Final Lesson

Title of Lesson: Froggy Read-aloud              Subject Area:  Literacy                    

Projected Lesson Length:   35 min            Grade Level:         First Grade             

Instructor: Katie Forand          Date(s) of Lesson: November 30, 2012                 

School:  Bakersfield Elem. School    Cooperating/Host Teacher: Mrs. G      

Description of Class and Classroom Climate:

     The classroom and school have a very strong sense of community in them. The school has about 160 students and the first grade class has ten students, four girls and six boys. The school is home to many low-income families and there are a great deal of students who receive free or reduced hot lunch. The children love being read to and really enjoy doing fun activities. It is a small class, that is sort of chatty, but that doesn’t stop them from getting their work done. They pretty much all seem to enjoy reading much more than any other subject.

Theoretical or Research Grounding:

Miller, D. (2002). Reading with meaning. Markham,

 Ontario: Pembroke Publishers Limited.
This lesson really goes along with many of the ideas from Debbie Miller’s Reading with Meaning. The lesson is essentially about proficient reading skills, which are really focused on in the book. Also, many of the ideas of discussing reading and having the children respond to reading is an idea that Miller uses a lot. The Froggy book allows students to make text-to-self and text-to-world connections about their experiences at doctors’ offices and overall thoughts about doctors in general. The whole Miller book really has to do with having a lesson based off a book and I really tried to use as many of these ideas as possible.

Guiding Question:
How can we use Froggy to connect to our lives and what we are learning?

Standards:
RF.1.1.
Content-Reading: Print Concepts: Skill- Recognize the distinguishing features of a sentence (e.g., first word, capitalization, ending punctuation)
This standard will be addressed while we are reading the book – looking at different sentences to see how they are formed and why they are formed that way. Also, I will be checking that they have the ideas of what a sentence needs to have when they write their journal entry. We will go over some of the main ideas of sentence structure before they start writing to remind them, but they should know most of it already. I will be looking for it and assessing it in their writing.
RL.1.1.
Content-Reading: Key Ideas and Details Skill- A. Ask and answer questions about key details in a text B. Describe characters, settings, and major events in a story, using key details
 This standard is the main point of the lesson. While reading, I will ask the students questions about what is going on in the story and their predictions. After the reading, we will discuss what happened, who the characters are, and where it took place. The students will also be given the opportunity to ask questions about the reading. They will then go to write about the story, either writing about what happened, their favorite character or how and why they connect to the story.

Content Learning Objective(s):
Know: The students will know more about how to respond to readings thoughtfully and how they are able to analyze information that is not directly given to them from a book.
Understand: The students will have a better understanding of what makes a good sentence, what the main idea, characters and setting of a book are. They will understand that these are things that are in every book and will understand how to get these ideas when reading on their own.
Do: Hopefully, they will pay more attention to these main ideas and look for them in every book that they read. Also, they should be able to form sentences that have all of the important features.

Procedure:
Anticipatory Set/Hook: I will begin the lesson by asking the students if any of them have ever gone to the doctor and what that experience was like for them. Once we discuss this for a few minutes, I will begin reading “Froggy goes to the doctor”.
Instructional Procedure: I will read the book aloud, stopping to ask questions and predictions as I read. After reading the book, we will discuss what happened in the book, who the characters were and where it took place. I will write the ideas on the smart board. After this, the students will go to write in their journals. They will either write what happened in the book, who their favorite character was, or about an experience that they had at the doctors.
Closure: To wrap up the lesson, I will have some of the students share what they wrote and we will discuss it. This will let the students see how the others think and can get ideas from each other.

Assessment Plan:
To assess the students I will use a checklist as well as notes on each. This will contain how they are able to understand the main ideas, characters and setting, as well as how well they are able use the correct sentence structure in their writing. This will be assessed based on their writing and my observations during the lesson.

Universal Instructional Considerations:
Multiple Means of Representation: I will be reading the book aloud, but after I will also allow the students to look through it if they need to. This may be necessary for some students to fully process the story. Also, even though we will be talking about the main ideas and characters, I will also write the student’s ideas on the board so they can reference them as needed.
Multiple Means of Expression: The students are being given an option of what they would like to write about, and even though they are all writing tasks, the three choices are all very different. This allows a student to use the prompt that they feel fits them best and that they can best express.
Multiple Means of Engagement: The students will have different options to be engaged in the lesson. I will be reading them a story, so they may really enjoy that. If not, they may like discussing the story and their own connections with it. Also they will get the chance to write something that they chose, from the open ended topics.

Differentiation Considerations:
The students in the class won’t need many adaptations for this particular lesson. I feel they will all be able to get the ideas from hearing the book and the discussion. However, there is one student who is still having a very difficult time writing. In this case, she would be able to write her thoughts down, but she wouldn’t be able to be assessed like everyone else, at least not on the sentence structure part. She is still working on basic spelling skills and the sentence formatting is not something she has even really started working with yet. However, she knows what she is writing, so I will have her read what she wrote to me or another adult and we can just transcribe it. She will still be able to be assessed on the topics that they should be able to get from the reading and discussion. This is the only adaptation that really needs to be made.

Resources/Materials:
Book – Froggy goes to the Doctor London, J. (2002). Froggy goes to the doctor. New York, NY: Scholastic Inc.
ISBN: 0-439-56226-0
Smart board
Writing Paper
Pencils

Support Considerations:
I will have the other adults walking around and helping the students writing. They will be able to help them with spelling or just making sure they are on task. One will probably be with a specific student for most of the time at least, so that she can help transcribe what she is writing.

Review:
Overview: The lesson seemed to go pretty much as I planned it. The students were interested in the book, they found it funny, like I had thought they would. Also, they were able to answer questions about the book and ask questions. One of the characters in the book, named Dr. Mugwort, was meant to be a toad, but I didn’t tell the students this nor did I think that they would pick up on this. One of the questions that a student asked me was “Was Dr. Mugwort supposed to be a toad?” I asked him why he thought she might be a toad, and his response was that she was brown and ugly, but looked a little like Froggy, so she had to be a toad. He was absolutely right about her being a toad; I just didn’t think that was one of the questions that would be asked. The students went a little off topic with the journal writes, some of them wrote about why they liked the book, instead of what the book was about, but it still worked for them doing the response that I wanted, and they still thought about the book and what was going on in it. I think that the students did what I wanted them to do with the book, they got the ideas that they needed. I did feel that some of the topics should have been discussed a little more, but I didn’t have time for it. I would have liked to have had the students discuss the main ideas of the book as a class, but they all seemed to get it so I think that it worked out alright. Next time I did a lesson like this, I would make sure that I left enough time to discuss the information as a class a little more than I did. I included the text-to-text by using the Froggy book. I asked the students if they had ever read a Froggy book before, which some of them had and recognized the characters, making a text-to-text connection. Also, we discussed their own experience at a doctor’s office, making a text-to-self connection. We made a text-to-world connection when we made overall generalizations about the students going to the doctors and what happens at the doctors, in general. The students did really well with this lesson.
Analysis: The lesson was implemented in the way I expected it to be. My assessment was also done in the way I thought. The assessment was very informal; I evaluated their work as well as kept a checklist based on what I observed in the classroom. I think pretty much all the students got the ideas I wanted them to and they did very well with the lesson. They just did the work that I asked and did not complain, like I thought some of them would. Overall, I feel that the lesson went very well.
Reflection: I think this lesson helped me to understand how to use a book to teach students important ideas. The students really liked hearing the book and they enjoyed the journal writing, which they usually don’t. Also, I will be sure to try to read entertaining books, like this one was for the children. They talked about the book all afternoon, so they really did enjoy it and get a lot out of it. I’ve always heard that books are the best way to teach skills, but until this lesson I never truly understood why. I will definitely use books as often as possible to teach lessons, because the students really enjoyed it.