Poltonavage

Chloe Poltonavage

EDUC 341

Professor Smolleck

Lesson Reflection

April 4, 2018

100th Day of School – Alliteration Style

As the 100th day of school came rather quickly in Ms. Rohrbach’s classroom, it is a day

to celebrate being a 4th grader at Priestley Elementary School in the Shikellamy School District.

This day happens to fall around the unit Ms. Rohrbach is currently teaching her students –

alliteration. The lesson that was presented to the 4th grade class focused primarily on four

common core language art and literacy standards. The common core standards lead the lesson

into becoming an extremely open, welcoming space for the students where they were able to

express their creativity in a safe space.

The lesson began when I briefly reviewed the overarching topic of alliteration and what

the students remembered from their lesson yesterday, where Ms. Rohrbach wrapped up the unit

on alliteration. I asked the students questions like, “What is alliteration?”, “Can we think of other

sight words and other familiar words that start with the same sound?”, and “What type of story

do you think alliteration often times falls into?” With that being said, the responses from the

students were what I had anticipated, like “Alliterations are sentences that start with the same

sound.”, and “Fiction stories because they are all not real.”. These responses were a perfect

Segway into the introduction of the lesson.

The introduction of the lesson was brief due to the fact that I knew I would be pressed on

time. Because students are only in each class subject for a very limited amount of time, the
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instructions had to be short, sweet, and to the point. I explained that by working in small groups,

our goal is to create an environment in which everyone has the opportunity to be engaged an

actively participate which I am hoping we can make happen today. I talked about the student’s

responses to the posed questions, and branched off of them to clarify what the activity was going

to consist of. After the students were separated into groups, I handed out the materials which

consisted of an oversized sticky note and a variety of colorful markers. Each group had a few

minutes to decide what sound they wanted to focus their story around. Since this activity was

based around the theme of the day, being the 100th day of school, the students were told they

were to create a story of exactly 100 alliterations. I explained that these could be nonsense words

and the sentences did not necessarily need to make sense, which was referenced by the fictional

part of the introduction. The students were then free to work on their own stories by beginning

with a rough draft. Prior to the unit about alliteration, Ms. Rohrbach talked about the steps of

writing which is the root of why I had asked the students begin with this step.

Both Ms. Rohrbach and I both had a small group of students to work on this activity. The

students were excited to create with sentences that did not really make any sense. In my group,

the students were eager to throw out words that started with the ‘s’ sound. Following the rough

draft, I helped the students come up with a way to break the story into different parts to give each

student the opportunity to read a piece when presenting it to the class. The students were so

enthusiastic and excited to have the opportunity to read their silly story out loud which was

reassuring to me at the time that they were really enjoying this. I gave everyone their own

marker, and we wrote each sentence in a different color that represented who read what part of

the story. This contributed to the engagement that I was hoping for because I noticed that each

student expressed the same eagerness as their peers to contribute to both coming up with silly
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words and wanting to read a section that gave everyone the same opportunity to read an equal

amount. By the time we had written the story on the oversized sticky note, the class period was

over and it was time for the students to go to lunch.

Throughout the process of planning the lesson, I focused on a few Common Core State

Standards. These included: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.4.5, CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.4.1.A,

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.4.3.D, CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.4.4. My lesson was planned to

touch on these standards because of: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.4.5 focusing on the drama part

of the story and be able to touch on the descriptive words in the story; CCSS.ELA-

LITERACY.RL.4.1 focusing on being able to draw inferences from the stories their peers had

written when listening to them being presented and being able to ask questions; CCSS.ELA-

LITERACY.RL.4.3 from their story line which will consist of specific thoughts, words, or

actions; and CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.4.4 because the use of word and sentence combinations

that do not necessarily make sense and being able to determine the meaning and the message the

students were trying to deliver through their work.

Although these were the primary focuses and what I expressed on my lesson plan, as I am

reflecting on the actual lesson I am realizing that there are other standards that were hit as well

that I failed to account for initially. Included in these standards are: CCSS.ELA-

LITERACY.W.4.8 as the students used names of people they know, different sports they have

played, etc. to contribute to their story line; CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.4.5 as Ms. Rohrbach and

I guided the students to create a rough draft; and CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.4.7 as the students

will present their silly story to their class and will read in the context of punctuation and the oral

representation (the large sticky note) of their story. I find that when I am able to implement these

practices in my own classroom, it will be important to actually take the time to reflect on the
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lessons and consider what I feel my students actually took away that day. When thinking about

my future classroom, I hope to have the ability to be flexible with my lessons and somewhat

expect there to be changes occurring within the lesson.

It was important to keep in mind how excited the students are to celebrate the 100th day

of school. When I was planning the lesson with Ms. Rohrbach, she suggested doing an activity

like this because she had done it in the past and really liked the enthusiasm students had for it.

She explained that in the past, she had hung the sticky notes up in the hall way for other classes

to read. With that being said, I did not want to stray far from what she had imagined the lesson

being on that particular day. I felt thankful that Ms. Rohrbach gave me the opportunity to use one

of her class periods with her students since the time each student has in each subject is limited

and valuable.

With that being said, the lesson suggested by Ms. Rohrbach reflects a lot of research that

has widely been used by educators across the world. In an article written to discuss the literacy

and language teaching in elementary schools, Richard Kern highlights the importance of hearing.

This lesson uses hearing when the students read their silly story out loud to their class. This gives

the students an opportunity to actually hear alliterations being used which in turn will

essentialize speech by increasing the knowledge of the languages sound system (Kern, 76)

Using tongue twisters to help students better understand the overarching concept of alliteration

referring to using the same sound repeatedly in writing.

In another text, Learning Matters: The Transformation of US Higher Education, Leeda-

Hurwitz mentions a quote that really resonated with me, “Learning from others is neither new of

revolutionary; it has just been ignored by most of our educational institutions” (Leeda-Hurwitz,

179) When relating this to the lesson I did in Ms. Rohrbach’s 4th grade classroom, the students
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had the opportunity to put this into practice by listening to their peers present their own

alliterations. Leeda-Hurwitz also discusses continual learning, a form of ubiquitous learning that

combines the following strands (Leeda-Hurwitz, 181) The idea of continual learning relates to

the lesson I did with the students based on a few different relationships to the idea continual

learning: 1) The connection between formal and informal learning, where in this case the

students formally reviewed the topic of alliteration and informally got the opportunity to practice

it, and 2) Personalization of learning, which includes the students being able to use their personal

experiences to come up with words to include in the story (Leeda-Hurwirz,181) The lesson I

planned and completed with the 4th graders lines parallel with the overarching goals that the

Common Core Standards. While planning this lesson, I also took my observations of the

student’s abilities into consideration from spending hours with them prior to the lesson.

Although there were many strengths of my lesson, there were just as many weaknesses.

Luckily I have the opportunity to actually work on getting the kinks out before being in my own

classroom, even though it is almost impossible for every lesson to be absolutely perfect and not

have any weaknesses. In this specific lesson, I feel like I could have done a better job of helping

the students brainstorm when writing their story instead of saying any word that came to my

mind. I feel like this will come as I gain more experience, but I feel as if my biggest weakness of

the lesson this. In the future I hope to do a better job of balancing being able to offer assistance

and guidance while not crossing a line of too much guidance. I feel as if my biggest strength of

this particular lesson was the freedom I had given the students. The last few times I had been

observing in their classroom a majority of their time was spent taking standardized tests. I

wanted to give them a space where it is okay to be silly in their work and it is encouraged to

spend time asking their peers their opinions. Ms. Rorhbach had created an environment where
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noise is okay under certain circumstances, and I feel like this group of students really did a great

job of respecting that. I had a pretty good understanding of where the students stood from a

maturity standpoint which allowed me to separate them into small groups. In a classroom that is

not as mature, specifically in understanding social structure, the lesson would need to be

modified to fit the needs of the overall group of children.

If I were to do this lesson in my classroom one day, I would do a few things differently. I

would most likely try to incorporate this lesson plan into a unit about poetry. For example, Shel

Silverstein poems would be a fantastic resource when covering poetry and alliterations. In a blog

written by an educator herself, Valorie Delp talks about Shel Siverstein’s poem from the view of

an educator and of a mother. In her blog, Delp touches on multiple different poems including

Bear in There, Mari-Lou’s Ride, Poemsicle, Picture Puzzle Piece, Rotten Convention, Spoiled

Brat, and Standing is Stupid. Bear in There uses alliteration in the verses, “He likes it ‘cause it’s

cold in there”, “and his face in the fish”, “he’s nibbling the noodles”, and “he’s slurping the

soda”. Spoiled Brat uses alliteration like, “The spoiled brat put a coat on the cat”, which would

be a great example of how alliteration does not necessarily have to mean the words are

continuous and that there can be other words in the sentence.

Using a different one of these books each day of the unit to really encourage the

understanding of alliterations would be one of my main goals. I really like the idea of

incorporating the poetry unit and the use of alliterations. Like we had discussed in class, often

times students are discouraged by poems and do not enjoy or find any meaning in them. By

giving the students an opportunity to actually create their own versions of this, the students will

then develop a greater appreciation and understanding of the importance of both alliteration and

poetry. Ms. Rohrbach did in fact use stories to tie into her lesson, however I would change that
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by using poetry. Another modification would be setting a time limit on how long the groups had

to write their rough draft and story to guarantee enough time at the end of class to share. This

would be a modification had I do the lesson in Ms. Rohrbach’s classroom again, however, I

would not want to set a time limit in my own classroom to ensure the students have enough time

to express their creativity.

Essentially, I would do a very similar lesson with the exception of the unit I do this lesson

in. I would also find a different way of organizing the students when it is time to decide who

reads what. This seemed to be chaotic at the time but could be modified in my own classroom by

having this pre-planned as I would be more familiar with the personalities of my students.

Another way I could modify this lesson would be having each child work with one partner to

create a few lines of a poem using alliterations, then get together in the smaller groups to make

one overarching poem that each student feels he/she contributed to which would then make the

organization easier when it came time to sharing their work with their peers.

I like the idea of having a reading backpack as our textbook highlights the advantages of

providing the students with the resources they need to gain a better understanding and improve

their fluency (Reutzel and Cooter, 244-245) This would be more directed if I modified the lesson

plan to a lower grade level as that is more commonly where reading backpacks are used.

However, if I earn a job that is local to the socioeconomic status that I grew up in, I am aware

that a larger percentage of my students will only have the resources sent home with them to learn

from. A lot of parents do not either have the funds to provide their students with different genre

of books for their children to read, therefore the children are already at a disadvantage to students

who live in a different type of home or come from a different socioeconomic status. It these were

the circumstances, I would continue using a reading backpack even in fourth grade because it is
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not very expensive and does not require a lot of resources or class time. This relates to the

alliteration lesson because I would give each student their own visual journal, so when they are

at home reading the poems or stories they are able to make sense of them and process them by

using visual arts.

Overall, I feel like the lesson I chose to teach the 4th grade students (with Ms. Rohrbach’s

help) had a lot of positive and negative parts to it. Fortunately, I am able to take time as a student

to reflect on the parts of the lesson that I would like to continue using in the future and parts that

I feel did not really benefit the student’s progression. With that being said, I feel proud of how

engaged the students were during the entire lesson and how they did not want to go to lunch

because they wanted to stay and share their silly stories with their classmates. Overall, this was a

wonderful experience that I got to share with about twenty 4th graders. Having the opportunity to

watch the students faces light up when they thought of a word that we could use in the story was

truly a blessing.
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Sources Cited

Delp, Valorie. “Alliteration Poems by Shel Silverstein.” LoveToKnow, LoveToKnow Corp,

childrens-books.lovetoknow.com/Alliteration_Poems_by_Shel_Silverstein.

Kern, Richard. Literacy and Language Teaching. Oxford University Press, 2014.

Leeds-Hurwitz, Wendy, and Peter S. Hoff. Learning Matters: the Transformation of US Higher

Education. É ditions Des Archives Contemporaines, 2012.

Reutzel, D. Ray, et al. Teaching Children to Read: Putting the Pieces Together. Pearson / Merrill

Prentice Hall, 2004.