Comprehension Strategy Lesson Plan Reflection

REFLECTION 

Comprehension Strategy Lesson Plan 10 minute teach/presentation

 

I was on the docket to teach my lesson on Tuesday April 30^th. Even on the day of, I was unsure if I had prepared the material properly. I work with 6^th, 7^th & 8^th grade. Given my experience and my mind-set, I would love to continue with the middle school age group through my career. There are times where I feel like the material I am presenting due to the school curriculum is weak. Or should I say, beneath the students’ level. I like to supplement my lessons time and again with challenging material, the type of projects that they may encounter in high school. I built a rather ambitious program at my last school for seventh grade that focused on dissection. The final project was a fetal pig. As a seventh grader, fetal pig dissections are uncommon. Most students don’t experience that level of challenge until high school or even college.

As I thought about my CSLP, I began to reflect on my current eighth grade students. What could I offer that would grant a heightened level of reading without intimidation? They have been studying global warming in their Earth Science classes were I teach. While we have been utilizing technology with web quests and creating small group presentations, I wanted them to read and discuss a series of text that was beyond their reading level so they could see what they might experience when they are in 10^th grade. Additionally, I wanted to offer a relative topic with the global warming piece so they could tap into their prior knowledge. It developed into a lesson plan that served a purpose at their school level and mine in TEGR 585.

The problem was how. The book I selected, Gaia, was quite heavy with vocabulary and the concepts presented may be beyond their grasp. I decided to pull a singly chapter that presented several similarities to what had been studied this semester. In order to bring focus to the whole mess, I redesigned a comprehension continuum chart and applied it to the lesson. In addition the chapter was easily broken down into nine individual reading sections. So my lesson plan began to take shape from there.

The idea was to assign reading sections to table groups. They would read their sections as a team; fill out their continuums as well as prepare notes to teach from. They would in turn teach their assigned readings to the class as a whole. Once everyone had done so, we would bring the whole chapter together as a compare and contrast to what had been learned through the school curriculum and my earlier teachings on global warming.

I attempted to reproduce that in a 10 minute teach during class on April 30^th. All in all, I thought it went well. I believe I could have modeled the comprehension continuum better by reading more and possible using a power point to show what I would have written in the columns of the chart. Examples and modeling definitely help in the process. The 10 minute teach was tough as it lacked prior knowledge or any scaffolding to draw from. I felt scattered during my 10 minutes and in hindsight I could have done better.

However, I did ask a few of my more advanced eighth graders to read the same piece I shared with used for my presentation. They were intrigued and wanted to pursue more. They were also openly pessimistic that many of the others in their class would be overwhelmed. So I may need to fine tune the presentation prior to a full scale follow through.