Jenn's Mini-Lesson Plan and Reflection

Reading/Writing Mini-Lesson Plan

Mini-Lesson Topic: Finding the Problem and Solution in a text

Instructional Objective (performance, criteria, conditions): Students will demonstrate their understanding of how to find the problem and solution in a text by finding and recording at least two problems and solutions from their assigned portion of James and the Giant Peach during the time in which they are reading independently.

Materials needed: Class set of James in the Giant Peach, sheet of paper to create anchor chart, worksheet to record problem and solutions

Connection	In the past several weeks… you have spent some time working on finding and recording the problems and solutions you come across while you are reading a text. Today, I’m going to teach you… some specific strategies that will help you to know that you have found a problem or a solution while you are reading a text.
Teach Mentor Text: James and the Giant Peach Anchor chart: Student generated list of the different ways that a reader could know that a problem has been stated, or that a solution has been described in the text that they are reading.	Today, I’m going to show you how…you will know that you have found a problem or a solution while reading. Using…James and the Giant Peach, a text that the majority of you are familiar with, I am going to read a few paragraphs out loud and I want you to listen quietly for a problem or solution. If you hear a problem or a solution I want you to remain quiet and simply give me a thumbs up. We are going to record all of the problems and solutions that we find, and then create a chart that will help us to know whether or not we have found a problem and solution in our future reading.
Active Engagement (Turn and talk to partner, then share with the group)	Now it’s your turn to try…I am going to give each one of you a different portion of James and the Giant Peach to read. I want you each to record all of the problems and solutions that you encounter while reading. After 5 minutes, everyone is going to share the problems and solutions that they found while reading with their elbow buddy, and then share what they found with the group as a whole.
Link	Today, I taught you how to…know that you have found a problem or a solution in a text that you are reading. When you read independently today and every time that you read in the future, you’re going to…stop and think about what you have read and determine whether you found any problems or solutions. You can either think about the problems and solutions in your head, or record the problems and solutions you come across on a sheet of paper.
Independent reading time -Book Box time	Students to Conference with: During the time in which students are reading from their book box, I will ask any student who didn’t contribute much during the mini lesson to read to me and share any problems or solutions that they encountered. Possible future teaching points: One possible teaching point for the future may include discussing what to do when more than one solution is discussed in a text. Students may know that they have read several solutions, but they may need help determining what the actual solution is in some cases. Another possible teaching point may include working on helping students to include problems and solutions in their own writing. Adding problems and solutions to their own writing will help to make their writing more exciting.
Sharing	Students to share: Each student will share the problems and solutions that they found while reading their assigned portion of James and the Giant Peach with the whole group following their sharing with their elbow buddy. During independent reading time, or book box time students can share the problems and solutions that they found when I ask them to read to me. They can also share the problems and solutions they found by recording them on a piece of paper and letting me see their piece of paper. Focus: The focus of the sharing is for me to see that the students know when they have found a problem or a solution in a text. I can also see whether the students found the chart we created helpful in finding the problems and solutions in a text or not. (If the chart was helpful, I may ask my CT to post a copy on a wall in the classroom). The student’s sharing will help me to determine what I should focus on in teaching them about finding the problems and solutions in a text in the future.

Reflection:

Teaching my mini-lesson showed me that teaching students how to find the problem and solution in a text is an extremely difficult task. My CT has been working on helping her student’s master this skill for the majority of the time since the students have returned from Christmas break, as this skill is something that the students will need to do on a certain assessment they have in 4^th grade. I just didn’t realize how difficult it is to teach, nor how difficult it is for students to understand how to find the problems and solutions in a text until carrying out my mini lesson. Teaching my lesson was very frustrating because it was obvious to me that the students did not learn anything from the ‘teach’ part of my lesson.

My CT set up three different stations during the time that I taught my lesson, at one station my CT did grammar with the students, at another the students did a visualization mini-lesson with Miss Kusler, and then students worked on finding the problems and solutions in ‘James and the Giant Peach’ with me. Therefore, I taught my mini-lesson three different times to three different groups of students. I used ‘James and the Giant Peach’ for my mini-lesson because the students were familiar with this text from having read it last semester. I felt confident in the beginning of the first time around of teaching my mini-lesson, because when I asked the students what problems and solutions were they provided good answers that showed me that they understood the terms. I then began reading a few pages of ‘James and the Giant Peach’ out loud and asking the students to raise their hand if they heard a problem or a solution. I think that one, maybe two people from each group of 6-8 students that I taught my mini lesson to actually raised their hand and recognized a correct problem or solution while I was reading. Then, I asked the students to read a select number of pages of the book on their own and record the problems and solutions they found. After the first group went through this step I knew it was not a good lesson. The students either didn’t find any problems or solutions at all, or they wrote down things that were not problems or solutions. I tried to change what I did for the second group and spend more time reading and finding problems and solutions together, but that didn’t really seem to help either.

I think that it is very difficult to teach students to really know what things are considered problems and solutions in a text and also to teach them to find them on their own. However, it is an important thing for students to be able to do. I know from the student work that I have that the students didn’t gain anything from my lesson, but I can think of several ways that I could improve my lesson. I think that one of the things that could have improved the lesson was not using a chapter book like ‘James and the Giant Peach,’ rather using a picture book instead because the large amount of text made it boring for the students and a book with less texts wouldn’t be so unbearable to read and search for problems and solutions. Another thing I could have done was spent more time with instruction on what exactly a problem or solution is and different strategies for finding a problem or solution. The students let me know that they understand the terms problem and solution from when I asked them at the beginning of the mini lesson, they just proved that they didn’t really understand what things were considered a problem or solution in the text. I will continue to think and search for other ideas on how to teach this concept to students, so I can have more successful lessons on finding the problems and solutions in a text in the future.

Heather's Mini Lesson Plan and Reflection

Lesson Plan

Reading/Writing Mini-Lesson Template

Mini-Lesson Topic: Fluency: Reading with Prosody

Instructional Objective: Students will be able to read a passage from Charlotte’s Web, and will show understanding and correct reading of frequency words and prosody, by reading the passage out loud. 

Materials needed: Copy of Charlotte’s Web, copies of various passages from the book

Connection	Yesterday we learned about… Quotation marks and their meaning. When an author uses quotation marks in their writing, it means that a person is speaking. Today, I’m going to teach you about/how to… Read out loud, using vocal cues for different speakers and how to use punctuation marks to read sentences differently. I am also going to teach you that the word dialogue means when people speak, which is shown with a sentence surrounded by quotation marks.
Teach Mentor Text: Charlotte’s Web Anchor Chart: Show an example of a dialogue sentence, such as: The boy said, “I want some ice cream.”	Today, I’m going to show you how… To read out loud and be able to show, with your voice, how to read dialogue, dialogue between two characters, and narration in a book. Using… Quotation marks and punctuation as your cues.
Active Engagement Turn and talk to partner	Now it’s your turn to try… Reading with correct prosody. I will have students work with a partner, and they will practice reading passages from Charlotte’s Web, using the techniques that we discussed together. I will expect to hear students speaking with various intonation and pitch to their voice, to model different character’s voices.
Link	Today, I taught you how to… Read using prosody and intonation while reading dialogue in a book. I also taught you that dialogue is when a character speaks in a book, and how you can find that during your reading. When you go off to read today and every time you read, you’re going to… Read using different voices for each character, and the narration in the book. You will also know when each character stops talking and when the narration takes over.
Independent reading time (Individual Assessment)	Students to conference with: Craig, Anthony, Domingo, Charleston, Vinnie, Da’Chi, Zoe, Quincy, Neveah, Erika Possible future teaching points: Students will be given time to read to themselves out loud and I will be sitting by each student, listening to them read out loud. I will try to read a sentence or two while the students are reading to me so that they can be reminded what correct prosody should sound like.
Sharing (Individual)	Students to share: I will ask all 10 students that I am working with to read a few sentences out loud to the group. When a student is sharing, I will ask the rest of the group to  listen and give them their full attention while they are reading. Focus: My focus here will be to have each student listen to each other’s reading and practice correct reading techniques themselves.

Reflection:

When I taught my mini lesson, my CT wanted me to take a group of students out into the hallway, instead of teaching to the whole class. When I picked my students, I selected a few low, middle and high reading level students so that I could get a diverse group of learners. The reason I chose fluency and prosody as my focus was because I found that when I read with my students independently, many of them did not recognize speaking and quotations while they read out loud to me.

When I began the lesson, I had the students sit in a circle, on the floor, so that everyone could see and hear each other. I began by telling them that we were going to practice reading with quotations, since they had been learning about quotation marks the past few days. I asked the group if anyone could tell me what quotation marks meant, and two students explained to me that they show you when people talk, which was a good start to my lesson. From there, I read a few sentences of Charlotte's Web out loud, but I asked my students to pay close attention to my reading because they were going to tell me which group of sentences sounded better. I read the first group of sentences with incorrect or no prosody and read the second group of sentences with prosody. When I was finished reading, the students told me that the second group of sentences sounded better, and I asked them why it sounded better. One student told me that when I was "using voices, you could tell when people were talking," and another student told me that it "made him listen to me more."

From there, I passed out copies of pages from Charlotte's Web and we practiced, as a group, reading out loud with prosody. During this time, I noticed that a few of my lower level readers had a hard time concentrating on prosody because they were unfamiliar with most of the words that we were reading, so they were reading behind the rest of the group. I decided that we would read the same two sentences a couple of times so that everyone was able to become familiar with the words. I found that the rest of my students caught on to reading with correct prosody after the second or third time that we read the sentence.

After we read these a few times, I allowed my students to partner up or read independently so that they could practice reading with prosody themselves. I found that my lower level readers chose to partner up and my higher level readers chose to read independently. I thought that this was great because my lower level readers were able to help each other with sounding out unfamiliar words and read together. As I listened to each group, I found that they were doing pretty well. At first it took some students a few tries before they were reading correctly, but I did not really have to help anyone during this independent reading time.

I gave the students 7 minutes to read to themselves, and then stopped them so that they could share what they had learned. I asked the group if they wanted to read out loud by themselves to the rest of the group (to see if everyone was comfortable with it) and all of the students said that they would feel comfortable reading out loud. I began by reading few sentences, and we went around the circle and I asked each student to read three or four sentences, whichever they were comfortable with. It was great to see the students reading, and reading with correct prosody! I think that all of the students enjoyed listening to each other read, which was great because they normally do not get the chance to read to each other. Overall, I think that my mini lesson went very well, but if I could change one major thing, I would have liked to teach this to the entire class, instead of a group, so that all of the students could benefit from this lesson. If I had more time, I probably could have taken other groups of students out into the classroom and taught the same lesson, to accomodate my CT.

Vocabulary

In my placement, vocabulary isn't really directly used.  In previous placements, I've seen some of the Dolch sight words posted throughout the classroom, and the majority of students in that classroom know most of the words.  In my placement for TE 301, my CT had the Dolch words posted throughout the classroom, and each week, she focused on a specific 6 words that the students learned and identified with through writing them down, learning their meaning, and learning how to use them in a sentence.  In my placement now, the only words posted throughout the room are a few words on the chalkboard on the back of the room, and they're referenced when students ask how to spell words during writing time.  Another time when students use words is when they are learning their spelling words each week, however, my CT simply posts the words on the whiteboard until the test the following week.

I think that vocabulary is essential to students' learning, and posting the Dolch words throughout the classroom in my previous placement was definitely beneficial to the students.  Many students struggle with reading and reading comprehension in my placement classroom now, and being able to identify with sight words and their meaning may help their reading and reading comprehension abilities.  Throughout reading time, students in my placement consistently point to words in their books and ask my CT what they are.  Instead of asking them to sound it out, or providing them with a meaning, she simply tells them the word.  I think that providing students with a meaning or helping them to sound it out would help them retain the word for whenever they see it again, which is why I disagree with simply telling the students the word when they point to it in their book.

Vocabulary needs to be better integrated into my CT's curriculum, especially because I don't think students in my placement classroom would know how to respond to "What does _______ mean?" or "What is the definition of _______?"  Even if it's something as simple as posting Dolch words throughout the classroom, implementing a few words a week into the students' vocabulary, or telling the students the meaning of the words when they ask what a word is while reading a book, expanding students' vocabulary would be possible with a few easy changes throughout spelling, reading, and writing time.

Implementing vocabulary throughout subjects that aren't related to literacy is also beneficial.  Even in math class, where vocabulary doesn't seem relevant, defining words that students may not know in the directions at the top of the worksheet or a word that is within a story problem that may be unfamiliar builds vocabulary as well.   I think that small implementations of vocabulary into my CT's curriculum will be extremely beneficial to the students throughout all subjects.