Small Group Guided Reading Lesson

Name: Amanda
Wisconsin Lutheran College
EDU 583


I. Focus/Purpose of the Small Group:
This lesson is designed for a group of 5 third grade students.
The text being used is children literature called Horton hears a who! By Dr. Seuss
The text complexity is Lexile: 490, grade level is: 3.8, and guided reading level is P

Primary purpose: The purpose of this reading is to encourage students to participate in the story
telling process while engaging in discussion questions. Their active engagement will help improve
their comprehension skills.
Secondary purpose: While reading they will also analyze some basics of sounds patterns used in the
book. Focusing on basic sound patterns will further help them in building their comprehension skills.

Students responses will also be monitored at each part of the reading process.

II. Before Reading:

1. Activating & Assess Prior Knowledge

A: Opening:
Today, we will start with a discussion about Who is Dr. Seuss and some of his other stories you may
be familiar with, and talk about commonalties between his books, like the rhyming schemes, sounds,
funny names and characters. Lets start by answering the following questions:
Raise your hands, has anyone recently seen this movie, and if so, dont spoil the
story for the rest of the class!
Does anyone have an idea about what this story will be about?
What are rhyme words? Can you provide me an example of any pair of rhyming
words?
Can anybody tell me about phonetics and sound patterns?
After discussing the following questions with students, they will be given introduction about this book
by explain the meaning the meaning of sound patterns: To read this book we need to know about its
characters. Horton, one of Dr. Seuss most famous characters is an elephant in this book. Due to his
very large ears, he is the only one in the jungle capable of hearing the smallest of sounds, coming from
the smallest of people who happen to be living inside a speck of dust. So you can say Horton hears
a phoneme (sounds and its patterns). So, a phoneme is a smallest unit of sound in speech. It may
bring a change in sound by changing its smallest unit. For e.g.: the words mat and rat are two
different words, but there is only one sound that is different between the two words - the first sound,
m and r. So phonemes help to communicate our thoughts with our friends and peers rapidly. This
is what we will observe at few points while reading the book just to get overview of various sound
patterns.

Fun activity for students:


Transitional Statement:
B. Preview and Predict
"On the fifteenth of May, in the Jungle of Nool,
In the heat of the day, in the cool of the pool,
He was splashing... enjoying the jungle's great joys,
When Horton the elephant heard a small noise."

What did you notice about the passage just read?
What was unusual about the speck of dust that blew past Horton? What can we predict about
this speck?
Does anybody analyze the sounds the words are making in this passage?
Now carefully look at the white board The above four lines provide profusion of phonetic and sound
patterns to work with such as the long U sound in the double OO combination in the words pool,
nool and cool, the two spellings of the OY sound are depicted in the words joys and noise. So we
all will help each other to recognize and analyze the sounds of words (especially for challenging
words) made in following pages of the book.

Now teacher will flip the page where Whoville will be first pictured, and will ask the following
questions:
What kinds of things does it look like they have in Whoville?
Where else have we heard of Whoville?

2. Vocabulary:
Snatched, hustled, sinking, yapping, faint, clover, hover, speck, racket, and mayor
a) The teacher will show the word on a word card and read the word.
b) The teacher will show the students the word in the text.
c) Kid- friendly definition:
Snatched To take something from someone suddenly
Hustled To move quickly
Shrinking To avoid doing a job
Yapping To talk a lot
Faint A very quiet sound
Clover A plant with three leaves and a purple-pink flower
Hover To yell loudly
Mayer The person who runs the government of a city
Racket Lots of noise made at the same time
Speck To be very, very small
d) The teacher will give an example that connects to the students lives with further examples.

3. Set a Purpose for Reading:
The purpose of this reading is to encourage students to participate in the story telling process while
engaging in discussion questions. Their active engagement will improve their comprehension skills.
While reading they will also analyze some basics of sounds patterns used in the book.

III. During Reading:
The students will first read the book in the group of 5 students, while each student reading their own
copy. The teacher will monitor and observe for signs of difficulty and observe their fluency while
reading. Students will record all information about various sound patters, questions being discussed
prior to reading, and the question they have while reading the book.
After the first half of silent reading time, the students will be asked to write down sound
patterns (especially with words they are having difficulty with), and about various characters that are
described in the book. Based upon that the students will be asked about what they will see in the next
half of the book? Why do they think about that? Were they comfortably able to recognize words,
sounds, and pronunciation in first half of the book? How can students evaluate themselves on basis of
fluency in their first part of book? (Because I think self-evaluation is very useful tool for the progress
of students). The teacher will support students as they determine the important facts from each portion
while reading the book. Then they will share this information they discovered at the end of reading.


IV. After Reading:
After the story will be read teacher will lead a discussion on lesson of the story, a persons a person
no matter how small. Classroom discussions will be done on following questions: What did Horton
do that was so important? What would have been happened to whos if Horton didnt protect them?
How did it make them feel? How did it make you feel?
Revisit Purpose Setting Question
1) After students will complete their reading, the teacher will develop discussion relating to what
students have discovered about the purposes set forth before the reading.
2) When the students are done reading, in small groups have the students to discuss difficult
words they have discovered while reading, the words they found difficulty in pronouncing, and
the question they have after reading the book.
3) Each student will write 5 words on the paper they found most difficult to pronounce, then will
perform choral reading with teacher to recognize each sound in the letter made (to get basic
overview of sounds that words make).
4) Teacher will record all the reviews and responses given by students to each other.
Clarify Additional Concepts/Vocabulary
At the end of class, students will discuss their conclusions with each other and with teacher, and the
events of the story to use this opportunity to address concepts of interest or questions that arose from
the reading. Teachers will provide guidance to them when they will need it. After discussing the story,
there will be a vocabulary activity on the board with their definitions for students. This will be word
match activity in which teacher will put the definitions on one side of the board, and the words on the
other.
Guided Writing: Going Beyond the Text

To reinforce comprehension skills within students, they will act out various scenes from the book in
small groups for the class as a re-reading activity. By acting out Horton Hears a Who, students will
read and comprehend the large and frequent phrases from Horton without an unwanted pause in lines,
and give the their reading like a real world context.