Cathy York

Comprehension Minilesson
March 20, 2019

For my comprehension minilesson, I had one student do a KWL+. The student I chose

decided on a book that was about lion cubs written by National Geographic. She is very

interested in reading and is usually engaged in lessons, which proved to me that this minilesson

would be something she would be excited to do. Before beginning, I prepared my materials,

which consisted of the KWL+ chart and a Ready to Write pencil. I then had the student pick her

book when she was ready to come over to me at the desk in the back of the room. I explained to

her what we were doing and she was excited, as I had hoped she would be.

Once my student was ready, we reviewed the KWL+ sheet. I had her read all of the

descriptions from the columns so that she knew what she was looking for and what was expected

of her. When we finished reviewing what she was about to do, we began by first going over

what she already knew about lion cubs. She wrote down that lion play, hunt, and sleep. Then

we moved onto the Want category and she read the question underneath the W. She told me that

she wanted to know how old they can be, what they eat, and if they can go to the circus. Once

she had both of these sections filled out, she read the story out loud to me.

In hindsight, a book with a bit more substance would probably have been better because

there would have been more to learn and I would better be able to assess the comprehension of

the reading if there were more complex sentences. Although the book was on more of an

independent level for the student, she did learn more about lion cubs. She told me she learned

that lion cubs cuddle, climb, chase, and pounce. Because none of these topics addressed the

things she wanted to learn about lion cubs, she reused her ideas from the Want section in her +

section, which consisted of ideas that she wanted to know more about.
 I liked this activity especially because I was able to do it one-on-one with the student. A

KWL would be boring to do as an individual assignment, in my opinion, but I think it could also

be fun to be interactive with it while doing a whole class reading. I like the idea of KWLs

because the different sections make you think about the topic you are exploring. By first listing

what you know about the topic, it gets you thinking about the world of your topic. Then by

asking yourself what you want to know about the topic, you are mirroring what you already

know against what you are curious about. The Want section then gives you guidance while

reading and will keep you engaged. I like that the + section gives the student a chance to assess

what they wanted to know versus what they learned to figure out what they want to still find out.

In my own classroom, I would like implement comprehension by having reading groups,

something like book clubs. This way students would be able to discuss their books with each

other with some guiding questions and games. These groups would be based on ability and

reading level so they would probably be about three to four students, depending on the class size

and abilities. Along with the comprehension, I would like to give the students prompts that they

could write about that relates to their stories. Aside from writing that correlates with their

content, I would like to have time for students to write about their weekends and also give them

time to write in journals in any way they would like. Then I would like to have an Author’s

Chair time to allow students to present their work to the class if they would like. I would include

these by allowing the students time after the weekend, on Mondays, to write in their journals

after the morning meeting. Then following this time, I would set aside time for the Author’s

Chair. The book clubs would meet every other day to discuss what the students have read. I

think I would implement this in an older grade such as fourth or fifth grade so that the students

would not be pressured when their peers are at a different place in the book. To include the
writing aspect in this lesson, I would give cubes with sentence starters that the students could use

as a group to write about their stories.