Grade: third

Date: 10/29

Goal(s): To have the students practice vocabulary words.

Objective(s): The students will lay a game to learn vocabulary words.

Standards/Benchmarks: Applying phonics and structural analysis to decode words (FMS topics)

Materials: folder games, cards with vocabulary words and directions, game pieces, number cubes. 

Introduction: introduce the vocabulary words from the reader’s theater.  Two Geese on the Loose pointing out the vocabulary words (terrify, drowsy, grumble, possibility, possum, and rehearsal). Explain and demonstrate the game.

Practice: The students will play the vocabulary game in groups of four.  The game requires students to define the words, use them in the sentence, and illustrate them.

Accommodations: Teacher will play with low students, or adjust the vocabulary to fewer words or different words.  High level learners may be required to spell the words.

Assessment: The teacher will watch and monitor the groups as they play.

Closure: At the end of the time given to play, recognize the winners with a pencil or certificate.

The game: create a generic game board on a manila folder so that there are spaces along a path that leads from a beginning to an end.  Divide the path into squares that are alternately colored four different colors and corresponding letters (red and “A”, green and “B” etc.).  Create cards that direct the player to define the word if they land on the green square, use the word in a sentence if landing on the red square, illustrate the word if land on the blue square, and spell the word if on the yellow square. The first player rolls the number cube moves that many spaces and then follows the directions on the card, the other players together judge whether it is right, if not then the student must move back to where they started.  The winner is the first to finish the game.

 

            I visited a fourth grade class that was learning about poetry. It was an introductory lesson.  The teacher conducted the lesson as a whole class.

            The students and teacher turned to the poetry section in their textbooks.  The teacher asked them what they knew about poetry and received several answers such as, it talks about feelings, it rhymes, and it is about nature. Next, the teacher directed the students to look at the poem on the first page, to read the title and look at the illustrations.  The name of the poem was “Grandma Song,” they were to guess by the title and illustrations what they thought the poem was about. After receiving several guesses, the teacher read the poem to them and then asked if there were any rhyming words, which there were, and so they spent some time identifying the rhymes.  Next, they spoke about the message of the poem and made some personal connections.

            This pattern was repeated three more times for three different style poems. Although students read the poem instead of the teacher, and they talked about how poems don’t necessarily have to rhyme.

            Most of the class responded and participated pretty well, but there were students on the fringes of the classroom that just didn’t participate.  I couldn’t help but think it would have been better to have the small group guided reading lessons with the teacher, or in the very least, have the students do some of the reading with each other in their small groups. 

            Another example of a reading lesson I observed was in a fourth grade class.  There are three teachers at this school who have combined efforts to help students learn better.  One teacher has the top readers, the second has the middle readers and the third teacher, mine, had the lower readers.  There were twelve students, eleven boys and one girl (I found that interesting). This teacher was also working with the class as a whole, they were continuing a lesson from the day before about indentifying the main idea. 

            The teacher would call on a student who would read from the workbook a set of related sentences and then together the class would decide what the main idea was, and then write it in the workbook.  There was some good participation from the group but even among all of these students who had been identified as the bottom readers, there was a gap between them.  There were students who had caught on quickly and would have liked to move on, and there were others who weren’t even paying attention and had to be reminded to stay on task.  I think is would have been so much more effective for the teacher to have split the class into three or four groups and worked more closely with one group while the others read independently or did other language arts work.  I was frustrated with those students who were being held back by the others who clearly needed more help.  I am just being sold on small group work more and more. 

            I worry about figuring out the organization and teaching students how to work in small groups while the teacher works with a group, but I sure think it is worth trying.  I also feel that it maybe becomes more critical as students get older, because it seems to me that the gap widens between those who are excelling and progressing and those who still need quite a bit of help.  It was just an eye opener to me to see that even among the bottom third of a group of students, there could be such a wide gap in attention span, interest, and ability.