Mini-Lesson 1 Reflection

I just taught my quick mini-lesson, and I’m really pleased with the outcome!  When I’d initially talked to my mentor teacher about doing prosody, she liked the idea, but did not indicate that the students had done any work with it.  I opened the lesson by saying that we were going to work on reading as though we were talking and with expression, being “fluidez,” Katie chimed in right away by explaining what it was in English.  They were very attentive, and kept scooting closer to me in order to hear what I was saying, and see the pictures of the few pages that I shared of Taky, el pinguino.  They were all very open to sharing their ideas about the differences in the ways in which I read the passage: once with fluidity, once without.  Zack said reading without fluidity, or prosody, was “boring,” Katie said reading with fluidity was easy for a friend to understand, and James said that reading without fluency was hard to understand.  They were also very excited to read aloud to the group, and did not get nervous.  I added an additional part at the last second, telling them to pretend to be the teacher, and hold the book up to read to the class while reading it.  This put them in the mindset of an experienced reader who’d already gained prosody, and they couldn’t wait to do it!

I am limited by the fact that I cannot use English in order to teach my lessons, so that the children can understand the meaning of the Spanish vocabulary word fluidez, but may not equate that word to English fluency or prosody.  My strength in teaching, though, is eliciting the growing bilingualism of my students, and asking them to rephrase what I’ve said for the rest of the group, just to ensure understanding.  Katie did this well after I’d explained what fluency was the first time, and she took a stab at defining it in English. I also believe that I help my students by restating a good point they’ve made in Spanish, so that they can both feel validated at what they have just said, as well as introduce vocabulary they might see later on in the lesson.  I also believe that my enthusiasm for the topic helped my students shake any fears of reading aloud to the group, and that my reminders to be respectful caused the students to want to help each other when they got stuck, instead of laugh at a mistake.  This would be good to use in a future classroom in order to promote collaboration!

I learned that I can adapt a lesson very quickly!  I was planning on working with the kids earlier in the day, when their focus is at prime, and when I could stretch the lesson longer.  I was told right before centers that I needed to quickly grab the kids and do the lesson within fifteen minutes.  I managed to cover all of the material, and the students told me exactly what they had learned at the end of the lesson, being that “reading with fluency makes it easier to understand.”  I’m better on-the-fly than I had originally thought!  I am also glad that I used a book that the students were familiar with in order to help them gain prosody, but I am curious as to how much of the book was memorized.  Katie and James read the last sentence as “me encanta la ciudad” whereas Zack read it as “me gusta la ciudad.”  Both of these sentences have the same meaning, but this lead me to wonder about their memorization.  I guess we’ll see next week when they get to read new books!