Reading Lesson Reflection #1

Lesson Reflection #1

While doing this lesson, I realize I haven’t thought of the reactions that the students would have towards a traditional children’s book that they are well familiar with. As I was trying to read the story to them as I originally planed, the students were trying to guess the next line that I was going to read and they keep on telling me what is going to happen and I couldn’t let them focus on me. I pointed out the words that I want them to read and ask them to sound it out for me, for some reason they sounded every word correctly. Then I couldn’t make sure if they have guessed it all right according to the illustrations or they really do have the phonemic awareness to help them did the job right. I asked each of them to explain to me, most of the time they just repeated the word and didn’t know what is important to state in their explanation. They were more worried than the correctness of the words they have sounded out than the process of how did they sounded out. I realize I didn’t do a good job at modeling and then I modeled again when it come to the word sticks, so I sounded every letter out phonemically and then combine the sounds together to sound the word out. I thought the students have been doing tasks like this for a long while this semester so I didn’t focus on the modeling part, but I think no matter what they have been doing in their classroom, when teaching a new lesson, teachers have to model as specific, as detailed as possible for students, epically for students at a young age to understand what the teacher is looking for and how are they going to perform or what are they expected to produce. After I modeled again and scaffold the students while they are trying to sound the words out letter by letter, they did a better job and they seems to be focused more at the letters than the content of the story that they are familiar with. They even tried to read the story with me. I really think teachers should point to the words when reading to the students in small groups, I feel half of the reason why they followed me and actually tried to read along with me is because I pointed at every word while I was reading. Although this seems is such a small thing, but I think this do help keep the students focus and engage them in the process of reading. During this part, I also think I should give students the time to look at the pictures while I am reading and after I am reading, give them the chance to retell the story even though the lesson is not about retelling could help them focus and engage too. I think as an adult reader I do not realize how illustrations help students while they are reading and trying to make sense of the words. I think as we, teachers trying to focus on teaching one strategy to students to read, it is helpful to appreciate and cooperate the students’ own learning styles and strategies to our lessons to help them learn in a efficient way. I do admit the clapping hand activity is a little hard for students to manage. I feel when giving instructions, because English is not my native language, I have difficulties to give clear instructions to get what I want from the students. I went through the book with the students together but end up being I always clap my hand before they do. Sometimes they get it but it was really hard to keep them engaging to the story, they were really excited about getting a chance to clap their hands. There are way too many words that have the sound of “s” in there and they lost focus on the six important words we were learning. However, the result came out good. I asked them to read the words in the word bank that is on the back of the book, and with pictures on top of the words, they read them out fluently. The part went really well was that they can actually sound the letters out to spell the word phonetically for the six words in the word bank. It is in my expectation that when trying to read or find the word I have read and wanted them to find was a little challenging, but since we have practiced with the six words for a long time, and they already got a grasp of those words, they did a very good job. In this lesson, I think I really learned that while planning a lesson, I should focus on the students’ reaction more. Figuring out and planning what I am supposed to do or to say is of course very important, but more importantly in order to make sure the students would be engaged and learning effectively, while planning a lesson, students’ possible reactions should definitely be considered.