Karen Hand CO#1

Karen Hand CO#1

Date/Time: November 18, 11 – 11:50 a.m.

Topic/Skill: Foundations Reading Class w/ Vicky Golen

Teacher Presentation: Today’s lesson was a review session for a quiz the students will take tomorrow. The quiz will be on vocabulary from Jack and the Beanstalk, “ed” endings, and phonics rules 1-4 for long and short vowels. First, she projected pictures of vocabulary from the story on the screen and let each student take a turn saying the vocabulary word that went with the picture. Next, she wrote words on the board and had students hold up the number of fingers matching the phonics rule for the word. Then she divided the class into 2 teams and played a fly swatter game (described in “Student Participation” below). Then she reviewed the rules for the 3 pronunciations of “ed” words. Then she wrote “ed” words on the board and asked students, in turn, to tell her which pronunciation that “ed” word had. Her lesson ended 10 minutes early, so she asked the students if they wanted to discuss the main idea of the story or review more for the quiz. They choose more review of the vocabulary for the quiz. She had each person act out one of the vocabulary words and have the class guess the word. Then she took words and asked each person to make a sentence using the word.

Classroom Management: Vicky started the class by collecting everyone’s cell phones and putting them in the “cell phone motel” until the end of class. :-) Also, especially in the beginning of the class, she had to remind students “English Only” and “No French.” There were a few French-speaking students in the class who were talking amongst themselves. She directed them to ask her their questions in English instead of asking each other in French.

Materials: computer/projector, white board/markers, 2 fly swatters

Student Participation: Vicky’s class was highly interactive. Students took turns answering questions during each part of the review today. After reviewing the phonics rules, Vicky had them play a really fun game. She projected words all over the board. The words included similar words, but with long or short vowel sounds, like twin, twine, cut, cute, tub, tube, fin, fine, hop, hope, pet, Pete, fad, fade, spit, spite, can, cane, rip, ripe, spin, and spine. The words were scrambled all over the screen. The class was divided into two groups. Each group got a fly swatter. They took turns sending up one member of each group to the board. Vicky would say a word, and the first person to swat the correct word with the fly swatter earned a point for their team.

Feedback Provided: When Vicky was showing the pictures of the vocabulary words, if the student not only named the noun correctly, but also included the article (e.g., “an axe”), she would make a point of saying, “Good job!” Vicky often provided on-the-spot corrections by repeating back a sentence a student had said incorrectly, but repeating it back to them correctly. One time a student (describing the beanstalk from the story, I think) said, “I am rich man. Where I live?” Vicky wrote on the board, “I am __ rich man. Where ___ I live?” She allowed the student to come up with the words he had left out.

Lesson(s) on teaching you learned: Vicky was amazing! I learned how the little ways you handle the details of the class create a fun, inclusive, and supportive learning environment. When a student asked a question and Vicky wasn’t sure what he was asking, she told him, “Tell me a little more about your question.” I thought that was so much better than just saying, “I don’t understand what you are asking me.” Also, with the variety of activities that she included in the lesson, I think Vicky did the best job of creating an interactive classroom that I have ever seen.