Anna Kingsbury

ENG 308-04
Second Lesson Plan

Date of Lesson:
This lesson took place over two sessions, on March 21st and the 28th, 2016
Target Learner:
My tutees name is Kierstyn. Kierstyn is in 5th grade and she is an
imaginative, energetic, talkative, and unique young lady. From what I have
gathered from working with her, she has 5 siblings and her parents are no
longer together. She does not speak a second language, and does not see
herself as a very strong reader. Kierstyn often has trouble focusing, both in
my sessions with her and when I have observed her in the classroom, and is
reading slightly below her grade level. She is a child that needs lots of breaks
and freedom of movement when she is learning, otherwise she becomes
frustrated and disengaged. Shes expressed to me a love of drawing, playing
outside, and reading fiction books.
Location:
Kierstyn and I have been doing our tutoring sessions in the resource
room down the hall. This is a full classroom that another teacher uses to
assist children, either one on one or in small groups, who are struggling in
specific areas. This room is much quieter than the classroom or the hallway,
and has plenty of tables and chairs where we can sit to do our work. There
are also giant bean bag chairs in which Kierstyn likes to sit, since they are
much more fun and comfortable than the chairs and she can move and
fidget more freely.
Canopy Goals:

When questioned about the text, Kierstyn often has difficultly

remember what she read whether it was a few days ago or 5 minutes ago. I
believe this might be due to her trouble focusing. Kierstyn had also
mentioned to me that she thought that she reads choppy, so it was our
goal to help her work on reading more smoothly has we worked together.
Therefore, the main canopy goal for Kierstyn was to help her comprehension
skills in recalling what she had read (both overall and in the smaller details).
The second goal is to encourage her to read more smoothly and consistently.
These objectives are both cognitive in nature.
Literary Choices:
Both of my guided read and read aloud were taken from a book titled Poetry
Speaks to Children edited by Elise Paschen and published by Sourcebooks,
Inc. 2005. (ISBN: 1-4022-0329-2).

The guided read is The Tale of Custard the Dragon by Ogden Nash (it
is only an excerpt). This poem is about a pet dragon named Custard

who is very cowardly, despite his frightful appearance.

The read aloud is Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll, which is a very fun
poem full of nonsense words about the hunt of a great and terrible
beast called the Jabberwock.

Lesson:
1. First session: The Tale of Custard the Dragon, guided read.
I plan to have Kierstyn read this poem to me, as it is well within her
reading level. After we read the story, Ill have her draw a picture of the main
character (Custard) and maybe some of the side characters. I will encourage
Kierstyn to use examples and details straight from the text to aid in her
drawings, and we will keep a list of characteristics of Custard the dragon by
her drawing. The goal in doing this is to help Kierstyn remember what she
read by taking time to actively reflect on the reading by drawing a picture
about it, and by going back into the text to retrieve details.

Possible questions to ask: What do you think Custard looks like? What
evidence do you have to support that? What do you think his personality is
like? What does the poem tell you about Custard? Can you find any quotes to
support your drawing?
2. Second session: Jabberwocky, read aloud.
I choose this poem for my read aloud as it has many nonsense words
that Kierstyn may get hung up on if she tried to read them herself, but
thought that she might be entertained and engaged with during a read
aloud. I plan on conducting the first part of this lesson much like the first
session. I will read the poem to Kierstyn, and then ask her to draw the
Jabberwock based upon details from the story, listing these details and
characteristics next to her drawing. To take this lesson one step further in
regards to her comprehension, I plan on asking Kierstyn to work with me to
compare/contrast the main characters from each of the stories: Custard and
the Jabberwock. In doing this, the goal is to have Kierstyn not only recall
each story that she read, but to look back at them and remember the
specific details about the characters whom she is comparing. This will allow
her to think deeper about the characters, and perhaps compare stories that
she might not have found similarities in otherwise.
Possible questions to ask: What kind of creature do you think the
Jabberwock is? Why do you think that? What are some physical
characteristics you see the Jabberwock having? Are there details in the text
to support your thinking? Can you find any direct quotes that would help
you? What are some differences between the Jabberwock and Custard? What
are some similarities? Lets look back at the stories to help us.
Reasoning:
I thought that poetry would be the most beneficial for Kierstyn when
working on her canopy goals: remembering what she read and reading more
smoothly. Poetry flows much better than a lot of regular stories and books. It

usually consists of words that rhyme or flow, and it has syllable schemes that
can often make the poem sound almost like a song. I thought this may help
Kierstyn with her choppy reading, and therefore give her more confidence
as a reader (I dont really find her reading as halting as she does, but I
thought this may be part of the reason why she does not see herself as a
good reader and so I decided to assist her with it).
I also chose poetry because it is shorter than the chapter books that
she had been reading in class, and even the shorter picture books that we
had read together. I thought that these types of works might help Kierstyn to
focus through the entirely of the work, and that she may therefore be more
inclined to remember the details of the story.
Also, as Kierstyn had also told me about how much she loves to draw, I
centered our lesson on doing just that. Instead of asking Kierstyn recall
questions about the work, I wanted to have her draw pictures of the main
characters and describe what they were like, using details and examples
from the work itself. I thought that this may keep Kierstyn more engaged and
that the freedom of expression through drawing would serve to let her
creativity and restlessness out.
Reflection:
I thought that this lesson worked very well for Kierstyn and really spoke
to her interests and strengths to help her along as a reader. During the first
session, Kierstyn was enthusiastic about reading the poem. I noticed that
while she was reading it, the rhyme scheme and sing-song melody of it really
helped her to smooth out her reading that she considers to be choppy. She
was absolutely delighted about this when I pointed that out to her, and I
think that it gave her a lot of confidence in her reading. Kierstyn was even
more excited that I suggested that we drew a picture of Custard the dragon
(although she had me draw him after she was unhappy with her first
attempts). I encouraged her to find details in the text of the story to support

what Custard looked like, which we wrote down next to his picture. After we
were done with this, I asked Kierstyn to describe to me what she thought
Custard the dragons personality would be like, and why. She told me that
she thought that he was very shy, and cowardly and even mentioned that
he was described as a coward in the text! I believe that drawing the main
character based upon how he was described helped to formulate a better
picture of Custard in her mind, and in doing so allowed her to remember the
story more clearly. She was so excited about this type of work that we even
drew some of the other characters in the story and wrote words to describe
their personality.
During the second session, I began by telling her that we were
continuing on with the same type of activity with a different poem, and asked
her if she could remember what we read about last time. Kierstyn
remembered very quickly that we read about Custard the dragon, and
remembered some of his general characteristics. This was already a great
improvement from the norm because there was a week in between our two
sessions (longer than usual due to an absence of hers), and she normally
says I dont know when I asked her about what we read the last time.
Kierstyn then flipped back to her drawing in her notebook that we made last
time to assist her memory and tell me more about what Custard was like. I
then told her that we would be reading a new poem about another kind of
fantasy creature, and would be comparing it to the dragon that we read
about last time. She actually said Oh thats a good idea! That will be fun!.
So I read Jabberwocky to her and Kierstyns immediate reaction was to
laugh at all the nonsense words (she has such a silly personality). When we
moved on to drawing the Jabberwock, she had a more difficult time because
it never says what type of creature it is exactly. She decided that it would be
a dragon, like Custard. She then filled it in with details from the story such
as it having eyes of flame. She took this literally, and drew fire in the
Jabberwocks eyes. However, when I asked her what she thought that meant,

she responded that it probably meant that either the Jabberwock could burn
people by looking at them, or that he was just really evil. We proceeded with
adding describing words next to the picture of the Jabberwock, as well as
other details from the story (she also decided to name the Jabberwock
Edger).
When Kierstyn and I were finished with that, I then suggested that we
do a Venn diagram to compare Custard with the Jabberwock (she wanted to
pick different colors to write the words in their bubbles, evil colors and shy
colors she is so visual!). Kierstyn had no problem coming up with details
from each story that made these two creatures different the Jabberwock
was evil and mean and scary, Custard was shy and cowardly and unpopular.
She got stuck when she came to the overlap: their similarities. The only thing
she could come up with at first was that they were both dragons, but we
looked back at our pictures and the poems and after further prompting she
came up with more similarities; mostly about their appearances (they both
had claws and sharp teeth).
This lesson served to assist Kierstyn in her work on recall from the
stories. I found that drawing pictures to describe the characters, interpreting
the personality/characteristics of them based on details, and comparing
Custard and the Jabberwock was very beneficial in doing so. In addition,
reading poetry really helped to keep Kierstyn engaged, and she found a new
confidence in her reading abilities when she realized that she didnt sound as
choppy when reading it. Kierstyn told me that she really enjoyed this
activity and the stories, and was very excited when I asked to take pictures
of our work to show my professor!