EDUC 540: Reading Lesson (Observation 1)

Teacher: Stephanie Naling

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Grade Level: 2nd Grade

I.

Content and Standards

a. Reading: Foundational Skills
i. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.2.3: Know and apply grade-level phonics and
word analysis skills in decoding words.
ii. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.2.4: Read with sufficient accuracy and
fluency to support comprehension.
b. Reading: Literature
i. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.2.3: Describe how characters in a story
respond to major events and challenges.
ii. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.2.5: Describe the overall structure of a story,
including describing how the beginning introduces the story and the
ending concludes the action.
iii. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.2.7: Use information gained from the
illustrations and words in a print or digital text to demonstrate
understanding of its characters, setting or plot.

II.

Prerequisites
a. Students must have an understanding of what it means to pretend or use ones
imagination.
b. Students must have prior knowledge of the different parts of a book, including the
cover page, title page, author, and illustrator.
c. Students must have prior experience participating in guided reading groups.

III.

Instructional Objectives
a. Students will be able to discuss the concept of using ones imagination and
playing pretend. (Understanding)
b. Students will be able to demonstrate comprehension of the process of making
inferences using context clues and background knowledge. (Applying, Creating)
c. Students will be able to identify antonyms throughout the text. (Analyzing)

IV.

Instructional Procedure
a. Before:
i. I will introduce the lesson by first showing the book to the students. I will
read the title and offer a brief synopsis of what the book is about without
giving up too much information.
ii. Going along with the theme of story, I will ask the students if they have
ever used their imagination or pretended to be someone or something else
during playtime. If so, what kinds of roles or characters did they pretend to
be?
iii. To further go along with the theme, I will ask the students if they have
ever heard of the word antonym before? After gauging to see which
students are familiar with the term, I will explain the definition as well as
provide examples, such as high/low, hard/soft, real/make believe. Then

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using a post-it, I will ask the students to come up with their own antonyms
which they will write on the post-it and create a sentence for each word.
iv. I will then ask the group if they have ever heard of the term infer or
inference? After assessing what each student knows of the term, I will
explain the definition as well as the importance of making inferences
while reading. I will also provide an example by using what I know about
the book so far (title and overview) as well as what I see from the book.
b. During:
i. I will then tell the students that we are going to preview the book/take a
book-walk. I will give the students about a minute to look at the pictures
in the book and formulate what they think the story is about based on the
pictures alone.
ii. Next, I will give each student a pre-cut set of highlighter tape and together,
go through some of the tricky words or concepts they may encounter while
reading.
iii. After we take a book-walk, we will start to read the book. I will remind
the students that as we are reading, they should pay attention to the
different things that Jungle Jenny encounters and think about whether
these experiences are real or pretend.
iv. I will have the students take turns reading each page. At certain points of
the text, I will have the students stop reading and ask them make
inferences about the text using the inferring strategy I introduced (p.7, 13,
27). Using another post-it, I will ask the students to write down their
inferences, in complete sentences; then share them with the group.
c. After:
i. After finishing the book, I will give each student a comprehension
worksheet, which will ask them a series of literal and inferential questions.
ii. At the end of the lesson, I will ask the students to attach their post-its to
their comprehension worksheet and keep it for the next time we meet. I
will also ask the students to keep their books to practice reading during
read to self.
V.

Materials and Equipment

a. Lewis, Sian. Jungle Jenny. Rigby (5 copies- 3 for students, 1 for student teacher, 1
for supervisor)
b. Multi-colored Post-Its
c. Pre-cut highlighter tape (1 set/student)
d. Comprehension Worksheet
e. Mini dry-erase easel
f. Pencils

VI.

Assessment/Evaluation
a. To assess my students understanding of the terms antonyms and infer/inference, I
will have the students find examples of antonyms in the text as well as create and
write sentences for their own antonyms. Additionally, I will have the students

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generate three different inferences throughout the text using the inference model I
will teach them.
b. To assess each students overall comprehension of the text, I will have the
students fill out a comprehension worksheet.
VII.

Differentiation
a. For students who need more help with developing inferences, I can have the
students pair up so the students can bounce ideas off of each other about the
process of inferring. Further, I can provide them with their own personal
inference-making model that they can refer back to or, if encased in a pocket
protector, can re-use for the current activity as well as future reading lessons.
b. For students who show a higher level of understanding antonyms, I can have these
students take the antonyms that they find in the text and create their own
sentences for each word.

VIII. Technology
a. No technology is needed for this lesson.
IX.

Self-Assessment
a. I will be collecting information about each students level of comprehension and
fluency while they are reading. Additionally, I will be assessing their efficacy in
word decoding as well as overall comprehension of the lesson throughout the
lesson. This data will help me to see how well they understand each learning goal,
which will benefit me in both understanding and addressing each students
strengths and weaknesses in reading. Furthermore, I will use each informal
assessment as a way to further develop this lesson as well as future small group
reading lessons.

Lesson Reflection
For my first student teaching observation, I had made plans to work with a small reading
group. It had already been just over a month since the start of the school year and my
cooperating teacher, her co-teacher, and I were establishing which groups I was going to work
with. They had given me the choice to pick, but strongly suggested that I work with two groups
one higher level reading group and one lower level reading group. This conversation led to my
decision to work with the Level M/N reading group, which consisted of three students, and the
Level J reading group, which consisted of two students. My host school, James F. Cooper
Elementary School, utilizes Houghton Mifflin Harcourts Literacy by Design reading program,
called Rigby Leveled Reading. As part of the program, Rigby offers both fiction and nonfiction
books that are divided into different reading levels as well as a corresponding teachers guide for
each level. For my first student teaching observation, I decided to work with the Level M/N
reading level. My cooperating teacher informed me that she had paired the two levels together
because only one of the three students in the M/N reading group was Level M, but that student

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was so close to moving up to Level N at the end of first grade that it seemed fitting to put the two
reading levels together.
When I got a hold of the corresponding teachers guides for both levels, I began to research
which book I wanted to start with. My cooperating teacher suggested that if I chose to start with
a fiction book, I should choose from the Level N books. But if I wanted to do a nonfiction book,
then I should choose from the Level M books. I decided to start my reading group with a fiction
book because this would allow me to gauge the reading capabilities of all three students,
especially my Level M student. The teachers guide provided a great deal of information,
including suggested reading strategies and skills, grade level vocabulary, and comprehension
activities for each book. While I thought that the guide was a great resource, I found the format
to be a bit overwhelming. The book I chose to start my reading group with was called Jungle
Jenny. The book focused on two main characters, Jenny and her grandfather, who played a game
of pretend every Saturday morning before breakfast. In this story, their game turns into reality
and Jenny had to utilize her resources (objects in her grandfathers backyard) to capture the
escaped zoo animals. For the learning goals, I wanted my students to be able to differentiate
between reality and pretend, understand how to make inferences based on context clues and
background knowledge, and identify antonyms within the text.
A day before my observation, I met with my Level M/N reading group to teach them about
making inferences. It was a rather shaky lesson despite spending several days researching the
concept and practicing strategies for teaching inferences. But at the end of the introductory
lesson I felt that the students had some understanding of inferring. On the day of my observation,
I met with my three students and we first briefly reviewed my lesson on making inferences
before telling them that we would practice making inferences throughout the text. I then
introduced the book to the students, provided an overview, and asked the students a series of text
connection questions. Next, I taught the students about identifying antonyms, and had them
practice finding antonyms in the story and write their corresponding synonyms on a Post-It.
Lastly, before starting the reading, I had the students highlight vocabulary words using
highlighter tape. The entire lesson took about three days to complete. As the three students took
turns reading, I had them stop at certain points of the story and infer about what was going to
happen next. We also went over the vocabulary words that were read. Once the entire book was
read, I asked the students a series of comprehension and inferential questions.
Overall, I think I did too much for this lesson. As stated above, the teachers guide provided a
great deal of information, which included different topics to cover along with fluency and
comprehension. However, I found the guide to be overwhelming and therefore, lost direction in
the information that I wanted to teach. In terms of meeting the standards for Domain 1, I felt that
I implemented all of the components. The execution of each component during the lesson did not
go very well, but in terms of planning and preparing for the lesson I felt that I did a good job.
Once I decided to work with the Level M/N reading group, my cooperating teacher and I began
discussing each students reading development. Knowing this led me to start with a Level N
book. This is because even though one student in the group is at Level M, she is close to moving

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up to Level N (1b). Once I chose the book, I consulted several resources, including videos of
other teachers teaching inferences to small group as well as texts such as the Rigby Level N
Teachers Guide, to not only understand but be able to teach inferring to the students (1a and d).
After consulting various resources, I started to plan and write out my lesson. My schools reading
program, Rigby Leveled Reading, aligns with the Common Core State Standards; and thus, the
comprehension and reading skills that are suggested per book offer differentiation to adapt to the
different learning needs of students (1c). Next, I formatted my small group reading lesson so that
each learning goal could build off of one another. For example, the main theme of Jungle
Jenny was being able to distinguish real events from pretend events. Therefore, the activity of
finding antonyms and coming up with their synonyms was meant to further help students
understand the difference between the central theme. Then, as the students read I reinforced the
lesson of inferring by having students infer what would happen next in the story (1e). The last
part of my lesson focused on creating assessments. I decided that a good way to gauge my
groups individual comprehension of the story, I created a comprehension worksheet that I
planned on using for my lesson. In addition, I had planned to further assess the students
understanding by collecting their Post-Its that contained their antonym-synonym pairs as well as
the inferring worksheet I had designed (1f).
The lesson planning process is hard. Even before learning about the six components of
Domain 1, I have always found the planning and preparation process of lesson writing to be the
most challenging aspect of being an educator. This is because educators have to be cognizant of a
range of factors. These include student skills and knowledge, prior prerequisites, state standards,
as well as determining appropriate assessments and differentiation. This first observation lesson,
I learned that even the most detailed lesson plans may not always translate well in the classroom.
As I stated above, I felt that I tried to do too much for this lesson. During my post-lesson meeting
with my observation supervisor, he agreed that I needed to filter my learning goals. I feel that
with time I will get better with my lesson planning.