Allison Lesson 2 Reflection

·         What students learned and which students struggled with the lesson.

 Students learned how to pick out words with a specific initial sound, specifically the initial /t/ sound, from my lesson.  They learned this because I had several pictures on the table of objects that had the initial /t/ sound and objects that had other initial sounds.  Each student got a turn to select an object from all of the pictures that had the initial /t/ sound to feed to the Sound Muncher.  Therefore, each student had to figure out which pictures had the initial /t/ sound, and which pictures did not have the initial /t/ sound.  However, 7 of my students needed more support from me to successfully complete the lesson.  These students looked at the pictures on the table for at least one minute before I stepped in to support them.  To support these students, I selected two pictures, one with the initial /t/ sound and one without the initial /t/ sound, and had them select which picture should be fed to the Sound Muncher.  Once I did this, each of these students were able to select the correct picture.  It seemed like it was overwhelming for them to choose the correct picture when several were in front of them, but when their choices were limited, they could successfully complete the task.

 

·         What are alternate reads of your students’ performance or products?

 Even though all of the students managed to correctly choose a picture with an initial /t/ sound, there could be another explanation for why all of my students did this correctly.  Some students who went near the end of the activity could have selected the correct picture because they heard several students correctly complete the task before them.  If they did not know how to do this at the beginning of the activity, they saw their peers complete this task first, so they learned what they had to do to correctly complete the task.  Also, I think the students who needed extra support were overwhelmed with the amount of pictures to choose from.  However, they could also have been shy.  Some of the students who needed extra support are quiet children.  Therefore, their shyness could have been why they needed support to complete the task, instead of their ability-level.

·         What did you learn about your students’ literacy practices that extend beyond your objectives?

 From this one lesson, I learned a lot about my students’ literacy practices.  First, I learned each student can pick out the initial sound in a given word.  Even though some students needed support in finding a picture, once I narrowed their choices, they could successfully do this.  Also, I learned each student knows “t” makes the /t/ sound.  I asked them which letter my Sound Muncher was hungry for, to which they all responded, “t.”  Extending beyond my objectives, I learned my students can all speak aloud to a small group of people.  Each of the students stated aloud the name of the picture they chose to feed to the Sound Muncher.  Additionally, I learned each student can listen to the ideas of others.  After each student stated which picture they chose, I had the rest of the students give a thumbs up if that student was correct, or a thumbs down if that student was incorrect.  This got the students to listen to one another.  Finally, I learned most students can follow directions.  Almost all of the students remembered to do thumbs up or thumbs down for each picture, but some students needed a reminder about what to do.  Overall, I learned a lot about my students’ literacy practices from one lesson!

 

·         When and how will you re-teach the material to students who need additional support?

 I will re-teach this material to students who need extra support in various ways.  First, I will re-teach them to pick out the initial sound in words in lessons 4, 5, and 6 of my unit.  In lesson 4 (Sound Snacker-Sound Smacker), the students will choose a picture and determine if it has the initial /m/ sound or a different initial sound.  In lesson 5 (Phoneme Go Fish), the students will find pairs of words with the same initial sound.  In lesson 6 (Letter tub initial phoneme sort), we will sort objects into tubs of m, a, and s as a small group, based on initial sounds in each object.  Therefore, all of these lessons will help the students work on picking out the initial sound in a word.

 Second, I will re-teach specific letter sounds to students by playing the “Who Let the Letters Out?” song to the entire class when we have extra time throughout the day.  This song will help the students practice all of the letter sounds, so they can easily pick out the initial sounds they hear in words.  Doing this will benefit the entire class, but especially the students who need more support with letter sounds.  Also, I will ask the students, “I am thinking of a letter that makes the /t/ sound.  What letter am I thinking of?”  I will do this for various letters, when we have spare time.  This will also help the students practice all of the letter sounds.

 Finally, I will pull each of these students aside and show them five pictures, each with a different initial sound.  Then, I will ask them to find me a picture that begins with a specific sound.  This will help them practice the skills of this lesson without having too many pictures to choose from.

·         If you were to teach this same lesson again, what would you do differently and how do you think the changes would improve students’ learning?

 If I were to teach this same lesson again, I would give the students less pictures to choose from for the incorrect initial sounds.  As I stated above, the students who struggled with this lesson seemed to be overwhelmed with the amount of pictures on the table.  Once I narrowed down their choices to two pictures, each of these students could correctly select the picture with the initial /t/ sound.  Therefore, if I provided them with fewer non-/t/ initial sound pictures, the students would be less overwhelmed, and better-able to select the correct picture without assistance from me.

 

·         What did you learn so far about implementing your ‘core practice’ and what do you need to do to continue your professional learning?

 So far, I learned my ‘core practice’ is important to teaching my students phonological awareness skills, and getting them interested in the given task.  All of the pictures I used for this lesson were pictures of objects I took with my camera from around our classroom and around our school.  Therefore, the students got really excited when I placed each picture on the table because they knew each object was from somewhere around our school.  Their faces lit up, and they got really excited to feed my Sound Muncher objects they knew about.  This excitement of recognition hooked my students into the lesson from the very beginning.  This ‘core practice’ is important to teaching my students these skills because they can apply what we are learning about to their everyday lives at school.  Instead of having pictures that were separated from their lives, I used pictures that were central to their lives at school, which helped them see the application of these skills outside of this one lesson.  However, I need to continue my professional learning about this ‘core practice’ to see how else I could apply this ‘core practice’ to phonological awareness lessons in others ways.  I found using pictures of objects that are familiar to the students to be successful, but I would like to know what else I can do to make phonological awareness lessons authentic to my students’ lives.