Knowledge of Subject Matter
Learning Stations for Reading Strategies
Rationale
"Accomplished teachers of students with exceptional needs command a core body of knowledge in the disciplines and draw on that knowledge to establish curricular gaols, design instruction, facilitate student learning, and assess student progress." (NBPTS)
Half of my professional development hours are earned in reading methods. During one school year I taught reading for high school students using the Wilson Reading System. Another year I used the Barton Reading and Spelling System. This year, for English grade nine, my co-teacher and I are focused on reading comprehension strategies. Early in the year we gave direct instruction in think-aloud processes to improve our students' reading comprehension. At the end of the year we will compare results on curriculum based assessments to evaluate our students' reading comprehension. The lesson plan for the first day of comprehension strategies follows.
Learning Stations for Reading Strategies
Lesson Plan
Lesson Plan – Station
Subject: English Grade 9
Teachers: Deborah Kerwood, Heather Wolfe
Learning Objective: (from Ohio Content Standard Benchmarks)
*Use appropriate self-monitoring strategies for comprehension
*Apply reading comprehension strategies to understand grade-appropriate texts *Demonstrate comprehension of print and electronic text.
Purpose: To demonstrate and practice the skills necessary for comprehending text, for example stopping to review, think-aloud, re-read; to identify and practice reading strategies for comprehension.
Anticipatory Set: Brief KWL discussion of reading strategies. “What are good readers thinking about when they read something that is tough to understand?” Close this set by telling the students about the old television program “Lost in Space,” and mimic the robot that swung its arms and said, “Danger, Will Robinson, danger!”
Teacher: Ms. Kerwood
Procedures:
1. Desks are prearranged creating 3 groups. Students sit where they wish.
2. Give students instruction for the lesson as follows:
Group #1 With a sticky note pad and color pencils make a set of three danger sign shapes like the ones on the highway--a stop sign, a yield triangle, and a construction sign, all with no words.
Group #2 Follow the instruction of Ms. Kerwood
Group #3 Follow the instruction of Ms. Wolfe
Teacher: Ms Wolfe
3. (Group #2) Teacher holds up her sticky note (created in advance) that is a stop sign. Then explains the danger of not remembering what has just been read. Instruct the students to follow as the teacher models using the story “The Cask of Amontillado.” After each two paragraphs, put the sticky note stop sign on the page to mark the place and jot down a phrase on yield sign sticky note that says what just happened. Replace the stop sign with the brief summary note and repeat for the next two paragraphs.
Teacher: Ms Kerwood
3. (Group #3) Teacher holds up her sticky note of a construction sign (it shows a man digging with a shovel—no words are on it) The teacher models and the students follow. Each time the action changes in the story stop to draw quick stick figures to show what just happened. Explain the concept of making a mental movie while reading.
Every 10 minutes rotate groups.
Reflection
Ms. Wolfe and I are continuing a nine-week emphasis on reading comprehension with this lesson. The basic idea for this lesson is in the students’ literature book, but we made it more appealing by using stations. There are ten danger signs in all. We will demonstrate some of the others tomorrow while reading aloud for the whole group.
Tomorrow’s lesson is planned as team-teaching style. I will read aloud and Ms. Wolfe will interrupt me to “think-aloud” and place her danger signs on the text using the document reader. We will continue this demonstration for the entire story. We chose “The Cask of Amontillado” purposely because Poe’s writing is archaic in style and filled with unfamiliar vocabulary. This way, the students who ordinarily have no trouble with reading comprehension were challenged and needed to make use of the danger sign strategies as well.
Also, the station for making the danger signs gave the kinesthetic learners, who we tend to overlook, an opportunity to be active in the lesson. I was concerned in advance that this station would become too noisy, but the ten-minute deadline kept the students on task.
We have a timer in the classroom that we use frequently for journaling and other writing tasks. I think the timer served as an important component of station teaching, because it signaled to the students to get up and change groups quickly. Also, it kept me on task when reading, explaining and modeling. It kept me from rambling on a bit as I can do sometimes. I did not honestly think that 10 minutes per group would be sufficient, but the timing was adequate. We will use station teaching again, especially with this group of students who tend to follow directions and cooperate very well.
Reflection
We are nearing the end of the 2009-2010 school year with this group of ninth graders. I look forward to end-of-the-year assessment results to measure our students' progress in reading comprehension. To reinforce the use of reading skills, we assigned a differentiated book report for each nine-weeks period. The students have read novels of their choice (with teacher and parent approval), and they have completed online summaries of their books, online conversations with their classmates about the books, and a variety of artifacts around the theme of their books. Some of the projects are, for example, make a movie trailer for the book, create a cartoon strip about the book, rewrite a key event in the book in play form, and many more.
On Monday we will begin Romeo and Juliet which will be followed by poetry, so the students have been exposed to a wide range of reading experiences with varied opportunities to demonstrate comprehension. It is my general feeling the we will see improvement in the scores. And most important, I know that some have been infected with the joy of reading.
We are nearing the end of the 2009-2010 school year with this group of ninth graders. I look forward to end-of-the-year assessment results to measure our students' progress in reading comprehension. To reinforce the use of reading skills, we assigned a differentiated book report for each nine-weeks period. The students have read novels of their choice (with teacher and parent approval), and they have completed online summaries of their books, online conversations with their classmates about the books, and a variety of artifacts around the theme of their books. Some of the projects are, for example, make a movie trailer for the book, create a cartoon strip about the book, rewrite a key event in the book in play form, and many more.
On Monday we will begin Romeo and Juliet which will be followed by poetry, so the students have been exposed to a wide range of reading experiences with varied opportunities to demonstrate comprehension. It is my general feeling the we will see improvement in the scores. And most important, I know that some have been infected with the joy of reading.