Joel's Reading Lesson Overview

Reading Lesson Overview

I have asked my CT if I could work with students that needed a little extra help. She identified “R” and “C” as students that could benefit from extra instruction. The units that the basal reader we are working with right now are focusing on a couple of different comprehension tasks.

I have two main ways of knowing that these two students are struggling with comprehension. The first was mentioned above. My CT has much more intimate knowledge of these students than I do and she identified them for me. She has mentioned that she has a hard time getting them to share ideas about passages with her. The second tool that she has used throughout the year is a DIBELS assessment that she has to use with them that is called a progress monitoring booklet. She is to ask them to read a short item of varying genres for her. The students are timed for one minute. The test then scores how many words they read and how many facts they can recall from the item read. She let me administer two of these tests to the students so I could get a feel for how they worked.

“C” read the stories to me at an appropriate rate (121 words and 118 words respectively) and even though it is not scored I noted that his prosody was pretty good throughout the reading. However the scoring rubric asks that they recall at least five facts from the reading. “C” mentioned five, but he really struggled with getting them and the first was just the title of the article. For example in the first reading he said “This is about pulleys.” and in the second he said “This is about plants.” This didn’t show great depth of understanding to me because the reading was really about how plants obtain their food.

“R” had a slightly different experience. His reading rate was a little slow (91 and 100 words respectively.) I noticed in his reading one of the things the CT mentioned to me earlier in the year. “R” is in speech class to help with a stuttering problem. He definitely took his time in reading the passage and sometimes had to start over. I sensed that this was probably compensation for the stuttering. “R” had even more trouble recalling what he read after. He mentioned three facts from each reading, but couldn’t give more. The test instructs that the teacher ask if they remember anything else, but says to stop and not give clues if they say they can’t.

There is one final thing I have noticed with “R” that will be important to my understanding of him. I have noticed and talked with my CT several times over the course of the year that some students don’t seem to see value in the work they are doing. They don’t seem to want to put effort into it as a result. “R” is probably the student that exemplifies this most in my classroom. My CT has been teaching for a long time and I have gained great respect for her, but she doesn’t seem to have a good answer to this problem. She has tried connecting with him and he doesn’t seem to take any more interest. I find it interesting that he told me his plans are to attend MSU when he graduates. When I asked why he said he wants to play football. I wonder how we encourage students to follow their dreams and yet crush them with realistic expectations at the same time. I have seen “R” in gym class and as a trained professional coach I think it would be a stretch for him to make a career out of sports. As a teacher I would probably try to build on that love, but I’ve seen evidence of that in my class and he doesn’t seem to want to explore other subjects any more because of it.