Comprehension 1

Comprehension Reflection Shannon Camden James Madison University

READ 436 Dr. Sullivan April 15, 2014

Comprehension 2 A comprehension lesson was conducted as a whole group with my fourth grade practicum class. The main comprehension strategy addressed in this lesson was summarizing a text by sequencing main events in a story. I was able to pick between two books to read aloud for this lesson, which included, Horton Hears a Who, and The Butter Battle Book, both by Dr. Seuss. I chose to do this comprehension lesson with Horton Hears Who. My cooperating teacher had already been over all of the comprehension strategies she needed to emphasize this year, so she handed me a comprehension list of SOLs matched with the CAF menu and told me to choose a strategy to reteach. For this lesson, I chose summarizing a text which included sequencing the main events of a story. When planning this lesson, I used a pre-reading, during reading and postreading strategy to help keep the students actively engaged and to think as I read. In regards to the pre-reading strategy, I provided the students with a story words worksheet to set a purpose for reading. This set a purpose for reading, because it actively engaged them by having them make predictions about the story. This strategy also helped me activate prior knowledge, because some students knew exactly what the story was by looking at the story words worksheet, whereas others did not. For the during reading strategy, I told the students to make sure they were paying close attention to the main events that were happening in the story, because at the end of the read aloud, they would be doing an activity involving sequencing and summarizing events. This strategy helped keep the students actively engaged because in order to do this activity, they would have had to think as I read the story.

Comprehension 3 For this lesson, I actually used two post-reading activities to integrate new information with what the students already knew. Before implementing this lesson, I wanted to do something fun and something that the students have not experienced before; therefore, I used a beach ball to help the students develop the ability to understand the story better. With a black permanent marker, I wrote the following questions on every color of the beach ball: Who are the main characters? What is the setting? What happened in the beginning? What happened in the middle? How did the story end? What was our favorite part? After I read Horton Hear a Who aloud to the class, I threw the beach ball to a student and had them answer one of the questions. I did this until each question was answered thoroughly. The students seemed to enjoy this activity. The beach ball activity set the students up to do a sequencing worksheet I provided. This worksheet was similar to a plot organizer. Both the beach ball activity and the sequencing worksheet were new ideas presented to the class. By providing the students with new options, the students are able to apply this new knowledge with prior knowledge by choosing the strategy that will work best for them with future texts. Meanwhile, the students seemed to like each section of the lesson. Many students already knew what the story was going to be just by looking at the story words worksheet; however, others we able to predict their own story. The during activity where the students were told to pay attention to the main events of the story was not a very explicit activity, but the students seemed to be paying

Comprehension 4 attention, because most of them did really well on the sequencing worksheet. As stated before, the students absolutely loved the beach ball activity, because it was new and exciting. If I were to change this lesson or make adaptations to this lesson, I would definitely change some of the words on the story words worksheet. Many of the students were able to predict the story I was going to read, because I included the word YOPP on the worksheet, which gave it away. Also, one of my students in the classroom is an ELL student, and he never participates in class. Next time, I would maybe pass the beach ball to him first to see if he understands the story at all. The only assessment I had for him was his sequencing worksheet, which told me that he did not understand the events of the story very well. In that case, I think it is important to follow-up with this student by going over the worksheet together. In order to incorporate comprehension instruction into my own classroom, I think it is very important to include pre-reading activities in order to set a purpose for reading. Pre-reading activities are also useful in assessing students. For example, an anticipation guide can tell you what the student already knows or does not know. I will also include during-reading strategies to keep the students engaged in the text being read and post-reading strategies in order to integrate new information with prior knowledge. These strategies will ultimately set my classroom up for successful comprehenders. When grouping students to do comprehension activities, I will groups students that are on the same instructional reading level, because the readability level of a text is important for being able to comprehend. To implement comprehension in my classroom I like the idea of introducing a new comprehension

Comprehension 5 strategy during circle time, having them read their instructional level reader book at their seat while implementing that strategy, and then doing a fun center that relates to that specific strategy.