Lesson Four

 Objectives:

1. Good readers are able to sort words into their proper categories based on blends and hoe the consonants influence the vowel.
2. Good readers are able to answer text dependent questions based on a reading passage.
3. Good readers are able to retell what they have read and determine what the main events in the text are.

Procedures:

1. We will start our day on a different task. We will be working on a close reading passage about magic. I will have the student read through the passage one time and answer a few questions that come directly out of the reading. I will then have the student read the text a second time and answer questions on how the text works. We then will read the passage one more time and I will have the student answer questions that evaluate the text and use the integration of knowledge and ideas.
2. Once we are finished with the close reading we will move on to a different word sort. We will be focusing an r-blend/r-influenced sort. I will have the student sort the words on his own based on how he feels they should be. We then will discuss his ideas and why he sorted them the way he did. I will then go through the sorts with him and explain why they belong in each category. When we have finished we will do a few activities based on that sort. (speed sort and blind sort)
3. Should we have time at the end of the day I will have the student continue on chapter 4 of our Dragon of the Red Dawn book. After he finished I will have him map the main events of the chapter and have him retell what has happened so far in the book.

Reflection of student:

Jason (pseudonym) was a fan of mixing up our routine from the normal just reading of the same book. Although the text I chose for our close read was a little higher than he was used to he seemed very interested in the text and started asking questions right away based on what we were reading. When I asked him the text dependent questions he didn't hesitate to answer right away. He does a very good job of locating answers that come directly from the text. When we went back to reread the text for our next set of questions he started to paraphrase and almost skim through the passage. He did this again for the third time and I could tell he did not fully understand why we were reading the passage multiple times. When we got to a little more of higher order thinking and questioning he did need more scaffolding when we answered the questions. I had him go through and circle words or phrases that told him that the boy in the story did not really think that magic was real. He circled all of the questions that the boy asked but could not tell me that they were all questions when I asked how each one of the phrases were related to the others. It took a little bit of extra questioning from me to finally get him to understand that when the boy continued to question the magic tricks this meant that he did not fully believe that it was real.
When we moved onto the word sort he got to work right away. Although his first sort was not completely correct he was able to sort one column correctly without any guidance. As we worked on the other two columns I had to remind him a lot to really focus on the sound the i made in each column and to take him time when sorting them out. After only a few times that we went through he caught on to the sounds not just the way the words looked and was able to sort them correctly. By the end of our time together we were only able to do one speed sort and he was able to get them sorted correctly in 1 minute 1 second.

Reflection on teacher:

After going over the close reading with Jason I noted that I still needed practice with the concept. I failed to explain to him what the purpose of us reading the passage multiple times was and it may have been due to me not fully understanding why either. The next time I do a close reading with the student I will make sure that we go over the objectives completely and we both fully understand the procedures and why we are doing the close reading. I chose a passage that I felt would not only be challenging but would be interesting for the student. He did an awesome job answering questions directly related to the text but when we tried higher order thinking I switched what questions I was going to ask him. This may have caused confusion for both of us. I was able to start a pretty good discussion between the two of us based on a question that involved looking in to the text and determining the answer based on how the text works. The third set of questions I gave to him were pretty straight forward and I wish I was able to create some better responses from the student.
When we were focusing on our word sort I felt as though we were rushed. Next time I work with the student I want to spend more time with the sort so that he feels comfortable with the words prior to us trying to do s speed sort. I felt as though he didn't fully understand how the i sound was working in the words and we should have spent more time on them rather than just jump into activities right away.
Overall Jason did a great job cooperating and ready to work hard. He seemed really interested in getting the words correct and determined to get them sorted into the correct categories that best he could.