Analysis of Previous Lesson

Teacher: Kelly Eaton / Student: Jessica
Session 3 of 6 / Teaching Date: October 28, 2009 / Teaching time: 45 minutes
Outcome Objectives: Jessica will have a solid grasp of comprehension techniques (namely, going back and sounding out words), and will have a firm understanding of the main themes and issues of the story. She will also know how to search for and find motive and other characterization in details.
1. Familiar Reading
To begin or lesson, we will go back to what she wrote in the previous session. I will ask her to tell me about the book, who the main characters are, what has happened in the first three chapters, and what she thinks will happen next. I will again emphasize that the part about Judy wanting to be a queen is not the most important part of the book by showing her how much more the book is about guinea pigs and Jenius (by showing her how they only talk about being queen for about a page and a half.) / Notes:
Q: What do you remember about the book so far?
A: - Judy wants to be a queen.
- She wants lots of guinea pigs.
- Her teacher thinks guinea pigs are stupid.
- She has two guinea pigs and they have a
guinea pig. She names him Jenius and
she’s going to train him.
Because she still bringing up the detail about being queen, I asked her where it mentions the part about the queen, and how many times. And she said they only mention it on the first 2 or 3 pages. I asked her if they talk about anything else more than they talk about being a queen, and she said that they talk a lot more about guinea pigs. I then explained that when I ask what the “main idea” or the “main point” of a story is, I mean what is the biggest, most important part. Then I asked her what she thinks the main idea of this book is, and she said that the book is about Judy and her guinea pigs, which is a much better answer than she gave last week.
2. Read a section of a chapter book:
Jessica only read the first 100 words of chapter of chapter four last week, so have her read the first few pages of chapter four (pages 22 through halfway down page 24, have her stop after “swelled head.”) silently. Then ask her to tell you about them. If she doesn’t give a thorough answer, prompt her with these questions:
-  What are Judy and Jenius doing?
-  What time of year is it?
-  How is Jenius feeling?
Now have her read the rest of page 24 through page 28 (the end of the chapter). This is a little longer than she’s read in the last couple sessions, so I want to see how she does with it. Ask her to tell you about what she just read. If her answer isn’t thorough, prompt her with the following questions:
-  How is Joe (Jenius’s dad) feeling?
-  Why is he feeling that way?
-  What does Jenius do?
-  Was it a good thing to do? Why or why not?
-  What is Jenius’s attitude like?
-  How does Judy feel about what Jenius did?
Then I will ask her to predict what she thinks might happen next. How / Notes:
Pages 22-24: I asked her to tell me about what she had just read, and she said “Judy’s gonna teach him tricks like ‘lie down’ and ‘stay,’ but not ‘heel’ because she’s afraid she’ll step on him.” Then I prompted her with a few questions. I asked her what time of year it is in the story, and she answered correctly “summer.” I asked her how Jenius was feeling and she responded that he is excited to learn more tricks. This is true to an extent, but the better answer would have been that Jenius was feeling proud. We went back and looked at what it meant to say that Jenius had a “swelled head” because she had never heard that phrase before.
Pages 24-28: I asked her to summarize what happened, and she said “Judy kept the window in the shed cracked, and one night Jenius jumped out the window, but I think she found him.” There were a lot of problems with this summary. Jenius escaped out of his cage because he figured out how to undo the latch. The door to the shed was open, not the window, and the more important part is that he figures out how to escape his cage. To get Jessica to realize this, I took her back a couple pages and asked her to pay close attention to what Jenius is escaping from and how he escapes. Then I asked her how Jenius’s parents feel about his new tricks. She said “his parents think he is too excited about doing his tricks” and “he’s learning tricks his parents don’t know.” Then we talked a little bit about his attitude, and how he’s getting a “swelled head” about learning new tricks his parents don’t know.
Prediction: Maybe he’ll learn more, but his Mom and Dad will tell him not to talk about the tricks, and maybe he will stop talking about it.
(This is a pretty good prediction.)
3. Running Record
First 100 words of Chapter 5 of Jenius the
Amazing Guinea Pig. (p. 29-30) / Notes:
Jessica made 9 errors, giving her a 91% accuracy rate. She also made one self-correction, giving her a self-correction rate of 1:9, which is still not where I’d like it to be, although it is better than last week where she made zero self-corrections. She uses visual cues in almost all her errors, so her biggest problems are still meaning and syntax. She also still needs to read through the whole word (for instance she read “lit” as “light”). We worked on both of these issues in our word work time. The biggest strategy I’ve been emphasizing is re-reading. I’ve told her that if something isn’t making sense, she should go back to the beginning of the sentence and try to figure out where she’s missing a word. I’m starting to get really frustrated in this, and I’m not entirely sure what to do next.
4. Work work/strategy
Review her running record. In the last two sessions she made a few errors because she did not read through the whole word. I will go back to one or two of the words she missed, and ask her to drag her finger underneath it as she says it. If this isn’t effective, I will model it for her. Then we’ll do another one. She also had a problem using meaning and syntax to fix her mistakes. If she does this again, go back to those errors and read aloud what she read before. Ask her if it makes sense, and where she might change a word. If she makes errors besides these, address those as well, but as of now reading through the whole word and using meaning/syntax to fix mistakes are the priorities.
Word Sorting: Do a word-sorting activity with short “e”s and long “e”s. (short “e”s: tell, bed, net, shred, cell, mess, speck, mend, cent; long “e”s: me, we, these, deep, cease, meal, freeze, crease, sneak). / Notes:
-  I went back and had her read through a sentence in which Judy is “leaning out her bedroom window.” When I took the running record, she read it as “learning out her bedroom window.” I asked her to re-read the sentence, and then I asked her whether she thought that made sense or not. She recognized that it didn’t and then when she re-read the sentence she immediately said “oh, leaning!”
-  Then we went through a couple other words she mispronounced and I talked about how we need to read through the whole word, especially if the word isn’t making sense in the sentence. I showed her how she can run her finger underneath the word to make sure she is reading every letter. She did this well, although I had to help her with the word “issued.”
5. Written response to book:
Depending on what Jessica and I have discussed, I will ask her to write 2-3 consecutive sentences on one question (rather than the 1 sentence answers), probably delving into motive or feeling. If she struggles with this, I will prompt her with questions, such as “what did we talk about?” and basic “who, what, where, why?” questions. / For her written response, I asked Jessica to write 2-3 sentences about how Jenius and his parents feel about Jenius’s newly-learned tricks. This is what she wrote:
“he fells good about what he lurnd but he is talking to much about it. Hes perent fell good about it to but they think that he is talking to much about it so they mhigt not like it.”
There are some good things in this writing sample. First of all, by the end she is clearly thinking through what she read when she writes “they might not like it.” Yet she started off the sentence by saying that his parents feel good about it, which is completely wrong. I think she mostly wrote that because she didn’t know how to start the sentence. Once she started thinking more, she seemed to get on track. What she says about Jenius feeling good about it is true, and also that he talks about it too much, but she is missing the key point that he is bragging about his new tricks, and that his parents really don’t like his bragging. I will definitely begin the next session by addressing what she wrote here.

-I’m starting to become a little more frustrated. I can’t figure out what else to do besides what I’m already doing. Her comprehension has improved a little, but her self-correction rate is still very poor, and I’m having a hard time deciding how I can help her bring that up. I’m still having fun working with Jessica, though. She’s a very sweet girl, and she tries really hard. I just really hope I can figure out a way to help her in the next few weeks.

Lesson Plan for Next Session

Teacher: Kelly Eaton / Student: Jessica
Session 3 of 6 / Teaching Date: October 26, 2009 / Teaching time: 45 minutes
Outcome Objectives: Jessica will have a solid grasp of comprehension techniques (namely, going back and sounding out words), and will have a firm understanding of the main themes and issues of the story. She will also know how to search for and find motive and other characterization in details.
1. Familiar Reading
To begin the lesson, we will go back to what she wrote in the previous session. I will ask her to tell me what happened, and how she would describe Jenius’s attitude, as well as his parents’. / Notes:
2. Read a section of a chapter book:
Chapter 5. Ask her to begin with pages 29-32, telling her to make sure she pays attention to the details and what she thinks are the most important events. If she misses some details, rather than asking her specific questions ask her things like “Well, what did Judy do in this section?” and “what did you think was the biggest event that happened?” See how well she does inferring and picking out the details without all the specific prompts I usually give her.
Have her finish the chapter (p. 33-38). Repeat what I did for the first couple pages. Make sure she understands what’s going on – tell her she can go back through the chapter and see what she’s missing. How / Notes:
3. Running Record
First 100 words of Chapter 6 of Jenius the
Amazing Guinea Pig. (p. 39-40) / Notes:
4. Work work/strategy
Review her running record. In the last three sessions her biggest problem was not using meaning and syntax as clues so I’m assuming this will be a problem again. Pick a sentence where she had particular trouble, and ask her to re-read it. Rather than asking her whether or not it makes sense I’m just going to let her ask that question herself. I’m going to wait for her to say something. If she doesn’t I’ll ask her what she thinks she needs to do next. If she still says nothing, I will prompt her by asking her whether or not she thinks the sentence makes sense. Then I’ll wait and see if she figures out that she needs to go back to the beginning of the sentence and start over. I will also again remind her to draw her finger underneath the words as she says them to make sure she read every letter. / Notes:
5. Written response to book:
I’m going to have Jessica do a writing sample similar to what she did last week. Depending on what Jessica and I have discussed, I will ask her to write 2-3 consecutive sentences on one question (rather than the 1 sentence answers), probably delving into motive or feeling. If she struggles with this, I will prompt her with questions, such as “what did we talk about?” and basic “who, what, where, why?” questions.