Georgina M.

Prez
10/20/2014
EDUC 453
Practicum Report
Observation of a Language-Arts Teaching Lesson

Lesson: Bats
Type of writing: Informational Text
Grade Level: 5th

Last week, in my fifth grade practicum classroom I observed and language arts lesson
based on an informational text. My fifth grade students love reading about animals. Since it is the
month of October the teacher decided to chose a text on bats. Bats are not very common animals
that they would enjoy reading about, but they are very interesting. This lesson was planned in a
very attractive way for the students. I helped the teacher trace and cut out to huge black bat wings
made out of paper and a head. These were put up on one of the classroom walls near the smart
board. The idea was to represent a KWL chart. Some of the materials that the teacher used
included post its, markers, books and online sources.
First, the teacher started off with a discussion on bats. Some of the starting questions were:
-

Who has seen a bat before?

Who has seen a bat from up close?

Do you think bats are dangerous creatures?

As the teacher raised these questions, the students began to engage in the topic right away.
Many students raised their hands to answer the questions and I could also hear side conversations
of students telling stories of experiences they had with bats.
After the introductory discussion, the teacher took out three different colors of post-it notes.
The green is was for facts about bats that the already knew, the yellow was for things about bats
that they wanted to learn and the pink was for things about bats that they learned after the lesson
and after the book was read.
The teacher asked the students to raise their hand to share a fact about bats that they already
knew. The teacher listened carefully in order not to repeat any facts and she wrote the fact down
on a post-it. Then the student would come up and post it on the bats left wing. (The left wing was
for K, the head was for W and the right wing was for L.) Some of the facts that the students
mentioned they already knew were:
-

Bats are black

Bats are nocturnal

Bats hand upside down

Bats fly

Bats eat insects

After posting facts that the students knew about bats, they realized they suddenly became
much more interested in them. In the K section there were questions like:
-

Where do bats live?

Are bats dangerous to humans?

How many species of bats are there?

Do bats have teeth?

Do bats feed on blood?

After filling the left wing of the bat and its head with post it notes, it was time to do the
research. The teacher did a short read aloud of a book about bats and then read an online source
text about bats. The students were required to write down at least four facts that were new to
them while listening to the informational texts.
To their surprise, all of their questions were answered but even more things were learned! For
the L section some of the facts included were:
-

Bats are the only flying mammals that exist

There are over 1000 different species of bats

Vampire bats exist, they carry rabies and feed solely from blood

Bats can live for over 20 years.

The purpose of this lesson was to engage the students in a topic for their journal entry at

the end of the day. At the end of this lesson each student was to write two paragraphs
summarizing what they learned about bats. The idea was for them to inform the reader many
of the important things there is to know about bats. They were required to use appropriate
grammar and punctuation.

Curriculum for Writing

I have noticed that in my practicum classroom there is a great focus on mathematics
because the students are very far behind in their learning. As far as writing, there is a daily journal
entry that the students need to complete so this demonstrates that they exercise their writing at
least every day. The way this is done is the teacher writes a question on her computer then it
appears on the smart board. Examples of these questions are:
-

Invent and describe a new food

Which character from a book would you like to meet and why?

What is your hobby? Why do you enjoy it?

I have noticed there is a big difference on the speed these students write at. Some kids are

able to fill a whole page in about ten minutes while others might have just filled a paragraph
during the time span. From what I have observed, the students do not seem inspired when it
comes to writing. From reading the language arts common core standards for fifth grade, I
think the curriculum might need to be modified a bit in order to be able to teach all of this to
the students. Lesson strategies like art-based literacy are a very good tool for any grade of
elementary and even middle school.
Some of the other strategies I have observed that the teacher combines with the language
art field is choosing a chapter book to read to the students. From this book she designs
different lesson plans. I taught a lesson to the students and the main idea was a text-to-self
connection. The book the students read in class was Because of Mr. Terupt. The students
were to choose the character that they identified with the most and look for certain
characteristics and traits that they could relate to their lives. In this book there were seven
different characters and they are all fifth grade students so it was not very difficult to find

connections. The end result was a drawing of two characters with joining characteristics in the
center and different ones on each side. The children really engaged in the activity.
When asking my teacher questions about her writing curriculum she explained that during
the fall they focus mainly on reading then in the spring writing is their main focus but that she
does tend to include writing in other subjects like science and history.