Chern Reflection 1

Reading Lesson 1 Reflection

            I was surprised to see how engaged the students were. They enjoyed reading, sharing their personal experiences, and making comments about the text or illustrations. Because the girl is shyer, I expected her to be reluctant to participate in reading and in the discussion questions. Instead, she was active and eager to share her thoughts, while the other student was sometimes distracted by other surrounding items, like teachers and students who were just passing by, and noises from other classrooms. They seemed to have achieved the learning goal, however, because they were starting to understand the concept about prosody, which they were never really introduced to.

           

I think the choral reading could have been improved. Once they started reading, I noticed that the student with higher reading level could read more quickly and with speed, while the other student is slower with reading vocabulary words and speed. It is not that he struggles with accuracy and speed, but because he was under pressure when another student reads faster. Even though I told them to read it together with expression, they still could not read in unison. I did not think that this would be an issue before, because it was my first time implementing a lesson with more than one student with choral reading.

            One strength of my lesson though, is that the students now have a pretty good understanding of what prosody is. I questioned their background knowledge of reading with expression with examples. Then, I asked specific questions about punctuation marks and text features, and gave corresponding examples for them to demonstrate expression. With different opportunities to practice and understand prosody, they were able to read the book with expression pretty well without little assistance.  

            I learned that even though the lesson may not proceed as I originally planned, I should always keep in mind that achieving the goal and objective is the key. There were many unplanned incidents that occurred during my lesson, like having one of my students get pulled out for a reading assessment and having two different reading speeds during choral reading. However, these should not become the obstacle that prevent them from reaching the learning goal.