter hands, seeing eyes, thinking brain, and listening ears), and it works!
I framed the lesson by asking who has heard of rhymes and encouraging the students to share with the group what rhymes are. I defined rhymes as words that have similar ending sounds, then followed by a read aloud of Shel Silverstein’s “Sick.” Even though the main purpose of this read-aloud was to listen for rhymes, the element of reading aloud serves many roles in any balanced literacy program or lesson. The reading of this Shel Silverstein poem specifically modeled fluency, developed a sense of story, involved children in reading for enjoyment, increased vocabulary, and created a community through shared knowledge (Fountas & Pinnel, 1996). The poem tells of a boy who goes through all the reasons he is sick so he cannot go to school. Once he realizes it is Saturday, he decides he feels fine and wants to go out to play. I was concerned this poem was going to be too long and over their heads, but this was one of the few times every individual in the small group was quiet and paying attention – they even clapped at the conclusion of the reading. A read aloud exposes students to “texts that are beyond the students’ ability to read independently, thus introducing more complex situations, sentence structure, concepts, and vocabulary” (Weaver, 2002, p. 232). A brief discussion followed by asking what they heard. When I designed this lesson, I wanted to include a read aloud because of how multi-purposeful they can be.
This allowed me to transition into my introduction about rhyming words and rhyming families. We went over two word families together and created one as a group. (See YouTube video below.) Eventually, each child had a turn at the white board to create their own word family in front of the group. This modeled the gradual release of responsibility – I do, we do, you do.
The body of my lesson was supported by the element in a balanced literacy program of Special Attention to Letters and Words and How They Work (Fountas & Pinnel, 1996). By going through words individually and breaking them down on the large white board for all to see, students were able to both hear and see how letters and sounds are manipulated to make words.
Interactive writing was a huge part of this lesson because there was a high level of teacher support and guided group writing of a large-print list. The large-print list helps children become familiar with letter forms and learn to use the visual aspect of print. This level of writing allows all children to participate in composing and constructing words (Fountas & Pinnel, 1996).
The purpose of the activity at the end was to see who mastered some level of the concept of rhymes. To succeed in this game, students needed to hear their word and find another picture that another student had that rhymed with their word. We did three rounds of this game. The first time, I said the words for them so they could hear it; the second time, they said the word to me and then went to find their partner; the third time, they did not speak and had to work together to find their partner or group of three. This gradually got more challenging because, by the end, the students could not hear the sound out loud. They had to say it in their head or to themselves. This also factored in group-work and helping each other as my role lessened as the activity proceeded.
This lesson took place the day before Thanksgiving break at 9:30 AM in the library, where all my small-group lessons were held. I ended with a much shorter read aloud of a poem about a turkey named Chummy who was yummy and ended up in my tummy! For this poem, I presented it more as shared reading because I had it visually hanging up for all to see. When I read it aloud, I displayed large enough for all to see. As I read the text, I “pointed to each word to encourage the children to chime in whenever they can” (Weaver, 2002, p. 233). This text was appropriate, engaging, and a nice way to sum up our lesson while also recognizing the excitement of the approaching holiday break.
Because my lesson was videotaped, I was able to review the video and record the individual time I spent with each child at the board and pass that information along to my partner who would teach the same lesson the following week. (See lesson breakdown below.) I was interested to see how my timing and pacing worked out, because when originally planning our lesson, we had to estimate how long each child would need at the board. Analyzing the timing breakdown of the lesson, I was pleasantly surprised I had estimated accurately. I planned for two to three minutes each for a total of thirteen minutes. I ended up spending slightly longer but it worked out, because I was not rushed at the end and I did not need much time for the closing activity.
Overall, the students seemed to grasp the concept of rhymes but some found it challenging to create their own. The actual numbers and timing confirm an immediate reaction of mine. I had a word chosen in my mind specifically for each child. Although I did not know who was going to come up next, I knew the word I was going to give them based on what I perceived their skills to be and what I thought would doable for them, but challenging. I felt Morena’s word was too easy for her, and the fact that she was only at the board for three minutes and produced as many rhymes as she did, confirms that. I gave her the word “play,” thinking the consonant pair “pl” would be discussed or seen as a challenge, but it was not.
The steps to my lesson went according to plan but it took longer because one particular student was acting out. He was disruptive and distracting and required personal attention in order to keep the group managed. According to a manual called “Winning Children Over,” which was given out by the Seminar teachers, this student, Khalee, seems to demonstrate that his goal is to get attention when he misbehaves (Walton & Powers, 2009). I got through everything I wanted, but it felt like I was struggling at times. As my lesson unfolded, I had to “uninvite” Khalee from the rug, a classroom norm that I wish I did not have to do, but I gave him two verbal warnings, and “uninviting” him was the next step if I wanted to be consistent with the teachers in Room 103.
As my lesson unfolded, I made some improvised decisions that I was not planning but felt appropriate when implementing the lesson. For example, after creating a rhyme family with the independent student at the board, I had all the students clap out all the words in the family as a way to hear and put all the words together. I did not think of that beforehand or have it in my lesson plan, but I realized I needed to come up with a way to wrap up each student’s turn at the white board.
As previously mentioned, I unfortunately had to “uninvite” one of the students from the carpet during the literacy lesson. I felt very disconnected from the other students because I was constantly thinking and trying to bring this one student back. But I knew it was going to be difficult with this particular student in the lesson based on the morning he was having. The group was randomly chosen weeks prior and Marna and I decided each kindergarten child was going to have an opportunity to be in a small group. With thirty students in the class and Marna and I each teaching three small-group lessons, it worked out to be five students per group exactly. I was going to make a last minute switch because he was having a particularly “off” morning but my teacher told me to take him (I think she wanted him out of the classroom!). I also realized that next year I am not going to be able to choose students for specific lessons when I have my own classroom, so I should practice. From the beginning, Khalee was calling out despite several reminders to “let his hand do the talking first.” An idea came to me that I would try to bring him back and hope he would feel proud and want to be part of the group. (See YouTube video below.) I worked his name into one of the word families that I share with the group during the introduction and modeled what I was going to do with each student individually. It worked for about three minutes.
Also, at one point, the two boys in the lesson went to the bathroom. In a different situation, I would have asked them to wait until after the lesson, but I also got nervous about the possibility of them having an accident because I would not let them go to the bathroom. There is one boy in the class who chronically wets his pants and I think this plays a role in my caution about asking a child to wait. Because I did not want to move on to the next person before these two came back, I asked Savannah, whose turn it was at the board, to pick from a list of words one that does not belong. I had just done a rhyming family for “cold” with her, so I put “mold, sold, see, cold” on the board and she was able to tell me “see” does not belong because “it does not have the same ending.”
Something I had thought about but did not prepare or put in my plan for anticipated student responses was students giving a word that makes sense when sounding out, but does not fit the family. For example, in our group word family I gave them _ee. Morena gave the letter C in order to spell key. I understand why she thought this was how to spell it, but I did not know if I should address it, leave it on the board, or overlook it. (See YouTube video below.) I handled it interestingly, but know there is a better way. I should have written it on the side and had a one-minute discussion and moved on. Along the same lines, Savannah had the word “cold” and one of the words she gave me to rhyme was “lold.” I thought about this for a second and decided to write it on the board because even if it is not be a word in Webster’s Dictionary, it showed she understood rhymes, which was the purpose of this lesson.
I am satisfied with the evidence of learning I saw. There is always room for improvement, but I think this was a good first literacy lesson, and the students were overall engaged and learned something new, except for the one who may have been too busy acting for the camera and talking out. Students learned and practiced rhymes, which are a part of benchmark testing in kindergarten and other data-collecting tests. Students also practiced working together in that final group activity, and articulating their thoughts about the identities of each group.
I framed the lesson by asking who has heard of rhymes and encouraging the students to share with the group what rhymes are. I defined rhymes as words that have similar ending sounds, then followed by a read aloud of Shel Silverstein’s “Sick.” Even though the main purpose of this read-aloud was to listen for rhymes, the element of reading aloud serves many roles in any balanced literacy program or lesson. The reading of this Shel Silverstein poem specifically modeled fluency, developed a sense of story, involved children in reading for enjoyment, increased vocabulary, and created a community through shared knowledge (Fountas & Pinnel, 1996). The poem tells of a boy who goes through all the reasons he is sick so he cannot go to school. Once he realizes it is Saturday, he decides he feels fine and wants to go out to play. I was concerned this poem was going to be too long and over their heads, but this was one of the few times every individual in the small group was quiet and paying attention – they even clapped at the conclusion of the reading. A read aloud exposes students to “texts that are beyond the students’ ability to read independently, thus introducing more complex situations, sentence structure, concepts, and vocabulary” (Weaver, 2002, p. 232). A brief discussion followed by asking what they heard. When I designed this lesson, I wanted to include a read aloud because of how multi-purposeful they can be.
This allowed me to transition into my introduction about rhyming words and rhyming families. We went over two word families together and created one as a group. (See YouTube video below.) Eventually, each child had a turn at the white board to create their own word family in front of the group. This modeled the gradual release of responsibility – I do, we do, you do.
The body of my lesson was supported by the element in a balanced literacy program of Special Attention to Letters and Words and How They Work (Fountas & Pinnel, 1996). By going through words individually and breaking them down on the large white board for all to see, students were able to both hear and see how letters and sounds are manipulated to make words.
Interactive writing was a huge part of this lesson because there was a high level of teacher support and guided group writing of a large-print list. The large-print list helps children become familiar with letter forms and learn to use the visual aspect of print. This level of writing allows all children to participate in composing and constructing words (Fountas & Pinnel, 1996).
The purpose of the activity at the end was to see who mastered some level of the concept of rhymes. To succeed in this game, students needed to hear their word and find another picture that another student had that rhymed with their word. We did three rounds of this game. The first time, I said the words for them so they could hear it; the second time, they said the word to me and then went to find their partner; the third time, they did not speak and had to work together to find their partner or group of three. This gradually got more challenging because, by the end, the students could not hear the sound out loud. They had to say it in their head or to themselves. This also factored in group-work and helping each other as my role lessened as the activity proceeded.
This lesson took place the day before Thanksgiving break at 9:30 AM in the library, where all my small-group lessons were held. I ended with a much shorter read aloud of a poem about a turkey named Chummy who was yummy and ended up in my tummy! For this poem, I presented it more as shared reading because I had it visually hanging up for all to see. When I read it aloud, I displayed large enough for all to see. As I read the text, I “pointed to each word to encourage the children to chime in whenever they can” (Weaver, 2002, p. 233). This text was appropriate, engaging, and a nice way to sum up our lesson while also recognizing the excitement of the approaching holiday break.
Because my lesson was videotaped, I was able to review the video and record the individual time I spent with each child at the board and pass that information along to my partner who would teach the same lesson the following week. (See lesson breakdown below.) I was interested to see how my timing and pacing worked out, because when originally planning our lesson, we had to estimate how long each child would need at the board. Analyzing the timing breakdown of the lesson, I was pleasantly surprised I had estimated accurately. I planned for two to three minutes each for a total of thirteen minutes. I ended up spending slightly longer but it worked out, because I was not rushed at the end and I did not need much time for the closing activity.
Overall, the students seemed to grasp the concept of rhymes but some found it challenging to create their own. The actual numbers and timing confirm an immediate reaction of mine. I had a word chosen in my mind specifically for each child. Although I did not know who was going to come up next, I knew the word I was going to give them based on what I perceived their skills to be and what I thought would doable for them, but challenging. I felt Morena’s word was too easy for her, and the fact that she was only at the board for three minutes and produced as many rhymes as she did, confirms that. I gave her the word “play,” thinking the consonant pair “pl” would be discussed or seen as a challenge, but it was not.
The steps to my lesson went according to plan but it took longer because one particular student was acting out. He was disruptive and distracting and required personal attention in order to keep the group managed. According to a manual called “Winning Children Over,” which was given out by the Seminar teachers, this student, Khalee, seems to demonstrate that his goal is to get attention when he misbehaves (Walton & Powers, 2009). I got through everything I wanted, but it felt like I was struggling at times. As my lesson unfolded, I had to “uninvite” Khalee from the rug, a classroom norm that I wish I did not have to do, but I gave him two verbal warnings, and “uninviting” him was the next step if I wanted to be consistent with the teachers in Room 103.
As my lesson unfolded, I made some improvised decisions that I was not planning but felt appropriate when implementing the lesson. For example, after creating a rhyme family with the independent student at the board, I had all the students clap out all the words in the family as a way to hear and put all the words together. I did not think of that beforehand or have it in my lesson plan, but I realized I needed to come up with a way to wrap up each student’s turn at the white board.
As previously mentioned, I unfortunately had to “uninvite” one of the students from the carpet during the literacy lesson. I felt very disconnected from the other students because I was constantly thinking and trying to bring this one student back. But I knew it was going to be difficult with this particular student in the lesson based on the morning he was having. The group was randomly chosen weeks prior and Marna and I decided each kindergarten child was going to have an opportunity to be in a small group. With thirty students in the class and Marna and I each teaching three small-group lessons, it worked out to be five students per group exactly. I was going to make a last minute switch because he was having a particularly “off” morning but my teacher told me to take him (I think she wanted him out of the classroom!). I also realized that next year I am not going to be able to choose students for specific lessons when I have my own classroom, so I should practice. From the beginning, Khalee was calling out despite several reminders to “let his hand do the talking first.” An idea came to me that I would try to bring him back and hope he would feel proud and want to be part of the group. (See YouTube video below.) I worked his name into one of the word families that I share with the group during the introduction and modeled what I was going to do with each student individually. It worked for about three minutes.
Also, at one point, the two boys in the lesson went to the bathroom. In a different situation, I would have asked them to wait until after the lesson, but I also got nervous about the possibility of them having an accident because I would not let them go to the bathroom. There is one boy in the class who chronically wets his pants and I think this plays a role in my caution about asking a child to wait. Because I did not want to move on to the next person before these two came back, I asked Savannah, whose turn it was at the board, to pick from a list of words one that does not belong. I had just done a rhyming family for “cold” with her, so I put “mold, sold, see, cold” on the board and she was able to tell me “see” does not belong because “it does not have the same ending.”
Something I had thought about but did not prepare or put in my plan for anticipated student responses was students giving a word that makes sense when sounding out, but does not fit the family. For example, in our group word family I gave them _ee. Morena gave the letter C in order to spell key. I understand why she thought this was how to spell it, but I did not know if I should address it, leave it on the board, or overlook it. (See YouTube video below.) I handled it interestingly, but know there is a better way. I should have written it on the side and had a one-minute discussion and moved on. Along the same lines, Savannah had the word “cold” and one of the words she gave me to rhyme was “lold.” I thought about this for a second and decided to write it on the board because even if it is not be a word in Webster’s Dictionary, it showed she understood rhymes, which was the purpose of this lesson.
I am satisfied with the evidence of learning I saw. There is always room for improvement, but I think this was a good first literacy lesson, and the students were overall engaged and learned something new, except for the one who may have been too busy acting for the camera and talking out. Students learned and practiced rhymes, which are a part of benchmark testing in kindergarten and other data-collecting tests. Students also practiced working together in that final group activity, and articulating their thoughts about the identities of each group.