Rosa Kleinman

Reflection on Observation (3/30/17)

Topic: Reading (Readers use everything they know to solve tricky words)

My students have been working hard at learning and applying a variety of

decoding strategies in Reading Workshop since the beginning of the school year. At this
point, we are working with the students to help them persevere in decoding difficult
words and encouraging them to try a variety of strategies--perhaps two, or three--
instead of giving up on a difficult word.
I taught this lesson according to the Teachers College Reading and Writing
Program curriculum, which we use for reading and writing in our classroom. An
essential part of a TC reading or writing lesson is a Post It that includes the strategy
which is usually the teaching point of a single lesson. Strategies are grouped by reading
and writing units on a poster that is available for students to use during the lesson, and
refer to afterwards at any point in that unit. After I modeled the strategy and taught it to
students, I would have liked to have sat with the strategy for a while and leave it up
during the independent portion of the reading workshop for students to refer to.
Something else that I would have done differently would be having the students bring
their books to the rug and giving them a chance to practice the strategy of trying
multiple strategies, and then share with a friend what they did. That would give me an
additional chance to assess whether or not students were able to apply the teaching
point, as well as give them a chance to practice it with me before doing it alone if they
were unsure of what they were supposed to do.
During the independent portion of the lesson, I gathered a small group of
students to do guided reading, a level B book about different members of family, which
is a first grade Social Studies topic. However, to make this portion of the lesson more
accessible to my students, I would like to have shown my students pictures of families
to help them understand who Mom, Dad, Grandma, Grandpa, etc., are. I would also do
short running records on each student as they read to assess their areas of growth and
strengths, which would inform further instruction. Something else that I noticed was that
my students were reading through the book only once, but I would like to encourage
them to read their books (all books, not just guided reading books) many times over, to
help practice reading words correctly and also to smooth out their reading voices.